Hello friend,

 

I hope this newsletter finds you well today. 

 

Thank you for the overwhelming support you all have offered in response to The Wisdom of the Hive. Please continue to share it with your community! Its launch was absolutely beautiful. The launch activities continue next week with a reading in Seattle and on Vashon Island. I love how the book is reaching people coast to coast, and I hope abroad as well. My dream for The Wisdom of the Hive is that it pollinates the world. This is my wish, and I’m speaking it into life. 

 

As I’ve been talking about the various themes from the book, I continue to return to one lesson in particular—the polarity of bitterness and sweetness. This theme is explored in great detail in the chapter on sweetness, where I share a story about losing a hive and having to contend with a whole box of honey they left behind in their passing. I believe this theme has been so present for me because while last week was full of celebratory events, honeybee magic, adventures with my best friend, and more, the week was also filled with visits to the emergency room with my mother, calls to nurses about the open wound on my mother’s leg that continues to grow and ache, and my mother’s confusion at all that is going on within and without. Last week was sweet and bitter. It was lovely and challenging. It left my heart full of gratitude and cracked open and broken at the same time. 

 

This is the tricky thing about being a human who strives to awaken to all that is present—we feel all that is present. I wouldn’t really want it to be another way. I want to feel it all, but the rapid cycling between bitterness and sweetness has been a bit much lately. It’s not just the book and my mom, it’s the world, too. I can bathe in the sun and feel the warmth of it as bombs are falling across the globe, and I know I cannot stop them. I can eagerly and with excitement await the hatching of the cardinal eggs below my screened porch, resting in the Jasmine as fires burn landscapes that may never recover. I can grow food in my garden, delighting in the anticipation of fruit and vegetables while an entire people faces annihilation through starvation. I can play my singing bowls and rest in the abundance of sound, astrally traveling to ethereal places while the earth feels like a foreign land because humanity has forgotten to be human and kind. Bitterness. Sweetness. All of it.

 

What I have decided to do is to allow them to co-exist because I am not good at bypassing bitterness, and I need sweetness to survive. What this means for me is that I taste both the bitter and the sweet. I witness what ails humanity and the more-than-human world, and I witness all the ways I feel I don’t deserve sweetness because of the ugly and bitter. I remind myself that I know how to do hard things and that there is sweetness in remembrance. I ask myself to be a vessel and channel for it all, and that my capacity to be in the heart of all of the feelings and sensations is my superpower. It is a superpower to feel so deeply and know that life is about feeling it all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Join me in the Pacific Northwest to learn about The Wisdom of the Hive.

 

We’ve all heard the refrain to save the bees, but what if the bees can save us? Beloved equity educators, authors, and beekeepers Michelle Cassandra Johnson and Amy Burtaine invite us to contemplate this question deeply. By looking at bees as teachers, the authors draw us into an examination of our relationship with each other and the world at large. Honeybees illustrate communal interdependence, attunement to nature, coexistence with darkness, and so much more—lessons worthy of emulating within our own human world.

In times marked by turmoil and uncertainty, honeybees offer a powerful example of how to turn toward each other, to deeply commit to creating conditions for survival of all beings, and to build a future where all can thrive. As Michelle and Amy write, “We won’t survive unless we remember our interconnectedness to all beings and change our ways of being—how we are to ourselves, one another, and the planet.”

 

Weaving their expertise in nature-based shamanistic practices, beekeeping, Buddhism, and spirituality, the authors guide us through stories, meditations, reflection questions, and nature-based practices to help us bring the wisdom of the hive to our own lives and bodies. With each chapter, we learn more about the life of a honeybee, our own life, and our relationship to the collective as a part of an ever-changing ecosystem.

 

The times we are living through are riddled with uncertainty and unrest. Divisive principalities are working overtime to sever us from the truth of who we are and further disconnect us from community and healing the suffering that is present in the world. Our ancestors faced times like these, and their healing wisdom, rituals, and practices are within us. They stream through us. 

The We Heal Together workshop is designed for us to access wisdom streams that can transmute uncertainty and unrest to restore balance. In this three-part workshop, you will access your inner alchemy to aid in healing collective wounds. We will explore various rituals, practices, and spells in service of the collective good and aligned with the law of nature based on everything being in balance, reciprocity, truth, and interconnectedness. We are all weavers of magic; through ritual, practice, and spellcasting, this magic can come to fruition here and now. 

 

Join Michelle C. Johnson and Amy Burtaine for bee magic to celebrate the turning of seasons.

 

Amy and Michelle, authors of The Wisdom of the Hive, are bee lovers and tenders, activists, and people who are deeply committed to healing work that supports bringing individuals, the collective, and our entire ecosystem back into balance. As each season gives way to another, they want to share wisdom from the honeybees with you.

During these 90-minute sessions, Michelle and Amy will share how the bees relate to each seasonal shift, share rituals aligned with the approaching season, and share medicine and wisdom from the lens of the honeybee hive.

 

Each session will include meditation, wisdom sharing, a ritual, somatic practice, and a mantra.

 

The Wisdom of the Hive: What Honeybees Can Teach Us about Collective Wellbeing is a profound, potent, and insightful exploration of how we can look to honeybees and the more-than-human world as teachers. When we do this, we begin to examine our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with the world at large. Honeybees illustrate communal interdependence, attunement to nature, coexistence with darkness, and so much more—lessons worthy of emulating within our own human world.

 

Learn more about these themes and engage in a community of practice in The Wisdom of the Hive six-week book club. 

 

Join me for a four-night, five-day retreat in the beautiful, healing Blue Ridge Mountains at Moon Rising Retreat Center.

 

Many of us, now, more than ever, are contemplating how to meet the moment we are living through with steadiness, grace, and regulated nervous systems. Many of us are curious about how we show up for the transformation happening on the planet and our role in creating balance and wholeness. Many of us are leaning into community as an antidote to separation and divisiveness. The Retreat is an opportunity to return to your center and the core of who you are as you gain clarity about the unique medicine and skills you can offer the collective now and into the future.

 

The retreat takes place over Samhain and Halloween, an auspicious time to gather and conjure medicine.

 

This retreat infuses yoga, mindfulness, shamanic, rest, dream, ancestral, and creative practices to meet and transmute the times at present. It will balance content and practice and include plenty of time for relationship-building with the land around us, one another, and ourselves.

 

We all have medicine to share. Medicine that is unique to us. Come explore and learn more about yours during this restorative and rejuvenating retreat.