It’s Okay, She Can Handle It

I was having a book discussion with women from my beekeeping apprenticeship last week and we got onto the topic of sovereignty and body autonomy.

I teach about asking the bees for permission each time you enter a hive or manipulate them in some way. This is NOT a common practice. In part, because we don’t know how to ask. We aren’t taught emotional and intuitive pathways toward knowing, or ways to work with our feminine side. In a Patriarchal system, we value our masculine side and masculine ways of knowing. Intuition and body knowing don’t have visual evidence to back them up, so they are undervalued.

I have a lot of students come to me after a rather upsetting lesson or in-the-field experience with a conventional, or even natural, beekeeper. It goes like this: beekeeper has an agenda. Beekeeper moves fast. Beekeeper quickly manipulates hive. Student expresses concern. Beekeeper says: “Don’t worry, they can handle it.”

There it is. The ubiquitous term that immediately devalues a being’s sovereignty. Not to stereotype, but only twice in the stories I’ve heard has this beekeeper been a woman.

What got me, is how often this phrase is used when manipulating or harassing humans. The female coworker experiencing sexual harassment: don’t worry she can handle it. The young boy being forced to toughen up: don’t worry he can handle it. The child being “lightly” bullied by their own parents: don’t worry, they can handle it. The 13 year old girl being teased by family for her changing body (me): don’t worry, she can handle it.

This attitude of toughness, or the ability to survive something, is so prevalent we don’t even notice how often we all say it. There’s a different between surviving and thriving. I think this is the crux of modern beekeeping: the commercial beekeeping industry has enforced a model of survival for human gain, dulling our senses to what it means to truly thrive.

The toughen up model of living may be great for survival in challenging environments, but it also comes with the Patriarchal disdain for those girly things like emotions, intuition, softness, gentleness, and god forbid, taking your time.

So next time you hear yourself of someone else say, “Don’t worry, she can handle it,” stop and check yourself. She may be able to handle it, but it does not mean she is okay with it.

Photo by Onyx Baird

Magnetic Maternal

I wanted to be held by a man.  Someone who loved me so much that he wanted to create life with me.  I wanted to share the moment of that positive pregnancy test with him, in joy and disbelief.  I wanted him to bring me hot cocoa and soup and marvel and my shapeshifting.  It was a fantasy, but not entirely unrealistic, after all, couples experience this all the time.  It took a decade of carefully picking apart the threads of love, partnership, and bearing a child.  I could not accept that they might be separate things.  Everything about my life had taught me to desire the coming together of two souls to create a third.  At the same time everything in my life has also taught me that family happens in a myriad of ways, and love does not equal someone who desires to create that new life with you.

When I love, I love big.  Not selflessly or with delusions of grandeur, but big like the way I feel when the ocean is lit up with phosphorescence, or when the songs sung by friends around the campfire make your heart want to burst.  Big like rivers and autumn.  It took a long time to learn the difference between desiring romance and desiring partnership.  It’s embarrassing to talk about wanting a man, wanting a partner, wanting love.  It feels like every statement of desire needs to be followed up by a disclaimer: “But I’m fine on my own.” “Oh, but I’m also a strong independent woman.” “Oh, but I’m not co-dependent.” “Oh, but I know I don’t NEED a man.”   Need and desire are two very different things.  What a perfect paradox of our times to be a woman who is at once longing to be met in love, and at the same time dismantling the patriarchy programming of a woman’s role in society.

It was some time around the 5th year after my miscarriage that I realized I may not meet someone in time to have a family.  This is when the unpicking of the threads began in earnest.  I was and remain unwilling to compromise on either of my two deepest desires around family: for a child and a partner.  I slowly came to the understanding that my time to grow life in my womb was limited, while love of a man was not.  I started to research the insemination process.  I began to make life decisions around the possibility of being a single mother.  I dated.  I cried over a broken heart.  I moved to a place with more access to friends, family, and community.  I doggedly refused to become jaded.  I took apart and rebuilt my life piece by piece. 

In this 10 year period of dismantling and becoming, I discovered an untruth I have been carrying with me: that I was not deserving of more than one good thing at a time.  I created either/or paradigms.  I can either be a strong woman or be taken care of by a man.  I can either have a career as a musician or have a child.  I can either have a child or a man.  I can either be a mother or a lover.  I can either be magnetic or maternal.  You only get one.

