Every Branch Carries Us Home

Written and illustrated by Crystina M. February 2, 2026 Full Moon 100% - Leo / Virgo

Come sit with me beneath the moonlight, and let us speak of ancestral love. The kind of love that hums quietly in your bones when you listen closely.

It began with one name. One ancestor, thirteen generations ago. Then another. And another. One by one, I traced the threads of lives that bent but never broke. Their strength winding through time, their stories flowing forward until they became a part of us.

Their names did not speak in words. They spoke in rhythm… the rhythm of their days, their struggles, their joys, and their time upon this earth.

A current that carried us into being. They married young. They raised children. They buried little ones. They honored their elders and tended to every soul placed in their care.

They packed up entire lives and crossed oceans, rivers, and mountains with nothing but what they could carry in their hands and hearts.

They planted gardens in stubborn soil. They chopped wood through winters that seemed endless. They baked bread over stone hearths. They fed the hungry, comforted the sick, held the dying, and kept the fire burning.

And still…They moved forward. Mothers and fathers. Brothers and sisters. Husbands and wives. Children who came and children who left too soon.

Loss traveled beside them, yet still their blood pulsed through the roots of time. They loved again. They rebuilt. They raised more children. They created homes where none had existed before.

Love was rarely a sweet ballad or a collection of perfect words. Love was steady hands. Exhausted bodies. Stubborn hearts. The choice to keep going even when they were tired, afraid, or ready to surrender.

I traced these incredibly resilient branches one by one. And when I stopped to count, there were one hundred and sixty-two names - grandmothers and grandfathers who carried us here. One hundred and sixty-two lives echoing through time in a current of survival, devotion, and love. From these names, I wove a family tree.

A gift for our family. A way for them to witness the lives that carried us into this world. Because every branch carries us home. Each branch carries the sweat, the pain, the prayers, the tears, the laughter, the hands held, and the love that continued moving forward when everything else felt impossible.

Our ancestors taught me this:

Love is not ego.

It is something deeper. It is planting. It is feeding. It is tending the fire through the cold. It is moving like roots beneath the frost…every small act, every sacrifice, every kindness quietly woven into the generations that follow. That is the kind of love that lasts. That is the love that built us. That is the love that carries us home.

That is the love that hums deep in our bones.