383. Monarch Butterflies

A few years ago Suzanne stumbled upon a new hobby, raising and releasing Monarch butterflies. It’s a very beautiful experience, and it’s also taught her and her family a lot of important lessons.

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Suzanne:   Hi, my name is Suzanne and it’s going to be okay.  This summer, for the third year in a row, my family and I have raised and released monarch butterflies.  We learned how to find monarch eggs in the wild. Note, it’s very hard, but we’ve somehow developed a knack for it.  We wait for them to hatch into the teeniest little caterpillars.

We feed them fresh milkweed leaves to help them grow 2, 000 times their birth size over the course of only two weeks.  We watch them transform into a chrysalis. and then magically emerge as a beautiful butterfly about two weeks later.  It’s a seasonal hobby we’ve kind of fallen into, but me, my husband, and two young children have all fallen in love with it.

I said to a friend the other day that in the summertime my personality is now monarchs, and I was kind of joking, but mostly not.  I’m honestly not sure when I first fell in love with butterflies. but it feels like I’ve always been enchanted by them. Their evolutionary process seems like pure magic to me.

These wiggly little caterpillars basically eat a ton of leaves, then wrap themselves up into a green burrito, turn into goo,  and then become one of the most stunning creatures on Earth.  Within two weeks of being, as I just said,  goo.  It’s wild.  Now, we’ve all heard the symbolism around butterflies and their metamorphosis before.

How they represent transformation, rebirth, growth, and the necessity of change.  But let me tell you,  witnessing the evolution of a monarch butterfly up close has been the most vivid reminder that change is inevitable.  Change is natural.  Change, even when it’s hard. A  monarch takes about 30 days to go from egg to butterfly.

The day after they emerge from their chrysalis, after their wings have had enough time to dry off, because remember, they were just living in goo,  we release our butterfly back into the wild.  We’ve done butterfly release parties with family and friends gathering in our backyard. And sometimes it’s just been our family of four.

But every time we all wave goodbye. And usually my six year old says some of the sweetest words to our butterfly friend, as we all wish them a beautiful life.  And in that moment, as I watched them fly off to begin the next stage of their journey,  I know  that it’s going to be okay.