It was the bees who started to change this.  I was captivated by their ability to surrender so fully to the bliss of the flower, and return with soul purpose to feed the nest.  Behind them sat the Melissae, the bee women of ancient Greece, and all the teachings of their lineage.  The Melissae is a woman who is fully alive to her eros and with her desire to nurturing life.  Magnetic and maternal.  One does not beget the other, they are constantly in flow with each other.  No sequestered spiritual life for the bee women.  They are fully of this world, dripping with the milk of the stars and the blood of the Earth.  I owe my courage for conceiving a child on my own to the knowledge that these women existed.  They exist.  We exist.

What is it that crafts these mythic lives we live?  Everywhere we see the day to day struggle of career, loneliness, memories, health, finances.  Yet, underneath and swimming around this is the possibility that you are crafted from the same material myths are made of.  The stuff that reaches beyond the fantastical and straight into the soul of things: long journeys, transcendent moments, the dark night of the soul, the wise mentors, perseverance beyond the odds.  Whatever new story I am writing, I know now there will be at least one essential strand that I pass down to my daughter, and that strand is the red thread of Womanhood.   When we look back in time and lift the veil of history written by men, we find a rich sea of women’s spirituality, women’s traditions, and women’s stories. Cultures and traditions that revered the Mother as creator and bringer of life.  The creatrix. She who we both come from and return to; the void of creation, the magnetic Earth.  She who is both Mother and Lover.  She who is full bellied and entirely entwined with her own sexual potency.  She who gathers the winter to her breast for the long sleep.  She who dances wildly through the desert and gazes quietly into the moon-filled pool.  

Perhaps separating the strands of partner and child are less about coping with grief and longing, and more about inviting the night sea memory of reverence for the Sacred Feminine to take center stage for the new little woman that I am carrying from one side of the veil to the other.  Perhaps she chose me because I am just wild enough to choose to bring her fourth on my own.  I am not striking out alone, but rather sinking into an often unspoken of lineage of women.  Women who were not “single mothers”, but mothers within societies, priestesshoods, and tribes where a woman was not dependent on the nuclear family to survive.  

As I near the portal of birth, there is a candle burning for the pathenogenic priestesshoods we’ve nearly forgotten about.  A candle burning for the womb shamans.  A candle burning for the grandmothers midwifing their granddaughters.  A candle burning for the pythoness prophetess and her womb utterings. A candle burning for the red tent.  A candle burning for the way of the rose.  

I do not doubt that my desire is strong enough to weave a family for my daughter that includes a father.  I have no say over the timing, but I do know that she chose me now, and I chose her.  I chose her during a global pandemic.  She chose me when all the hands of community could not hold her as she enters the world.  I chose her despite the sometimes insurmountable heartbreak.  She chose me because I am alone, not despite it.  I chose her because I can, not because I’ve run out of time.  She chose me because I am strong and soft.  I chose her because I am brave, and because I wanted her more than anything in my life.

I have never felt more in touch with my womanhood.  

Together we are the maternal and magnetic, dripping into garden of life.

Photos by Koa Kalish

Paradoxes in Living

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.

Respecting the Sovereignty of a Body

Happy Friday the 13th, a day long associated with women’s bodies and women’s cycles. Did you know that a woman has her moon cycle about 13 times a year? Funny how a number associated with women’s potency, power, magnetism and fertility was conveniently turned into an “evil” number.⠀
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As we do the incredibly tenacious work of teaching the world to honour women’s bodies, we are doing so much more than supporting female bodied humans. There is a direct line from subjection and abuse of women’s bodies to the abuses done to the Earth and it’s creatures. With the advent of Patriarchy, the act of imposing power over a woman’s body led to the skewed world view of man’s dominion over the Earth rather than partnership and stewardship with the Earth. The inherent fecundity of the Earth has long been associated with woman and the power of the womb. Despite ages of misogyny, the Earth is still called Mother Earth. Even after the arrival of Patriarchy, there continued long-held beliefs associated with the Goddess of the land. In Celtic nations, to earn governance of the land, the King had to wed the land, known as Sovereignty. It was only she who bestowed sovereignty upon him. ⠀
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The suppression of a woman’s voice, the denial of climate change, and modern day beekeeping practices are all related. They all source from a belief system that is both threatened by and in direct opposition of the sovereignty of the body. When we started placing more power in the As Above, ignoring the So Below, we forgot our own birthright as beings woven into the fabric of life. One of the most radical things you can do to disrupt the broken system of our times is to listen to the body. Yours, the bees, your children’s, your beloved’s, the Earth’s.⠀
You want to be a beekeeper? Start with hearing and respecting the inmate language of your body.

Can You Let Her Lead?

