Who Is Bee? 🐝
Hi. I’m Bree.
Writer. Mom. Wife. Caregiver. Psychology nerd. Professional question-asker. Occasional rabbit-hole spelunker. Collector of stories, strange facts, human behavior, half-finished creative projects, and apparently an increasing amount of bee-related philosophy.
Welcome to Brilliantly Bee.
Trying to explain who I am has always been a little complicated because I’ve never fit particularly neatly into one box.
I have a B.S. in Clinical/Community Psychology and an M.A. in Counseling Psychology, with a specialization in Rehabilitation Counseling.
That last piece probably explains a lot about me.
Rehabilitation counseling focuses largely on what happens when life knocks someone sideways.
Something changes.
A body.
A career.
A relationship.
An identity.
An expectation.
A future someone thought they understood.
The old normal doesn’t quite work anymore, and suddenly a person has to figure out:
Okay. What now?
I’ve always been fascinated by that space.
Not just professionally.
Personally too, although it took me a while to realize it.
I’ve Done a Little Bit of Everything
While earning those degrees and figuring out adulthood, I’ve worked in enough different environments that my résumé can be a bit confusing.
I’ve cleaned houses.
Worked in a greenhouse.
Worked at a laundromat.
Restaurants.
Offices.
Schools.
Daycares.
Buses.
Human services.
Case management.
Mental health and disability services.
I’ve been trained as a massage therapist and medical massage therapist. I’ve studied Reiki. I’ve wandered through astrology and learned to interpret natal charts. I’ve explored mindfulness, psychology, personality, trauma, relationships, behavior, spirituality, self-development, and whatever else made me stop and ask:
Wait. Why do humans do that?
I’ve worked with people from vastly different backgrounds and circumstances.
I’ve worked with children.
Families.
People with disabilities.
People rebuilding lives.
People navigating systems that were supposedly designed to help them.
And eventually I realized something.
The common thread wasn’t a particular job.
It was curiosity and care.
I want to understand people.
Especially what happens when life doesn’t go according to plan.
Then Motherhood Blew Up the Laboratory
I always wanted to be a mom.
I imagined motherhood extensively.
The children.
The adventures.
The lessons I’d teach them.
The traditions.
The kind of mother I would be.
Very adorable.
Very organized.
Very theoretical.
I first became a mother through loving a child I hadn’t given birth to. Becoming a stepmom introduced me to the enormous, strange expansion that happens when another human’s well-being becomes woven into your own.
Then, several years later, I got pregnant.
I thought my professional experience with children and families had prepared me.
Reader:
It had not.
At 12:30 a.m. on October 12, 2016, Axl arrived with a thick head of dark hair, full little cheeks, and absolutely no concern whatsoever for my carefully constructed identity.
The person I had been before he arrived suddenly felt very far away.
I loved him with an intensity I couldn’t have understood beforehand.
And I didn’t quite recognize myself either.
Both things were true.
That’s something motherhood started teaching me very quickly:
Two things can be true.
Actually, seventeen things can be true.
You can be overwhelmingly grateful and completely overwhelmed.
You can adore your children and desperately need five minutes where nobody says “Mom.”
You can want motherhood your entire life and still grieve pieces of the person you were before it.
You can be exactly where you want to be and still wonder where you went.
Humans are inconveniently complicated that way.
I Thought I Needed to Get the Old Me Back
For a while, that was the goal.
Find her.
The woman before motherhood.
Before babies, caregiving, bodies changing, careers changing, schedules, bills, appointments, and endless invisible logistics.
Surely she was still in there somewhere.
And she was.
But eventually I realized something important.
I wasn’t supposed to go backward.
I was becoming someone else.
Motherhood wasn’t the last time life would rearrange me, either.
There would be more children.
Loss.
A miscarriage.
Health struggles.
Surgeries.
Caregiving.
Career changes.
Moves.
Relationships evolving.
People aging.
People dying.
Work that mattered.
Work that didn’t.
Unexpected opportunities.
Creative sparks.
Things ending.
Things beginning before I understood that something else had ended.
Life kept doing what life does.
Changing the assignment.
And somewhere in all of that, the rehabilitation counselor in me began to recognize her own life.
The old normal wasn’t coming back.
Maybe the question wasn’t:
How do I get back to who I was?
Maybe it was:
Who am I becoming now?
That question lives at the heart of Brilliantly Bee.
Turns Out, I Really Like Humans
We’re fascinating.
We are stardust walking around with childhood baggage and grocery lists.
We fall in love.
Develop coping mechanisms.
Raise children.
Repeat patterns.
Break patterns.
Believe bizarre things.
Change our minds.
Lose people.
Find people.
Build identities.
Outgrow them.
Get traumatized.
Heal.
Don’t heal.
