Trust the Cluster
Written by J. Willow
The Bee Sisterhood Oracle deck is just the first piece of something larger – The Bee Oracle Project. The Project’s mission is to empower women spiritually and financially; creating the deck was our first major effort, intended to energize an amazing group of women and create a path to financial sustainability for the work we seek to do. As we evolve, we are moving towards a true Hivesong Collective, where women from everywhere create and prosper together and in tandem. More on that one day, when all is ready.
Festooning
The Cluster of the Bee Oracle is where our day-to-day work happens.
You’ve met the eight of us on the website by now and may have noticed that we each keep our relationship with the Bees and Spirit in our own way.
You might also have read that we each bring our unique talents to the Cluster and fold them together in harmony, creating our own Hum of beauty and productivity.
It’s beautiful. We make decisions by exploration and consensus, always standing in integrity and keeping our mission at the center. We celebrate each other’s contributions expertise, and we are free to come and go as we need without losing our place or the esteem of our Sisters.
The Flow
The Cluster grew organically, adding women as new needs revealed themselves for talents beyond what we possessed. It has always been that, just when we’re starting to feel stuck, the perfect person finds her way to us.
As of this writing, the Cluster is a collection of beetenders, artists, priestesses, witches, healers, UX and graphic designers, writers, editors, teachers, entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, business administrators, marketers, and mystics. And there are only eight of us, so there’s a lot of overlap! I think this is why we have been able to be so flexible with each other – there is no task assigned to one Sister that could not be supported by another, at least temporarily.
It is perfect and divine, and also not easy all the time. Each of us has had to grow and evolve over the last two years to make our Hive dream a reality.
The Hum
Our collective Hum didn’t magically appear on its own, and in fact we are still, and always will be, working to keep evolving and growing together. Individually and collectively, we’ve built emotional trust over time.
We all bring our strengths and talents to this work, but also our blemishes and insecurities. This has been true for me, I know. I have mostly worked in political journalism, startup acceleration, and nonprofit advocacy for people most other folks don’t care about. In my daily world, the race goes to the swift and the bold. It’s definitely had an influence over how I engage with others. Some of this conditioning has been helpful, some not so much.
I’m also anxious in groups because I have (and am working through!) a lifelong belief that if I’m not bringing value, people don’t want me around. That’s my soup, everyone has their own blend of seasonings in their broth.
I’m sharing this because I have grown so much in this Cluster through the support of my Sisters. I recall a meeting where a certain expenditure was proposed and had been agreed upon in spirit by others in the last meeting, which I’d missed. When I learned about it, I had questions, and I sensed I was getting on some women’s nerves by drilling into it. Feeling their silent resistance made me anxious, which started me stuttering and running on verbally. It was messy; I couldn’t stop explaining myself and apologizing for asking the questions in the first place, yet I also couldn’t justify the expenditure without further understanding. Finally, Jackie asked me:
“Willow, what do you need right now?”
The Sun
I was so grateful for that. It allowed us all to take a beat, and the other women gave me my time without speaking. Finally, I was able to say, “I need to feel heard and understood in my concerns.” From there, we were able to reframe the conversation in a productive and supportive way, and quickly came to a consensus resolution. The topic never came up again, directly or indirectly.
There are so many examples I could share. We are all talented, but none of us has done this work before and we have had to learn a lot along the way, both professionally and interpersonally. We didn’t all know each other before joining the Cluster, and those who came later have been dumped into the middle of a fast-moving train and encouraged to hang on tight, but also to be held by the rest of us.
In two years, we’ve only lost one member who didn’t have the investible time she’d hoped for. Even when we get over-tired, as we all did around our Kickstarter campaign, we don’t take it out on each other because we trust that everyone is doing what she is supposed to be doing, whatever that is. That is the beauty of a true Cluster, and I encourage everyone to look around, seek out your Cluster. Are there people who you trust implicitly? If so, keep them close. And if you are not blessed with a loving community now, trust, seek it out, it’s never too late. I was 52 when I found mine.
Blessed Bee.