Have you ever found yourself guilty of the general assumption that western history didn’t REALLY start until the birth of Jesus?  Okay Okay, maybe we can go back to the Roman Empire and it’s conquests.  That’s when what matters got going right?  Or possibly Ancient Greece?  Aristotle and all that? It’s a sneaky thought.  It’s a thought that perpetuate the idea that prior to the birth of modern society (let’s call it the Classical Greek era for now), people were just a bunch of warring tribes made of barbarians, heathens, and savages.  The history I was taught didn’t discuss how these “heathens” were actually rich, well established societies that centralized leadership, spirituality, art, and culture around women and matrilineal lines.  In such a short span of a few thousand years, we effectively erased the trace of women as political and spiritual leaders from the common populous.

Since 2010, I have studied under a European bee shamanism tradition that is, at its heart, gynocentric.  I mostly teach women, but I have always known that this work needs to be offered to both women and men, so last year a bee sister and I created a workshop that was inclusive to all genders.  On two different occasions I invited a male friend to attend the workshop.  I invited each of them because I saw how much they might love and be empowered by the work, but also how much they would bring to the table.  It was an invitation.  Do you want to know how they both responded?  Friend “A” wrote and asked if I wanted him to teach it with me.  Friend “B” didn’t even ask. He assumed the invitation was to co-facilitate, even though I was already teaching the workshop with another woman.  I do not believe I miscommunicated here.  Friend ‘A’ has never studied this work and friend ‘B’ has taken one workshop in England.  Meanwhile, I had 9 years and 11 trips to England behind me.  I do not completely fault these men for their assumption, but rather the paradigm we live under.   Neither of these men would openly question my worth, my knowledge, or my expertise, but the habit to question a woman’s ability to lead is so deeply embedded in the social structure of Patriarchy, that they both assumed I was asking for their leadership.  They both assumed I needed their help leading something they had no experience in.

Words like “I would love you to attend” or “I think you would be interested in this work and I could see you there” somehow got interpreted at “I would like you to teach this with me.”  While I would love to co-facilitate work with men, this blatant assumption was deeply off-putting.  I value the extremely hard work and dedication I have put into my work, but even as a leader in my field, I am still questioned by the subversive and undermining nature of a social paradigm that favors male authority over female authority as if it was a singular truth.  

Turns out, historically, matrilineal and women-honoring cultures thrived for much longer that Patriarchy.  They thrived, not at the expense of men (or the natural world), but rather as societies that honored the life-creating wisdom and power of the feminine.  Dearest, beautiful men who are are partners and loves, thank you for your help and your desire to do right, but also please consider this:  Can you let her lead you?   Can you let her lead without turning her into your mother? Can you let her be sovereign in her sexuality and not assume it’s just for you?  Can you let her lead others, without feeling emasculated in your relationship?  Can you let her be powerful and a feminist without assuming that she disdains men?  Can you let her shapeshift, as is her nature?  Can you welcome her vulnerability and her power? Can you allow yourself to be lead and to follow?  Can you allow her to be lead and follow?  Can you allow roles to be fluid?  

I want you.  I want your kinship, your love, your eros, your leadership, your wisdom, your protection, you humor, your intellect, your magic.  I want me too.  I want my trust, my vulnerability, my power, my sexuality, my protection, my humor, my intellect, my wisdom, my magic.  Fight for these things in me, believe in me, because I am also doing the hard work of championing a world where these things can be freely expressed in both of us. 

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

Feminist Beekeeping

I’d like to take a moment to talk about why Feminist Beekeeping is a thing at all.

First, let’s understand a few things.
1. We are all struggling with language and the meaning behind words.  
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As a natural beekeeper part of my job is to rework the language around beekeeping. Changing words like “worker bee”, to “female bee” or “sister bee” helps to shift our mentality away from the industrial era model of beekeeping which equates bees to factory workers. Similarly, working with empowering women and celebrating the essence of the feminine in all things/genders requires some tricky navigation around the rocky shoals of language.

2. Feminism is not exclusive to women. 

I know this is basic feminism 101, but men can be feminists too. 

Let’s review:
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fem·i·nism
noun
the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.

fem·i·nist

noun
1. 
a person who supports feminism

Okay so we have a dictionary definition. That’s a start, but also riddled with pot holes. The point is, you can advocate for the equality of the sexes in all areas of your life, including beekeeping. You can be an advocate for how women are treated in this industry, etc etc

3. Feminist is not a bad word. 

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If you look back through the history of language, many words denoting bad, angry, evil or weak characteristics have their roots in gender shaming. Look up left-handed, sinister, witch, wicked.

Our modern stereotype of the angry, man-hating feminist is but one example of the demonizing of the feminine. You don’t have to be an angry woman to be a feminist. You are also completely allowed to be angry and a feminist. Just saying.

