I grieve deeply for what I have forgotten.
I know and feel deep in the recesses of myself, my way back ancestors, who were earth honouring beings connected within the web of life.
A companion to the human and nonhuman.
The seen and unseen.
I have felt them always and it was so painful, as my experience in the current culture didn’t mirror this back to me.
As a teen I plunged into depression.
Feeling so utterly hopeless as I looked around and could find nothing, absolutely nothing , that would value what was inside me. I didn’t see the point in being here. Like maybe I was in the wrong place.
I have spent my entire adult life in understanding this grief.
And slowly, very slowly clarity reveals itself in whispy strands.
Some float away on the breeze.
Some become me.
As a mother I have felt so frustrated and in despair that had no ancestral a skills, no rituals, no deep understandings of the way in which to navigate all of the realms of existence to pass on.
I know I should with ever fibre of my being.
They were all destroyed hundreds or thousands of years ago.
Gone for it was all oral, all felt, all passed down from mouth to heart woven into story and life.
Something that has brought me solace is to relearn ancestral skills.
I never feel my ancestors closer than when I do these.
They lean in and smile when I fumble.
Which is often 
These wise and brave people of the Earth.
Beekeeping has been one of these crafts.
As I relearned the mysterious ways of the hive and the women who have worked closely with them both in the dream realms as well as the waking realm, it nourishes this part of me that grieves.
It’s as though some part of me remembers and so weaves with them.
I may not have the skills to pass on to my children but to relearn it beside them is the next best thing.
Makes my heart warm as I see it reawaken within them.
This is my son gazing in awe at the beauty the bees create. Look mum!! Look at what they’ve made! Isn’t it amazing!!
We face together, the awe and the fear of bees.
It’s humbling.
Yesterday I could feel them so close, holding me, asking me to transcend my fear and to just feel into the bees with my son doing the same.
Life hurts and life heals.
Life is the sting and the honey.
