Staring out the window, my mind is ricocheting off various topics. The Coronavirus and systemic racism. Varroa mites and treating the symptoms. Climate change and the denial of human abuse to the planet. How you can be a feminist, and still really enjoy when a date foots the bill. How great it can be to foot the bill. The silencing of a women’s voice and the inevitability of two white men vying for power.

How do we measure abuse with the bees? How can we tell? If a woman grows up strong and “fine”, how can you tell what actually happened to her when she was too young to protect herself? The violation of a child. The violation of a woman. The violation of the bees. The violation of the earth. The violation of a peoples. We have to stop, but how? This is what the death of Patriarchy looks like. Seeing the abuses of power at every turn. Eyes wide open. Witnessing the patterns. Breaking them.

If the hive were your child, would you treat her that way?

You wouldn’t look at me and immediately be able to read the trauma of childhood abuse. I certainly never talk about it. But it’s there. It plays into my fears and my ferocity. It fuels empowered reclaiming of my body’s wisdom, and also still wakes me in terror from vague dreams. Shame prevents me from speaking about it. But the story of one person’s twisted use of their own physical power over another is playing out on every channel right now. So loud.

Does it mean I stop falling in love with plum blossoms, moving like honey is rippling through my body, or singing La Vie En Rose at the top of my lungs? Not at all. I’m fucking awesome right now. Life is doing that golden thing we always seek, but rarely get to swim in.

Regardless, I have found that the greater my capacity to swim in the dewy glow of life’s magic, the greater capacity I have to face the shadow of pain and trauma.

How do we teach our children better boundaries and more trust at the same time? How do we care for the bees without projecting our desires for “production” or connection” onto them? How do we stay connected? There is so much paradox in living.