Arlene Butler

Parkinson’s arrived recently for me as an explanation for what once felt like random symptoms. Now I have a name for the tremor that has surfaced. I live inside the question of what comes next—how to learn this body again, how to make peace with uncertainty, how to keep choosing joy with intention.

For most of my life, and throughout my work as a psychotherapist, I have folded paper into peace cranes. More than 70,000 origami cranes have passed through my hands. Each fold has been a lesson in patience, in releasing perfection, in practicing acceptance—one small gesture toward inner and outer peace.

From this practice grew 1000 Cranes 4 Peace: a project of giving and witnessing. I offer a crane, and I take a photograph. Over 6,000 people, in more than 60 countries and on all seven continents, now hold a piece of this ritual in their hands. My cranes have traveled to museums and galleries, and to the palms of the famous and the forgotten alike, carrying quiet messages of healing.

In 2024, I brought 10,000 cranes to the Children’s Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, where memory and hope stand side by side. The miracle of folding a single square of paper into a bird of peace never grows old. And somehow, even now, my trembling hands still remember how to fly.

I have just finished writing my memoir and shaping my sadness and wonder into comedy. I want to be a voice for understanding Parkinson’s—not as an ending, but as a human story still unfolding. Every voice matters. Every crane counts.