Taking Flight: Change Starts here(Offering 9.5)
Finding purpose when the world feels too big to hold.
In this chapter, the heartbreak at the USâMexico border collides with early motherhood, guilt, and the question that haunts so many of us: What can I do when the world feels unbearably heavy?
(If youâre new to Eclosion: An Artistâs Path to Power and Peace, start at the beginning. Or visit my Memoir Hub for a full table of contents with links.)
Change Starts Here
When Seren was two years old, Iâalong with most of our countryâlearned about the horrible treatment of children and families at the US-Mexico borderâfamilies simply trying to find a safe harbor within the storm of their lives. As they crossed into the US, children were separated from their families. They were held in cellsâcages reallyâranging in age from infants to seventeen-year-olds. Many were not having their needs met. They were not receiving the love and human touch they needed to thrive.
Holding my own child in my armsânursing her, loving her, watching her grow and developâwhile simultaneously witnessing the treatment of these children and families at the border horrified me. I didnât want to live in a world where families fleeing violence and danger were then torn apart. I wanted so badly to go to the US-Mexico border to protest, to do anything that I could to help those children and families. To do something.
Going to the border wasnât feasible at the time and I spiraled downward into the place of ânot enough.â I felt guilty for what I had. I had so much: a house, land, relative safety. I didnât feel that anything I was doing was enough for this situation. It was only by chance that I was born where I was, to the family that I was. It could have been me desperately trying to find safety for my child.
I shared my feelings of guilt and ânot enoughâ with a mentor. She pointed out my limitations, reminding me that I canât take on every single issue. Instead, she suggested that I focus on something I could changeâsurely meaning myselfâand trust that other people are out there doing the things Iâm not.
How was I supposed to trust other people to do what I could not? It seemed like an easy escape. But I did my best to believe it, because I was miserable and that was not helping anyone.
During this time, I was asked to present to a group of teachers who were studying climate change and working to incorporate climate curriculum into their classrooms. I did a short presentation on the power of collaborative art and led them through an exercise exploring their hopes and fears around the climate crisis.
One of the teachers from the workshop approached me afterwards and shared an idea brewing within her. She wanted to create a migration parade for her school that would incorporate learning about the migration of species, particularly pollinators and birds, and human migration. She taught second grade at a bilingual school where many of her students had immigrated from Latin America.
Together, we created a parade celebrating migration. I worked with two second grade classes on bringing art and science together to create positive change. We explored the importance of migration, how it is essential for different animals and cultures. Many of the students did not yet speak English and had survived their own crossing of the US/Mexico border. A few bravely shared their stories with the class.
We chose to focus on two species, rufous hummingbirds and monarch butterflies, both of which migrate between the United States and Mexico. We worked together to create costumes for the parade as we explored obstacles that both animals and humans face when migrating.
This pilot project initially involved just two classes, in the hope that the entire school would participate in coming years. However, the enthusiasm of other teachers led to the whole school joining the inaugural yearâs parade. Community members came together to provide music, show solidarity, and observe our march. The parade route snaked through the school grounds and extended onto nearby sidewalks. To deepen the educational impact, we integrated an obstacle course into the parade route symbolizing real-world migration challenges. Many students wore clothing representative of their cultures, connecting the parade to broader themes of migration and belonging.
As we marched along, the students chanted over and over again:
âÂĄLa migraciĂłn es un derecho humano!
ÂĄLa migraciĂłn es un derecho animal!â
Migration is a human right! Migration is an animal right!
I discovered that while I couldnât go to the US-Mexico border to help children and families there, I could work with children right in my own communityâchildren who had migrated themselves, or whose classmates had migratedâto express pride in their cultures, to uplift their stories, and to show the importance of migration.
This project did not change any laws. It did not directly change what was happening on the border. But it changed me. It gave me a sense of purpose. A sense of being part of the solution. It meant that I could keep doing the work.
And if it helped just one of those students find healing or a sense of belonging, a new understanding of the rightness of their migration story, or a new level of compassion for others who migrate, then it was a huge success.
This pattern shows up time and again in my lifeâthere is some huge, overwhelming, global problem that I feel passionate about. I do what I can on a global scale, but the issue is so large that I feel like less than a drop in the bucket, and I begin to spiral. When things feel too big, I remind myself to pull back inâto community, to family, to my body. That is where I am most potent. And sometimes, an opportunity presents itself right in my communityâa local manifestation of a global problem, one where I can make a larger impact.
Just as the monarch butterflyâs migration relies on each individual butterflyâs contribution to a much larger journey, each local action contributes to a broader transformation.
Where does change start for you today?