Recently I have been emotionally and physically challenged as I peeked into my 37th birthday. I started out sick the days leading up to my birthday, and then we lost a duck to Bella, the dog we wanted to bring in as their protector. The day before the kill, one of the ducks laid an egg for the first time. I had given half of the egg to Bella, thanking her for being their protector. The next day she killed one and almost injured our drake. Clearly, she didn’t want the job, or we have not been able to train her well enough. It’s possible that she is too intermixed with breeds who have been bred to hunt ducks (she does love the water).
I have to contend with accepting that I didn’t make the right choice in bringing her here.
Perhaps what it comes down to is that we are not dedicated enough to have a dog here.
We made a mistake. I went against my inner knowing, and dreams, and family members saying no. I’m not sure why I pushed so hard to try and make a square peg fit into a round hole (perhaps I’m still trying to soften the edges on this one), but I’ve done that from time to time. My ego takes off and I follow the wrong horse. Where’s the silver lining? Maybe there isn’t any, and I just need to admit my faults and move forward with appropriate action.
When we found the duck laying belly-up in our creek, I cried. I cried so hard for my inability to be a good mother to the ducks and the bees, a good mother to Bella to ensure she wouldn’t harm the ducks—my inability to be all of the things that are needed here at the farm. I wailed for my sisters and mothers and grandmothers around the world that have been separated from truly being able to support one another.
One of the feminine principals that can be witnessed in the honeybees is their communal sense of living. The Mother bee in the hive is completely cared for as she is birthing all of her sons and daughters. Every bee has a part to play that is vital for everyone’s survival.
They are a species who perish if they are on their own, and I wonder how true that is for humans too.
I imagine what it would feel like to have my daughter be truly supported by many hands and many hearts. For right now it feels as though our soil is on the barren side of nutrients, and I see this true for all of my close friends with young children. I imagine what it would feel like to have all of our needs met and more without feeling as though we are not enough. Then I tell myself, “Hunny, we aren’t enough without the village, and that’s okay.”
Oh how I long to live where we are all supported and feel as though we are enough, because we have enough hands to feel as though this is true. I was reading a book to Aurora, and in the book, a birthday party was happening. Each turtle brought one element to the party, and with everyone bringing the one thing, the whole party was fantastic, with no one turtle feeling as though they had to bring everything.
Somehow we have been convinced to isolate from one another. We no longer live in intergenerational households, or close to our brothers, and sisters, aunties, and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers. In our situation we chose to move away to live in closer relationship to our Earth Mother. Yet, we are alone.
At least this is how I felt in that grave moment as I was crying for our dead duck. Her duck family all grieved her too. They all stopped foraging for food or bathing in the water. They all were huddled near one another with their heads laying on their backs and were silent. We didn’t notice a duck died right away, Phil, my husband, and Aurora, our daughter, had left for a couple of hours and I took some time to myself. When they returned is when Phil saw the duck in the creek.
I thought the ducks were acting strange but I thought it was because of the drake that Phil saw almost getting mauled by Bella.
And as I was wailing for the ducks, and placing my head on the ground offering my tears to the Earth, is when the ducks began to pop out of their grieving state and one by one came near me, since I was near their water, food, and their dead duck sister.
When Aurora saw the dead duck, she said, “EAT!” She’s a farm girl, isn’t she? But since the duck was already very stiff, we decided to bury her up by the gardens. We laid her with herbs and offerings including honey for the bees to support her spirit into what lies beyond.
After this I internally beat up on myself quite a bit. One never feels so much shame, and anger towards themselves until they see that they were wrong. Or that they failed.
This is how I felt. Absolutely enraged at myself still working to move through the lessons. But last night I had a dream that shifted my perspective.
In the dream there was a little girl who was getting on a bus after a traumatizing moment. On the bus I watched her and two balls of energy that looked like orbs enter the bus. One ball of energy was loving, supporting her to feel capable, creative, strong, and ready to guide her to her best life. The other one was hateful, diminishing her spirit, and leading her towards acts of self sabotage. The little girl was allured by the latter one, but soon repositioned herself facing the first one, the loving one, and walked off the bus with this energy.
As I woke up to our daughter crying in bed beside us needing comfort, I realized that we have a choice in every moment of which energy to follow. It doesn’t matter which energy path one has been following. All that matters is this moment and which energy you do choose to follow. It’s that simple, yet sometimes when you are meshed in the negative energies it is hard to find your way out.
I’ve recently began reading a book called The Way of the Rose by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn (the parents of Sophie Strand, a popular woman writer who is intertwined with mycelial networks). Although the authors are not religious, they are spiritual, and have found that the rosary is an ancient pathway led by the Great Earth mother, a loving spirit, an energy that reminds me of the loving orb in my dream.
So I suppose a rosary is one of the ways to find the loving energy again, and to begin following it when you feel as though you’re off course. I imagine this energy could be imbued into anything that you carry with you, or even a movement, a mantra, or a type of breath to call back the loving energy for guidance.
We must call it in, for it is not as intrusive as the more negative energies within our life. The loving energy respects our choices and does not push us, so we must call upon the love, even though it is with us all along.
And so I find that this is my great lesson following my birthday and the guidance for living out my year ahead. The lessons of the duck are clearly intertwined, for while the duck was in our creek laying dead, before we found her, I was creating a rosary with honeysuckle vines, and cranberries and offered this to one of our sacred Springs. It was a reclamation to choose the path of life honoring loving guidance. And as one of my dear friends, Tracy Donovan, said to me on my birthday, I choose to see everyone as angelic, and that we are inherently so.
So to the angels, the goddesses, the bees, the loving sacred energy living through all things, may we find a way in every moment to follow our own loving energy pathway.
With love,
Louise and The Bees