bees and my beloved
guided by bees and my beloved across dreams and oceans
the new license plate on my car reads: beelovd.
a play on words with beloved and bee loved.
that plate came with a new car, a gift i never expected to give myself, but one i found the courage to buy as a testament to loving myself enough to invest in me. because if i do not, who else will? and while not a day goes by that i do not feel grateful for the abundance finn bestowed on me in so many countless ways, as a single mother of four and a widow, it falls on me now to take care of me. it is both a lonely and a freeing realization.
since finn died of cancer, in september 2022, i had been driving the tesla he picked out for me while he was sick. i have had so many beautiful moments in that car, and so many heartbreakingly sad moments, crying my eyes out and processing in that car, riding in what i used to joke was my “big fast speaker on wheels,” always listening to random shuffle playlists, which felt like finn talking to me on so many occasions.
and maybe that is another reason i had been thinking recently of tracy chapman’s song, fast car, and why i chose to write about it here. not only was it the first song i ever covered and truly loved, but in many ways, the tesla from finn was my first real ticket to freedom. and yet, like so many things in life, it came at such a bittersweet cost.
but then my tesla—fast and fancy as it was, and connected to finn in all ways good and pure—had begun to no longer feel right. and by april, my birthday month, i knew it was time for something different. i had even stuck an anti–elon musk bumper sticker on it, because i could not align with the fascism and political games he has been playing on the national stage.
finn’s dream gift
the very weekend i went to test drive a new electric car, my friend, and former class parent from my waldorf teaching days, reached out unexpectedly. she had been doing her holy nights journaling practice, where each night after the winter solstice corresponds to a month in the year ahead, and the dreams from each night represent what might happen in the year to come. on christmas eve, the night for april, she had dreamt of finn. in the dream, she and finn had decorated a new car with twinkle lights to surprise me.
she told me that when she reread her notes in april, she saw the dream and felt the urge to reach out. and when she did, it was confirmation, layered and luminous, that finn was still weaving with us—that he had indeed picked out a brand new car for me, a birthday surprise present, only this time from the other side.
so when i felt the urge to choose a new license plate, i knew i wanted beloved, as a reminder of how much i still am loved, even though the word itself makes me choke up.
that plate was already taken, but beelovd was not. and that was when i realized: finn had started keeping bees just before he got sick, as if he knew they would become a sign for me. they have been a constant presence since, a living pulse of his love in real time.
i have always loved how bees represent the way humans should live: ruled by the divine feminine, in service to the whole, weaving sweetness from the nectar of this world. and there have been countless times when i have sat on our land, crying for so many different reasons, all the loss and betrayal i have sustained in this lifetime, and a bee would come and land on me. sometimes they stayed for minutes on end, arriving just when i needed a reminder, a little sweetness from finn, from the universe, whispering that i am infinitely sweet and loved.
so when the plate arrived, it felt like a message and a blessing, a way of living into his love while also stepping into my own.
just a week after putting the license plate onto my new car, i set out with my four children on a return trip to europe—to the old world and to my past. i had not been back since i graduated two decades ago. those six years abroad had been such a magical time for me, speaking italian and being completely myself, and totally free in the big, wide world.
i had been dreaming of going back more seriously ever since finn got sick. during the year he battled cancer, i would picture us in europe together, as if it were a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel full of short fuses, fear, and chemo treatments. but i also knew in my heart that finn would most likely not be making that trip with us. maybe that is why he used to get irritated every time i brought it up. on some level, he must have known too. if he returned at all, it would not be in the flesh.
also in april i had a dream that finn was traveling with us in europe. we rode together in a stranger’s black car through unfamiliar streets. in the dream it was more like a vessel, a chariot between dimensions. the streets were strange and labyrinthine, mirroring the cities of our trip still ahead—london, paris, rome, and also the twisting passages of memory and healing.
i did not know yet what the dream meant, only that it was sent as a sign. and when my friend reached out with her dream, it sparked this memory too. finn was traveling with us as he always is. our loved ones never truly leave us.
this morning, right before i woke up, a bee visited me in my dreams. it carried a package, like a delivery, as if to say: finish what you started. i had written much of this on our trip abroad, but then i got busy and never published it. the bee reminded me it was time. the bee and finn, my beloved.
new york threshold – june 2025
we were supposed to be in london by now. a spring storm in the rockies delayed our flight out of denver. we missed our connection and ended up landing in new york city just before midnight, me and my four tired children, navigating the fluorescent-lit maze of newark’s vast airport with no luggage, no sleep, and no idea what would come next.
our bags had been marked for london and were nowhere to be found. the woman at the united counter was visibly over it, grumpy, exhausted, clearly ready to clock out. she told me there was little chance we would find them that night. her energy was blunt, pessimistic. but i felt something else stirring.
we caught the last skytrain and rode it to the far terminal. the airport was empty, echoing. when we reached the baggage claim area, i looked at the sign.
carousel 11.
i checked my phone.
