Migratory Return

Instinct and Love on Mother’s Day

Photo by Julia Craice

Every year, millions of birds, insects, and animals move with the seasons across vast distances to migrate. They are guided by changes in the weather, light, magnetism, scent trails, and even ancestral coding passed down to them. Sometimes traveling thousands of miles to perpetuate their species - they are often guided to places they have never been before. And the journey there is never easy. Facing exhaustion, storms, predators, or human made changes, still they travel. Every year. These epic journeys are a testament to the strength and resilience of the world around us.

Most people know that Monarch butterflies migrate approximately 3,000 miles between Canada and Mexico. But here's the truly incredible story of their migration: no single butterfly makes the round trip. The butterflies that leave the north and return to the south each fall are the fourth generation of the ones who last made the journey. Yet, somehow, they know exactly where to go and how to get there. They fly thousands of miles to a place they have never seen.

It's been many years that I’ve been coming up to Sundance, deep in the mountains of Utah, for Mother’s Day weekend. (Read my previous posts here and here). This time, I’m continuing to read a book that I’ve been perusing for many years called, The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs, by Tristan Gooley. There is a lot about animal movements and migration in the book. Reading about these instinctual journeyings, I am reminded of my own journey through mothering as I try to travel to a place with my family without a guidebook and without ever having been where I’m trying to go. As I read, I think about how often being a mother has felt the same: no trail to follow, no example to trace—just the pull and push of instinct and love.

I’ve come up here enough to Sundance, that it feels like home now. The mountains are peaceful and quiet. The smell of pine and the sound of the stream restores me. The snow that’s still on the back side of the great Mount Timpanogos is beautiful. Each year, I come here, and I return back to the beginning. I return to a place of mother’s day. When Monarch butterflies sense that they are off course, they will actually do a full circle turn in flight to reset their inner compass. Coming up here is my full circle turn. I reset. I think about changes I want to make. I pray. I make goals about loving more deeply and accepting more fully. I connect with myself. I reorient. I remember what matters.

This last year, my youngest child turned 18. It was a pivotal step in our journey as a family. The generation I’ve raised has faced things I never faced when I was growing up. It’s all new and the truth is, as a mother, I’m making it up as I go along. There is no well laid out path for raising a transgender child, it’s instinct, and love, and prayer, and soul searching. I could say the same for each of my children and what they’re going through. They’re unique and their situations are too. It’s required that I constantly check in with my heart to see what the next step is and determine the most loving response to whatever I face. I’m migrating. Moving forward to a loving home. Sometimes flying off course, and correcting.

A lot of mothers feel the pull towards a form of mothering that they themselves never experienced. And just like generational trauma can be passed on, here’s the good news that I’m discovering as my children have grown into adults: generational healing can be encoded too. So can unconditional love. So can hope. So can the courage to stand up and fight for rights. We can pass these things on to our children and implant them inside their minds and hearts and prepare them for their own flight. Their own epic journey as adults. And maybe these children, they will travel farther than we ever could.