Oct 06, 2020
Unlearning What the Patriarchy Taught Me About the Pecking Order of Women
In my flocks, I’ve borne witness to what I fear.
Author of Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember (Ecco/Harper Collins). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Guernica, The Rumpus, The New York Times, and BuzzFeed, among other publications. Her novel is forthcoming from Ecco / Harper Collins. Beekeeper. She/her.
twitter: @xtinehlee
In my flocks, I’ve borne witness to what I fear.
I categorized the sexual assault under things that were my fault. “It was not that bad,” I told myself. “Others have been through worse.”
This period of social isolation is, I’ve told my child, an act of love for others. We are, whether we want to admit it or not, part of a herd.
Being left behind is not a disadvantage. It is an opportunity to grow and an opportunity to live life on my own terms.
He prefaces all his beekeeping sessions with a proposal to examine hives without gloves. It teaches a beekeeper to be more gentle. It’s easier to be gentle without gloves.
I was single for the first time in eighteen years. I felt unmoored. For the first time in eighteen years, everything was new, including me.
By farming, I connect back to my own culture. To, pun intended, my roots. To what it means to be a child of immigrants and help things grow.
Bees do not attack—just as trauma survivors do not attack, but rather defend. She will not sting you unless she believes the colony’s life depends on her defense. Because when she stings you, she dies.
Nature is never obedient. It rallies forward. This is the reality on a farm: The bounty comes all at once.
The thing my mom told me to do—“Save twenty percent for yourself. Never give one hundred percent to anyone.”—was not selfish after all. Not when thinking about my own survival.
