Soul Tending and human stages of development

Dear Readers,

It has indeed been a very long time since I’ve communicated. A lot has happened since I last published a post. I have taken a summer herbal medicine intensive, sent my bees to a new home, packed up a household, sold many belongings, pared down my life and moved to a 600 square foot casita with husband and tuxedo cat. Fortunately it has a loft over the garage that is a cozy cave with a curved bamboo ceiling. The blessing is that it gives us about 100 more square feet. I like to imagine myself in Bali, sipping a Mai Tai as the weather grows increasingly more blustery and cold outside the French doors of this Northern New Mexico tiny house.

I have left many things behind that fed my soul— beekeeping, my music/choral community, my church, many friends— to be a pioneer at this new frontier in my life. It has caused much sorrow, as well as renewed joy. As the Sufi poet wrote in the Guest House, I have struggled with the daily task of welcoming, without judgement, every visitor that shows up at my door even if it is a “crowd of sorrows”. At 61 years old, I am squarely in the stage of life the psychoanalyst and psychosocial development researcher Erik Erickson called generativity vs. stagnation. I have moved from the prior stage, intimacy vs. isolation, and am suspended in time before the final stage before death, Integrity vs. Despair. I am finding myself facing a vocational crisis weed patch most days, trying to figure out how to divide my time between a patchwork of paid work and volunteer work—all of it rich and diverse, like sirens, all calling my name.

As someone who loves to have my fingers in many pots stirring at one time, I have become aware that my energy is more finite and my body doesn’t wish for the all the interruptions and multi-tasking upon which I once thrived. I seek a more contemplative life.

Meanwhile, I strive not to be a person who resents and fears growing older and all the things that make life more complicated in an aging body. Yes, I am healthy in body and spirit, but those anxieties of a western, first world, privileged person do creep around the edges at times….will there be “enough” financially? How about healthcare in a rural place? Will I(we) find community again? I send the questions packing as often as I can, with the quote attributed to the prophet, Mohammed, “Tie your camel first, then trust in Allah“. All I need to do is look up beyond my small bubble and out at a world on fire, to bow down and give gratitude and say a prayer, find an action in solidarity with those who suffer so tremendously these days.

As part of my plan for this decade of my life, I will be completing a young adult juvenile fiction trilogy, The Bee Priestess series published by Olympia press @ Amazon. I hope you’ll consider checking out the first novella, set in Ancient Greece, with a young woman as the protagonist. Perhaps it will be good medicine for the times in which we live. It is for any age, particularly women who seek healing and wholeness from trauma— coming of age in a society that has precious few rites of passage for empowerment and consciousness in turning from one stage to another. In terms of Erik Erickson’s stages of development, Althaia is in the stage of autonomy vs. shame/doubt—a place many of us get stuck in our lives unless we have ceremonies, people or circumstances that help us wake up to the spiritual/emotional work of healing in our lives.
Here’s the synopsis:

Althaia, the eldest daughter of Lander and Phaedra Adamos, explores the changes from childhood to womanhood in first century Greece. Restrained by cultural rules and family expectations, Althaia faces her father and overbearing mother when she falls in love with a Roman soldier. As occupiers, Roman soldiers were viewed with contempt by the Greeks and to fall in love with one is seen as a betrayal to the family reputation. Despite this, Althaia cannot help herself and the result is both unexpected and tragic. Althaia’s mother, Phaedra, does not take this well and uses her considerable influence with Lander Adamos to ‘gift’ her daughter to the goddess Aphrodite as a temple priestess at Acrocorinth in Corinth. Here begins Thaia’s journey to the underworld of her own suffering and eventually triumph as she is mentored in beekeeping and the healing arts, exploring the complex natural world and how elements of this can heal and strengthen the human body and soul. She becomes seasoned in her craft as she is called upon to meet the pox pandemic raging in the Roman Empire.

Though Althaia loses her childhood friends and family as she moves into womanhood, she eventually builds new relationships, has new experiences, and is transformed from her own trauma – becoming a powerful Bee Priestess in Ancient Greece.

I hope you’ll consider putting The Bee Priestess on your holiday list for purchase, even as you contemplate your own developmental or healing stage as this old year turns new in these precarious and uncertain times.

“Sometimes we grow resentful as we grow older. When our image of an ideal life evaporates and painful historical, personal, family, or financial realities break through to the surface, it can be most disturbing. Let us try to see the pain of our human and spiritual journey “from above.” The great art is to gradually trust that life’s interruptions are the places where God is molding you into the person you are called to be. Interruptions are not disruptions of your way to holiness, but rather are places where you are being formed into the unique person God calls you to be. You know you are living a grateful life when whatever happens is received as an invitation to deepen your heart, to strengthen your love, and to broaden your hope. You are living a grateful life when something is taken away from you that you thought was so important and you find yourself willing to say, “Maybe I’m being invited to a deeper way of living.”

Henri Nouwen