Feminine is derived from Latin ‘femina’ meaning "woman, female," literally "she who suckles”. As in, she who bears children and suckles them at her breast. So in its oldest sense, feminine means woman. The word has gone through centuries subjected to patriarchy and is now associated with qualities of the “weaker” sex. Qualities associated with delicacy, male-attracting, handkerchief waving, the good Christian wife, being soft spoken, being shrill, being emotional etc.  
However, the term has been reclaimed by women and men alike to denote an energy or quality that is not solely based on biology, but can be understood as something that exists within all things and people. This type of feminine is often paired with other words to differentiate it. Sacred feminine. Divine feminine. Feminine principle. It has a mirror energy we call sacred masculine, divine masculine, or masculine principle.
These terms are adopted social constructs that help give us language in a dualistic world, but they don’t in an of themselves mean woman or man. We all have these intertwining, nuanced, full-spectrum internal forces. We play with the terms masculine and feminine as they are expressed from within us to help us better express our own wholeness, REGARDLESS OF GENDER.

When I talk about the feminine or the sacred feminine and its importance in the beekeeping conversation, I am referring to this: in the cultures of the ancient world (namely before classic Greek and Roman, where our language and much of our western social structure comes from) there was once a time of predominantly matriarchal cultures. This did not mean the inverse of patriarchy, where women dominated men (that’s patriarchal thinking), but rather cultures that honored and celebrated that all life comes from woman. These cultures revered the life-giving qualities of woman: breast milk, pregnant body, maiden/mother/crone, cyclical phases, etc. The earth was seen as the mother of all peoples because the planet literally provides us with life. Certain creatures and aspects of nature were also associated with life-bringing: cow/bull, moon, ocean, rivers, bees, and serpents, to name a few. Furthermore, what brought life could also consume and destroy (floods, decomposition, winter), which is where we get the many goddess myths associated with both these qualities. Hathor/Sehkmet, Kore/Persephone, Brigid, Kali, etc.  
Enter the slow transition over to Patriarchy, which brought with it not just a cultivation of nature (hunter/gatherer to agrarian transition), but also a dominance over nature. Blend that with a shift to male dominant gods and eventually monotheism, and the power over women became synonymous with power over the land. I’m aware that is a very short, crude surmising of a very big topic. 

Now we have in our lexicon a number of negative associations with anything to do with the life-bringing/life-consuming ebb and flow of that which is associated with woman. Furthermore, our dominance over nature continues in its most abhorrent destructive expression. We have experienced a terrible, life-threatening loss of the sacred associated with earth and nature as our life-bearing mother. This dominance-over mentality (let’s just remember this is also part of rape culture) is deeply imbedded in conventional beekeeping practices. It is found in our hive designs, our methods, our chemical uses, our thought and our language around one of the creature most heavily associate with the sacred feminine throughout time.

So, does feminism have a place side by side beekeeping? You bet it does.

Male Beekeepers as Allies

How Male Beekeepers Can Be Allies For The Female Beekeepers In Their Lives: .

::Please Stop Bee Shaming Us::
In beekeeping there is an awful lot of vitriol and shaming, especially toward natural beekeepers. Many of those natural beekeeping humans also happen to be women. Just look at the Learning from the Bees Conference happening in Amsterdam this month. The ratio of presenters is 41/34 women to men. That’s more than half! Women are making waves in the beekeeping world. Considering that beekeeping is still a male dominant industry, this is a very cool thing to see. 
I recently spoke to a US hive provider and he said 70% of his clients are female. The face of beekeeping is changing and there are many more women out there dawning the veil (hehe - see what I did there?).
So dear men, please stop shaming us for our ideas, methods, relationship to bees and voices, be they scientific, spiritual, agrarian or urban.

::Listen::

I can not tell you how many times I’ve watched or experienced a man bulldoze over any conversation about beekeeping. I’ve seen it happen at countless beekeeping association meetings. I’ve watched women on speaker panels have to aggressively fight to get a word in. I witnessed silencing. This is nothing new in any industry.

I experience the worst mansplaining in the older generation of white males who either disregard me completely or treating me like a “cute” little hobbyist beekeeper who doesn’t know any better. Ask us questions. Ask our opinions. Ask why we are doing things certain ways. Wait for us to ask for your advice. Have a discussion, not a telling. Be curious.

.::Have Our Backs::

Participate in feminism. Be engaged in standing up for us and advocate for our voices to be heard. I know a lot of you are super rad feminist men who love bees and all those who support them. Show us.

::Learn From Women::

If you’re new to beekeeping, include books by female authors. If you’re looking for mentors, find mentors that are women as well as men. Educate yourself fully.
I love you. I believe in you. Let’s save this planet together.