Shedding Shells and Skins

Martin Prechtel says that “in order to heal, an old skin must be shed.” I’ve been thinking a lot lately about shedding, especially snakes that shed their skins and hermit crabs that shed their shells. Snakes, I think, need their privacy so I’ve focused most of my attention on the humble hermit crab and what it has to tell me about safety, boundaries, carrying, and letting go.

I’ve tried to imagine how the crab must feel as it discards one shell and takes on a new one. This is one of nature’s most liminal events. The vulnerability is obvious, though still worth pausing over and considering. I also imagine the crab may feel some relief, especially the brave, questioning ones. Thresholds like this are also filled with such hope, the marking of movement, the potential of the new and unknown to be wonderful.

Imagining myself as a little crab relishing in this moment of endings and new beginnings, I was very sad to learn that hermit crabs are not hermits at all, and rather than enduring their liminal shedding alone, they have made it a social ritual. They actually line themselves up from biggest to smallest with a shocking accuracy and they pass their shells down from one to the other. This means, of course, that the only found shell is for the largest among them, and the only shell left behind is laid down by the smallest. What does this mean, I wonder, to pass your shelter, your shell, down to another rather than discard it completely? An inheritance like this is perhaps a road for my thoughts to wander along another day.

What has my attention right now is not how the crab sheds its shell or the snake its skin, but why. For both, it is a response to growth, a recognition that, in order to expand, the very thing that holds you together, keeps you safe and gives you shelter, has to change. For the crab, the ideal shell is the one that still lets you grow underneath it. Once it starts to confine or inhibit you, it’s time to cast it off and find (or receive) something new. It’s time to let go.

It strikes me that shedding is an act of consent. That God, that life, invites us forward, invites us deeper, and our role is to continue to say yes to what is next. So, we shed our shells, we wiggle out of old skins, we bravely keep growing, we bravely keep moving. But, unlike the frantic non-hermit crab, I think I’ll take my time between these two shells. I think I’ll relish in this vulnerable space where, between letting go and picking up, I am free, however briefly, to carry nothing.