She May Not Behave Like You Expect

You may think you know her. You may have read about her behaviour. You may have studied her. You may have experienced her habits. She may be nearly predictable. But, she may not behave like you expect. She is a Queen, after all.⠀

This season I have had more encounters with queens than any before, and the great She is schooling me. We are taught to recognise a series of behaviours in animals, plants, earth and people. we learn to expect them. We greater knowers, like to know things. We like to predict. It makes us feel safe. It helps us steward. But the wild doesn’t read our textbooks or attend our webinars. We forget that each face we encounter, each bobcat, rowan tree, hummingbird, isn’t just an animal, they are a being with a personality, and personalities aren’t always predictable. ⠀

Life is wildly unpredictable. Our sunlight cultivation of order and neat little vegetable rows gets ruffled by errant vines and night visits by the deer people. But oh how we long to be among those unsettling antlered wanders. We know the swarm follows the queen and she hides deep within it, but oh how we long for that moment when she wades bravely along the outside edge. When she does not hide. She confounds us, but we long for a glimpse of her strange mystery.⠀

They say when you hive a swarm, the queen is in the heart of the cluster and stays protected deep inside the new colony. But yesterday she flew in the golden rays and landed on my finger. ⠀

They say a queen mates shortly after hatching, but I have witnessed her waiting weeks, remaining virginal and adored by her sisters. ⠀⠀

She is complex. She is a daughter of the sun and the moon. She yields and she takes no prisoners. She is a mother and a lover. She is discipline and chaos. ⠀

She gives me hope as I step down an unusual road to motherhood, weeping this week in joyous gratitude for the village of people supporting me (you!), while being absolutely brought to my knees in the heavy grief of longing for a partner. 

The Queens. Our ladies of Sun and Shadow, they hold my spirit in their delicate ferocity. In their promise for life. They remind me: be wild, step bravely, let yourself be fed, wait for your time. Walk into motherhood with Her, and like her, be something you could never predict.

Mother For President

I’ve been thinking a lot about women’s voices lately. I’ve been thinking about what would happen if more women were voted into office, or if more women were invited to speak at basically any conference that’s not for, or already about, women. I’ve been noticing the changes too: how I can casually talk about my menstrual cycle around my male friends, or how pumping milk at work is suddenly something normal to see on Netflix shows. For god’s sake, it’s starting to be okay to talk about the normal function of our bodies.

Here we are, making all this progress about what we can say and do in comparison to our grandmothers and their mother’s mothers. Sure, that’s amazing. I can talk about having two miscarriages on social media and I won’t be publicly hushed or shamed. But also, how on earth do we address the grave transgression on the body of the non-human when we are still struggling for a place of equality among genders. Not to mention atrocities done to other races and nationalities. ⠀

We see all these cries of dismay: “the lungs of the earth are burning!” Yes, I agree, this is horrifying. Meanwhile, I’m grateful my bees are still alive because California isn’t burning...this year...yet. Count my blessings or pull my hair out? Which is it to be today?⠀

So here’s today’s thought: it’s not so much that we need to learn to respect our mother (which we certainly do), but rather we need to remember the Mother. Not just the archetype, but that age-old wisdom that valued Mother as synonymous with life. That same wisdom built shrines, temples, halls, even entire religions around Mother. Because you know what a mother does? She feeds her children with food she’s made with her own superhero body. She literally gives them life and then she protects them while they grow. And do her children burn her lungs in return? Not usually.⠀

It’s not just that there’s a need for the feminine voice in science/politics/agriculture/education/theology/everything, but rather a remembering of the Mother‘s voice. And no, I don’t mean the mother issues you talk about in therapy. I mean doing away with Freud and other such bullshit and coming back into relationship to the feminine voice that includes the Mother for all that she is: the Mother who is sovereign in her queendom, who is sexy as fuck in her body, heart, and mind, who is fierce in her rage, who is still learning from her elders, who is teaching her young, who trusts her intuition, who is revered, but not for her hierarchy. She is revered because she is her own being, and also, because, consequently, she brings life. Kinda like, oh, a queen bee.

Our attention on the feminine often falls to the maiden: she who is still becoming (she who is desired by men). I love the maiden. I also love the lover (a 4 female archetype to discuss another day). But culturally, we don’t really see the mother.

She’s not on our magazine covers, unless we want to show off how sexy she is while pregnant or how quickly she lost that baby weight. And if we do see her, she is only Mother. That is her only identity. We are so one dimensional in our seeing. No wonder we can let the lungs of our mother burn, or her blood dry out. We don’t see her.

Luckily, in this bubble experiment that is social media, I see mothers. So many of you. Using your voice as a mother and besides being a mother. More please. More mothers’ voices. Your true voices, stronger than the chains of patriarchy and social expectation. Full of the brazen authenticity and vulnerability that will wake us up from our collective amnesia. Oh and to all you women out there who aren’t/can’t be mothers with your bodies, but are creating life in your own way? I’m talking to you too. I’ve spent enough years in the maiden archetype, and I’m all about the crone, but it’s time to embrace the Mother, because we all know she’s a Queen.

#mother #queen #feministbeekeeping