~inspired by Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche’s allegory of the camel, the lion, and the child maps uncannily onto the arc of a woman’s life – her seasons of endurance, rebellion, and rebirth. These metamorphoses are not linear milestones but cyclical returns, each revealing deeper layers of strength. The camel kneels under the weight of expectation; the lion roars to claim sovereignty; the child, having weathered both, creates not from duty or defiance, but from pure joy.
The Camel: The Sacred Burden
‘What is most difficult?’ asks the spirit that would bear much, ‘that I may take it upon myself and exult in my strength.’
In youth and middle age, many women become the camel: backs bent under loads they did not choose but carry anyway. This is not weakness but fortitude in motion. The camel does not question the weight; it moves because survival demands it.
We recognize this phase in the midnight vigils over a sick child, in the invisible labor of holding homes together, in the deferred dreams filed away for “someday.” Like the sea turtle returning to ancestral shores to lay her eggs – driven by instinct, not applause – the camel persists out of necessity and love.
Internally, this stage breeds quiet tension: a growing tally of unmet needs, a hunger unnamed. Yet there is nobility here. The camel’s strength is not in submission but in her capacity to build – foundations, futures, a world for others to stand upon.
But deserts are not eternal.
The Lion: The Unapologetic No
To create new values – that even the lion cannot yet do; but to create freedom for oneself for new creation – that is the power of the lion.
The lion emerges when the cost of compliance outweighs the fear of freedom. Her role is not to destroy but to clear – to slash through the “thou shalts” that once bound her. Where the camel asked, “What must I bear?” the lion demands, “What will I no longer tolerate?”
This metamorphosis can be seismic (a divorce, a career leap at fifty) or silent (a boundary expressed, a no where there was only yes). Like the hawk riding thermals high above the valley, the lion gains perspective. She sees how small the cage was – how vast the sky.
Society often mistakes her roar for anger, but it is clarity. The lion does not rage; she reclaims. Her territory is time, voice, autonomy. This stage is not selfishness but self-possession – the courage to say: I am not only what I carry.
The Child: The Alchemy of Play
The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes.
The child is the hardest-won metamorphosis. She is not naive but new – a self unshackled from duty and defiance. Having borne and roared, she now creates for the exhilaration of it.
Her language is curiosity, not obligation. She plants gardens without calculating harvests, learns languages for the music of them, dances in empty rooms. Like an old apple tree that blooms riotously each spring – not to prove vitality, but because it cannot help it – the child’s creativity is innate, unselfconscious.
This is not regression but resolution. The camel’s strength and the lion’s fire distill into something lighter: wisdom that knows its vitality need not be earned. The child’s Yes! is not deference but devotion – to life as it is unfolding.
A Spiral, Not a Line
These stages are not locked in sequence. A woman might be camel (stalwart in her career), lion (fierce in motherhood), child (playful in love) – all at once. The metamorphoses recur, each pass deeper than the last.
To live fully is to embody each incarnation – the camel’s resolve, the lion’s defiance, the child’s delight – not as steps toward an ending, but as currents in the vast sea of becoming.
Also read, Changing How We See the World Around Us.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Which metamorphosis of womanhood are you in? Are you carrying a load or fiercely defying your circumstances? Or are you playing with joy?
