Let Go of the Layers of Skin That Keep Us Small

A mythological story describes a bit of this process, is it comes from polynesia. The matriarch of the society would regularly go down to the river and shed her skin. But one season in lar when she did this, her skin got caught on a branch,. She just left it there and went back too, went back to the community. Her teen aged daughter was horrified by seeing her mother in her new being, without the skin, and she friaked out. And according to this myth, from that point on, the humans lost their connection with their own timeless immortality, with spirit. So what's the teaching here? What does it really mean to shed our skin?