Cages

“A bird in a cage is safe, but God didn't create birds for that”

- Paulo Cohelo

My brother sent me a text the other day—a grainy video of a massive palm tree in Uruguay, alive with wild parrots. Dozens of them, screeching and swooping, their green wings flashing against the sky. The caption read, "A flock of Jacques."

I hadn't thought about Jacques in years.

Back in college, my brother and I made an unlikely pair of roommates. He was an art major with a special interest in unusual sculptures. I was a bunhead who spent my days in ballet studios and the theater department before eventually switching to something more "acceptable." We lived upstairs in a century-old white house with a wraparound porch at the edge of campus. Our apartment was a strange little world—mismatched furniture, experimental art projects in various stages of completion, and a large fish tank balanced precariously as his headboard. Inside that tank lived something I can only describe as a nightmare with fins. A piranha, maybe. Or some other creature that survived by eating other living things. I used to lie awake at night, convinced it would leap out of the water and attack him in his sleep.

One afternoon, we ventured to the pet store for fish food, and I wandered into the bird section while he browsed. The cages were filled with exotic parrots—impossible greens, blues, oranges. Feathers I didn't know could exist on a living creature. I stood there mesmerized, thinking, if he can have a horrible fish, I should have a bird. That was my logic.

Jacques came home with us that day, cage and all.

I had big plans. I was going to teach him French. He'd sit on my shoulder while I studied, and we'd become fast friends. It didn't go that way. I'd read aloud from my French textbook, and he'd stare at me like I was the most tedious thing he'd ever encountered. At night, he'd squawk relentlessly until my brother covered the cage with a towel and shoved it in the closet. Some days I'd come home from class and rehearsals to find Jacques still in there, tucked away in the dark. When I'd open the closet door, he'd glare at me with his little birdy eyes, full of what I can only describe as seething disdain.

The worst part came when I learned that birds in captivity have to have their wings clipped. Otherwise, they'll fly away. I could barely clean his cage without him darting around the room, leaving droppings everywhere and aiming for the nearest open window. How on earth was I supposed to clip his wings?

Eventually, I gave up. A hippie dude in a brown van showed up one day and took Jacques off my hands. He even paid me.

I think about that bird sometimes. About how I brought him home, thinking I could make him into something he wasn't meant to be. How I kept him in a cage because that's what you do with birds you want to keep. How the whole arrangement made both of us miserable.

It's funny how long it took me to realize I'd done the same thing to myself.

For years, I built cages around my life. Small ones at first—silent agreements that my voice was too much, my dreams too impractical, my needs too inconvenient. Then bigger ones. A marriage that didn't fit. A version of myself I thought I was supposed to be. I trimmed my own wings because that's what good women did. We stayed small. We didn't fly too close to the windows.

I see it now in the women I work with. Smart, capable women who've spent decades in cages they didn't even realize they were building. Marriages that stopped feeling like partnerships and started feeling like prisons. Lives that look fine from the outside, but leave them waking up at 3 a.m. wondering, is this all there is? They've clipped their own wings for so long they've forgotten what it feels like to stretch them.

The truth is, cages feel safe. They're predictable. You know the boundaries. But God didn't create us for that. We weren't meant to stay small, silent, accommodating. We weren't meant to spend our lives staring through bars at a bigger world we're too afraid to step into.

And here's the thing: the door was never locked. It never is. We've just been too afraid to push it open.

If you're reading this and feeling that familiar tightness in your chest, that quiet ache that whispers something has to change, I want you to know something. You're not stuck because the cage is too strong. You're stuck because you haven't yet decided you're worth the freedom.

But you are. You always have been.

Maybe it's time to stop clipping your wings and start remembering what it feels like to fly.

If you're ready to open the door, let's talk. Schedule a free consultation with me today, and let's explore what freedom could look like for you.

Love and Light,
Michèle

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