Grow around things.
Make art.
Make terrible decisions.
Make astonishingly brave ones.
Argue on Facebook.
Pet dogs.
Plant gardens.
Tell stories.
Look at stars.
Try again.
I am endlessly fascinated by the whole ridiculous experiment.
My education gives me one lens through which to look at it.
My life gives me another.
Brilliantly Bee lives somewhere between the two.
So What Exactly Is Brilliantly Bee?
Excellent question.
I’m still finding out.
And that’s sort of the point.
This is a place for curiosity.
For stories.
For psychology without requiring everything to sound like a textbook.
For motherhood without pretending motherhood has to consume the entire identity of the person doing it.
For caregiving.
Relationships.
Posttraumatic Growth.
Self-development.
Grief.
Purpose.
Creativity.
Wonder.
Work.
Bodies.
Boundaries.
Families.
Bees.
Probably cats.
Almost certainly weird facts I discovered at 5:30 in the morning that somehow resulted in an existential crisis before breakfast.
Sometimes I’ll start with a teaspoon of honey and end up contemplating the meaning of a human lifetime.
Sometimes I’ll write about something heavy.
Sometimes something ridiculous.
Usually they’re closer together than we think.
I’m Not Here to Tell You How to Live
That’s another way Brilliantly Bee has changed.
I used to think helping meant having tools to offer.
Here is the strategy.
Here is the worksheet.
Here is the answer.
My counseling background taught me plenty of useful tools, and I’m still fascinated by them.
Psychology.
Mindfulness.
Personality frameworks.
Writing.
Creative exercises.
Astrology or tarot as tools for reflection, if that’s your jam.
But I’ve become increasingly skeptical of anyone claiming to possess the universal instruction manual for being human.
I certainly don’t have it.
If I ever find one, I’ll let you know.
What I believe much more deeply now is that different people need different tools at different times.
Something that changes my life may do absolutely nothing for you.
Great.
You Bee you.
I’ll Bee me.
The interesting part is becoming curious enough about ourselves to figure out what actually helps.
The Work Is Becoming
I’ve spent much of my life caring for other people.
That’s another thread I’m only beginning to fully understand.
I notice what needs tending.
People.
Animals.
Plants.
Spaces.
Problems.
Give me a metaphorical dandelion growing through concrete, and apparently my first instinct is to build it a tiny fence and ask whether it’s getting enough sunlight.
Care has shaped me.
So has learning that caring for everyone else cannot require disappearing myself.
That’s part of becoming too.
I’ve learned that growth isn’t necessarily returning to some ideal version of ourselves.
Sometimes growth means recognizing that the person who entered an experience and the person who emerged from it are different.
There can be grief in that.
There can also be possibility.
I’ve become particularly interested in Posttraumatic Growth and the ways struggle can sometimes deepen relationships, reveal strength, change priorities, open possibilities, and make ordinary life look different.
Not because terrible things secretly happen for wonderful reasons.
Sometimes terrible things are simply terrible.
But humans possess an extraordinary ability to build meaning from what remains.
That fascinates me.
Follow the Pollen
Maybe that’s the philosophy underneath all of this.
Stay curious.
Pay attention.
Notice what you’re carrying.
Notice what you’re leaving behind.
Ask better questions.
Care for your hive.
Let yourself change.
Make the best right decision you can with what you know right now.
Find the next flower.
And don’t underestimate the significance of small things.
A conversation.
A kindness.
A story.
A boundary.
A question.
An ordinary Tuesday.
A bee carries a microscopic amount of pollen from one flower to another without understanding the entire ecosystem she’s helping create.
Maybe we’re not so different.
We don’t always get to know what grows from the things we leave with one another.
We just get to decide what we’re carrying.
Welcome to Brilliantly Bee
I’m a mother.
I’m a wife.
I’m a caregiver.
I’m educated in psychology.
I’m a writer.
I’m a professional.
I’m creative.
I’m practical.
I’m spiritual in some ways and spectacularly skeptical in others.
I’m still figuring things out.
I hope I always am.
Brilliantly Bee isn’t about arriving at the final, perfected version of yourself.
I don’t think she exists.
It’s about paying attention to the person you’re becoming.
Finding meaning in ordinary things.
Being willing to look again.
Laughing when appropriate.
Swearing occasionally when extremely appropriate.
Learning.
Unlearning.
Caring.
Creating.
Growing.
And remembering that you are allowed to be more than one thing.
So come wander around.
Bring your questions.
I’ll bring mine.
We’ll see where the pollen takes us.
🐝🌻
Stay curious. Follow the pollen. Bee brilliantly you.
Bree
Buzz on over to the Brilliantly Bee shop at Bonfire for an “I’ll bee me, you bee you” tee or hoodie!
Brilliantly Bee 