Grief and hesitant hope: Lessons learned from the bees🐝

I want to take a moment to extend a honey-warm welcome into the first newsletter of 2022!

I have an old-fashioned soul in the sense that when I sit down to write to you here, I imagine my keyboard as ink, and my hands become a feather-tipped quill while the screen becomes papyrus. I envision cozying up next to a glowing hearth and invite words that embody integrity and sincerity to pour forth like prayers in their own timing.

Today, as I attune inside, the words feel weighted, like dense firewood with portions charred and burned to ash while other parts are dipped in honey.

That’s how life has felt to me as of late: weighted, dense, ashy, charred, and somehow containing moments that find a way to feel drenched in honey. Sweetness and starlight always creep in, even on life’s darkest nights.

On a personal note, in the past 2-3 weeks, I have canceled family holiday travel plans to spend Christmas with covid (thankfully I am now fully recovered) and experienced a tidal wave of what feels like both collective and personal grief.

I’ve whispered countless prayers for sudden challenging events affecting dear friends, clients, and loved ones. If you’re facing such an event, I whisper a prayer for you now.

I’ve both received 1:1 support and given support to a handful of brave beings navigating hardship within the holy grove of their everyday lives.

This past week, I started snow skiing again after not going since I was a teenager (!) and practiced what I teach by leaning into full permission and self-encouragement to move as fast as the slowest parts of me. So far, I’ve fallen back in love with the magic of skiing in the mountains.

And … perhaps most notably: I’ve recently started (or perhaps returned) to a wild beekeeping apprenticeship, which is rooted in an ancient tradition called The Path of Pollen.

I feel like the Path of Pollen entered my life as a result of a question I’ve been asking again and again through my whole life, but especially over the past year: how can I serve? How can I nourish truth and beauty in what often seems like a hopeless place?

The answer to this big question didn’t arrive as a flashing neon light, a meditative message, or even a recurring thought. The answer arrived with the bees.

It started by reading a book about bees in preparation for teaching Fairy School last spring. The book Song of Increase shares how honeybee hives are sanctuaries for nature spirits. Just as some humans go to churches or temples or sacred groves in nature as a holy place to pray, for nature spirits, honeybee hives are a sacred place. As a result, I found myself reflecting on bees as tangible weavers between the worlds of Fae and Human.

Over the summer, I led several private retreats on Mt. Shasta. At every single retreat, the bees showed up and landed on at least one of the participants in the midst of a meditation or experience. On one such occasion, a woman had set an intention for opening up her voice, for throat chakra healing, and while engaging in breathwork on the mountain, two bees showed up, one landing in the middle of her throat and the other landing on her lips at the same time. They stayed there for a whole song. No one was stung in any of these encounters.

For the past 2+ years, I’ve also immersed myself in a somatic trauma resolution training called ReBloom, where the collective group of facilitators is called the Hive – and this year, I was invited to join the Hive as a supervisor and facilitator.

Needless to say: the bees have been making themselves known in big and small ways – and through this invisible thread of synchronicities, I found myself invited to immerse myself deeper into the Path of Pollen through apprenticing.

When I think about the bees in relation to the immense challenges on the planet at this time, I feel humbled to listen. Not to what I’ve read or been told about bees, but to the brightly buzzing Hum beneath the surface. The Hum that’s sung through thousands of years on Planet Earth, that continues through the bees alive here today. It’s the hum of life itself, of interconnection, collaboration, and cross-pollination of ideas, resources, and actions.

Listening humbly to the Hum doesn’t always offer immediate, linear, or logical answers to big and necessary questions; however, it can and will provide direction.

I experienced this in my first apprenticeship gathering, where we were led through an ancient meditative practice for connecting with the consciousness of bees. As I spiraled deeper into the experience, I heard within the Hum an invitation to Arrive in my Fullness. The bees showed me how it’s possible to be humble without denying my wisdom and all the paths I’ve walked both inside and out. I always like to show up in learning environments with humility and reverence, but the bees showed me how I’ve been expressing a shadow aspect of this intention by cloaking “humility” as an excuse for withholding my experiences, my wisdom, and my voice – which can be of service to others when shared sincerely.

The bees showed that when I arrive in my fullness, I light up my cell in the honey hive with golden light that in turn, nourishes the rest of the hive. When I hold back or hide, the light of my hive cell is shrouded in false darkness, and the hive misses out on receiving a specific kind of nourishment.

One of the most consistent things I’ve reflected on in the midst of these times is integrous contribution. How can I share my heart’s medicine in a world that’s quite literally on fire?

Despite all I’ve shared, up until now I’ve still held parts of myself back or at the very least, dimmed my light, gestating and re-forming. But today, in the midst of both honey and grief, raw sorrow and hesitant hope, I feel a new bloom emerging.

I’m not where I was one year ago or three years ago. I’m not even where I was two weeks ago! And while today officially marks seven years in business as Angelic Breath Healing (happy birthday ABH!), I celebrate that I’m meant to grow, to fall back to the Earth, to melt into ash, and rise again as an otherworldly bloom.

Like the bees spread life-giving pollen while seeking the nectar that nourishes them, we too give life and light to others when we nourish our joy. The hive only works when each bee plays their part, and the human hive is no different. We need one another, and how we show up affects the whole. We are interconnected and must collaborate to meet our challenges with compassionate solutions.

We are a part of it all. We are wild seasons and rhythms that often don’t make sense to our logical left brains. Our instinct guides us so much more than we know.

We are allowed to hurt while feeling hesitantly hopeful.

We are allowed to change our minds, to set fire to old ways of being and witness a new terrain emerge – slowly, steadily, not overnight.

We are allowed to wail at the moon and wish at the water. We are allowed to dream.

We are allowed to light a heart fire on a vision that nourishes our parched humanity. We are allowed to be the water in times of drought, and to receive water when we’re drained and parched.

We are allowed to listen to bees for guidance if it feels right. We are allowed to lean into the pathway that feels like honey to our hearts.

Today’s non-linear newsletter serves as an invitation to honor where you are. To welcome the weather of the world with searing presence. To lean into the deep-rooted web beneath your feet and call forth the questions worth listening for answers to in the Hum of our collective honey heart, the hive of humanity.

In honor of 7 years weaving this web collectively together, I have a few gifts and offerings for you this month:

1. On January 22nd, I’m teaching Angelic Breath Healing with Unicorns. This online class is an invitation to nourish your true nature and remember the magic that you are.

2. For the rest of the month, I’m offering 44% off Fairy School with the code BIRTHDAY. This was originally recorded in May 2021, but I’m making it available to you a little while longer before prepping for this year’s offering.

3. If you’ve felt called to work 1:1 together in a shorter (or longer) container, I have a few new options for sessions together. You can check that out here - please scroll down to view 3 options for working together.

Finally, I’d love to hear from you. What’s alive for you today? What’s asking for your sacred support, care, or attention? What feels like honey – what feels like ash? And like the bees, how can you light up your cell in the hive with golden light? How can you give and receive support within the interconnected whole?

With honey,
Madeline