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Dear Nurturers,

This week had me weeping about bees in front of a stranger.

I was on Skype meeting Aja Horsley for the first time. Aja is the lovely owner of Drizzle Honey, one of our sponsors for the Self Care Starter Kits at the upcoming retreat (only 2 spots left, if you want to join us!). She told me casually that each bee spends its entire lifetime creating only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.

“WHAT?!” my insides rang.

1/12 of a teaspoon.

This made me reconsider every indulgent drizzle, every voluptuous swirl, every lick of the sticky tip of my finger and fall in love with it intensely in retrospect. Tears sprung to my eyes as I contemplated the pilgrimage each bee makes from flower to flower, legs heavy with pollen,  drunkenly courting and nuzzling buds and blooms to return to the hive to write what is essentially a liquid love letter.

I have always been sensitive – for better or worse deeply feeling and intuiting the emotions of those around me, with an uncanny ability to step into their shoes to feel what they felt. Nurturers, for lack of a better way of explaining it, in that one moment I knew what it was to be a bee.

Laugh all you want, but that experience had me floored. I'm not even sure I can adequately communicate the feeling without coming across as some crazy lady (thank you, Aja, for understanding). It's not some cutesy anthropromorphization that caught my heartstrings – it's the integrity behind the creative mission of each bee.

The fact that these creatures journey and create and while doing so play a seemingly tiny but deeply crucial role in the fertility of further creation is nothing short of holy.

It's inspiring! I came away from this flitting insight with tears in my eyes, a profound respect for any future honey I eat, and a potent sense of the importance of creativity for creativity's sake. A bee's creative journey somehow erased any lingering doubts I had about the validity of my own. We can take a page from the bee book and wander from beauty to beauty, letting our souls soak up the inspiration we need to create our own sweet expressions for no other reason other than that's what we're built for. If this is what happens with the tiniest of creatures (who apparently also have feelings, according to recent research!), imagine what is possible with our human selves – us with our intelligent hearts, souls, brains, and vast capacity for collaboration, creation and innovation.

So, I'm curious – what will you do with your creativity now that it's been put into this perspective? How dare we continue to judge or underplay the value of our creative contributions to ourselves and the world at large when creativity is the most vital thing to our survival and our thriving?

My question to you – what will YOU do with your '1/12 of a teaspoon'?

The dream vision I have for Nurture is not unlike a hive of sorts – a place for us to connect over things that inspire us, creating together and cross-pollinating (and feasting well while we're at it).

This week brought with it more sweet collaboration. Stirling from SPRKFLM is on board to help out with social media strategy for the crowdfunding campaign and I couldn't be happier! It is difficult to describe the exact kind of gleeful affirmation that happens when you listen to your phone messages and it's a perfect stranger saying: “Hey, I love what you're doing – how can I help?” and after one brief phone conversation you already know they're the type to 'get' the fact that you cry about bees.

I also got the official financial overviews, budgets & forecasts for my business plan back from my financial fairy godmother, Shannon. It's 5 years of my future – the future of this company – interpreted in numbers. It is incredible both in scope and emotion because it makes me grasp how BIG this dream is. It reminds me I cannot (nor do I wish to) do this alone – let's collaborate my fellow honeybees! Reach out to me here & sign up to our newsletter to keep track of the buzz. Sorry. I went there. Had to. You have no idea how much I held myself back with bee pun use in the creation of this blog post.

Much love,

Sonja

P.S. Speaking of collaboration, I'm still on the lookout for you or anyone you know that fits the following descriptions for volunteer positions on the Nurture Retreat Centre crowdfunding campaign:

• Someone who loves systems & project management as much as I love organic butter (that's A LOT, dear Nurturers.)  You might start gleefully drooling at the idea of creating timelines and spreadsheets. Colour coding is like breathing to you.
• A connector/PR/influencer courtship consultant. Someone who knows people, who can also genuinely reach out, connect with them and get them on board to donate or spread the word. Or both.

If you're interested and want to learn more about what's involved, send me an email at connect@nurtureretreats.com!