Some nicknames are cute.
Some are random.
And some become anchors you grow into over years.

Years ago when I was backpacking along the Florida Trail, I met another woman hiker. We walked together for a few weeks, the kind of temporary companionship that long trails create. At the end of the time together, she looked at me and said:

“You’re a Butterfly.”

I thought this was cute and adopted it, adding in emojis to my work and personal branding.

Studio 1950 business cards have butterflies on them.

Only now do I see why she chose that name for me, because the journey of the monarchs mirrors something I’ve been living without realizing.

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The Monarch Migration as a Mirror

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the monarch butterfly migration. It’s one of the most astonishing journeys in nature because not one butterfly is heroic, but because no single butterfly makes the full trip.

Monarchs don’t complete their legendary migration in one lifetime.
It takes four generations to fly from Canada to Mexico.

× One generation begins the journey

× The next continues

× The next carries it further

× And only the fourth arrives

Each butterfly flies its stretch.
Each inherits an instinct, a direction, a memory of where the last left off.
Each continues a journey that started long before it was born.

The meaning hit me today:
this is exactly what it feels like to be a woman building anything right now.

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We Are Mid-Migration

I had a conversation with a group of women from Daya Ventures today about women’s ownership, capital, and empowerment. And something clicked:

We are not generations deep into women having economic power.
We are not centuries into women being allowed to own businesses, bank accounts, property, or debt.
We are barely one lifetime into full financial autonomy.

We are mid-migration.

We inherited this flight from women before us.. our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers who never had these opportunities.
And we are continuing it for the next generation, who will fly farther because of what we’re doing now.‍

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My Personal Take

I’ve always been drawn to movement...travel, motion, flight.
Even now, pursuing my private pilot license feels like a continuation of that instinct: to rise, to see from above, to navigate the invisible currents that connect places and people.

She couldn’t have known how accurate it would become years later.

Or maybe she could.
How much my life would revolve around exploration, entrepreneurship, aviation, women’s empowerment...all forms of flight.

And how much the metaphor of migration would eventually reflect how I see the world, this is for sure where I want to be.

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I Don’t Believe in Competition. I Believe in Continuation.

Women don’t build in competition ...not truly. We build in lineage.

The old model of “everyone fend for yourself” never belonged to us.
We’re rewriting the system with collaboration, joy, shared capital, shared knowledge, and shared elevation.
We are each carrying the journey a little farther.

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Why I’m Writing This

Today I was reminded why the nickname Butterfly still feels true.
Because I’m part of something long, beautiful, and bigger than myself.
Because my own life [the travel, the flying, the building, the curiosity] is just one part of a larger migration of women stepping into power.