11:11.
of course. a universal sign that spirit is watching. a number finn often sends. and then, unbelievably, our bags came tumbling down.
presence confirmed.
the next two days in new york felt like an unexpected offering, a threshold. we wandered into moments of magic: the moroccan café with fresh, nourishing food, harry potter on broadway where i cried more than i wanted to, feeling finn beside me in the velvet-dark, a summer evening in bryant park where hundreds of people practiced yoga while we ate dinner.
that night, i made a quiet toast. not to finn exactly, but to myself. to stop feeling guilty for not going back to a rhythm that broke when he died. my kids toasted with me, smiling encouragement. and just after, a bee came and hovered softly around me for several minutes.
“papa,” whispered my youngest.
the bees return again and again, a gentle reminder of how his love lives on, like the plate i chose, beelovd.
mid-atlantic
i am writing this now from somewhere over the atlantic. my two youngest are asleep beside me, their legs draped over mine. the cabin is hushed, dim-lit. everyone around us is dreaming. but i am wide awake, laptop open on the tray table, words rising to be shared.
as i sit in the quiet hum of this night ride, clarity comes easily, maybe because at 30,000 feet we are high above the net of human suffering. this trip back to europe feels sacred, like a bridge between the woman i was and the mother i have become, a ceremony of return.
as it is my first time back, since i left at twenty-seven, uncracked, not yet a mother, not yet a widow, not yet aware of the buried truths of my childhood. back then, i was still living in the before.
now, i return with four children beside me, a soul refined by loss and love, and a promise whispered by spirit: live.
and i carry with me the dream of traveling in a black car with finn beside me. i do not yet know what it means, only that it was sent as a sign. and already i can feel it waiting to meet me on the other side of this ocean crossing.
love beyond time
traveling as a family without finn, joy always catches in my throat, because part of me died with him. but he wants me to shine now. not just survive, but live.
dreams remind me of that. like the one where we ran hand in hand down red sand dunes on another planet, weightless and laughing. love beyond time, portals inside pain. in this dream, i did not want to wake up, because the feeling of being with my beloved was so visceral.
at one point we were buried under the belly of a giant whale, but we made it out, and that’s when we went running down the red sand dunes hand in hand, pure exhilaration and love coursing through our veins, so happy to be running and laughing free. whales in dreams are said to symbolize the depths of the unconscious, the vastness of ancient memory, and the power of emotional rebirth. perhaps we had to pass through that threshold of the deep before we could emerge, light and unbound.
when we reached the bottom of the dunes, i began to show finn a body of work, like a chronicle series i was writing about our life. they glowed purple and gold, the colors of spiritual royalty, and they were called larger than life. because that is what finn’s and my love is. a beloved love story that is larger than life.
love beyond time, portals inside pain.
once we arrived in europe, the dream of the black car revealed itself. every uber for our family of five turned out to be a black mercedes van, the exact image i had seen in sleep.
and then there were the bees. one hovered around me in new york, just after i made my toast. another came to me in london, landing softly on my hand as we worked to reschedule our missed train to paris. that journey carried a quiet weight.
the last time i was in paris, i was an innocent eighteen-year-old girl. after a gap year in wales, i stopped in paris alone for a single night before flying home. it was the only night that year i was completely by myself. a turkish man, at least twice my age, was selling paintings by the seine and insisted on taking me all around the city. i went into freeze mode, the way old trauma had trained me to, and by the end of that day he forced himself on me.
ever since, the memory lived in my body, silent but insistent, shaping how i felt about paris. and so, returning this time with my children, sudden tears welled in my eyes as we navigated the crowded train station. i paused, breathing through it, and in that moment a bee flew right to me and landed on my thumb, as if finn himself had come to steady me, to hold my hand.
tears came as i boarded the train, but the bee reminded me: i am not alone. what once was violation is now reclamation. we are here. we have survived. this time is different. at forty-seven, with four children beside me, i return to the city with new life.
later, in cinque terre, the bee signs continued. sophia had overheated in the summer heat on the ferry between the little towns. we rushed her off the boat and into the water, and when she emerged, a honeybee was clinging to her bathing suit. we looked on in wonder, as if papa himself was helping to look after us all.
finn’s love kept threading through our journey, in dreams, in magical 11:11 numbers, in bees, in the simple grace of being guided.
to be someone’s beloved, and to call someone my beloved, is still what my heart longs for. i miss his great big bear hugs, and his solid, salt-of-the-earth self, every day. and yet, there is new magic in the way he keeps showing up for us, even if our love languages are different now.
and so i write our continued love story to remember, to witness, and to say with my whole being: i am still here.
and maybe that is what it means to bee loved.
to be love.
to live as a living testament, broken open, and beloved.
thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.
i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