Introduction: A Lavender Field Full of Bees
I didn’t expect a lavender field to bring me back to myself. But standing there—surrounded by hum and bloom, bees weaving through the purple haze—I felt something stir in me that I hadn’t felt in a long time. A remembering. A quiet knowing that my story is still alive, and maybe it’s time to share it.
This blog series is a return. To the girl who cried over bees. To the woman who channeled Spirit in a stranger’s living room. To the winding, sacred, sometimes chaotic path that led me here. I’m not writing this because it’s tidy—I’m writing it because it’s true.
I’ve lived many lives in one lifetime—teacher, caretaker, channel, survivor, seeker. And for a long time, I let my voice go quiet because I didn’t want to take up too much space. But something about that lavender field reminded me: the bees don’t apologize for buzzing. The flowers don’t ask for permission to bloom.
So this is me, buzzing and blooming and telling the truth. One story at a time.
Content Warning:
This post contains discussion of sexual assault. Please take care while reading, and honor your own boundaries. If this topic feels too tender right now, it’s okay to step away—you’re not alone.
“Why would you do that?” I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, a warm humming in my belly, as my throat locked uncomfortably in the discomfort that only comes from doing my best to stop tears that I already knew were coming. I knelt down on the wood chips, scooping up the crumpled bumblebee in the palm of my hand. It was my first day of third grade at my new school, in a new place. My parents had divorced, and we were hours away from the familiarity of what home had meant, in a new city (with roughly 71,000 more people.) The boy above me laughed and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, “it’s just a bee.” A small group of children gathered around us, I could feel the embarrassment flooding through me as the bumblebee sunk it’s stinger into my palm; a final act of protection. “Why are you crying?” asked another boy. I stood up, facing them, while using the back of my sleeve to wipe my face, “it stung me.” I was too embarrassed to tell them the truth, and they didn’t buy it anyway; laughing as they turned away to get in line at the schoolyard door.
I feel a lot. And for most of my life, that meant hiding what I felt; until the closet doors blew off. I wanted to be accepted and would do my best to become palatable; to be a helpful presence. This process created a willingness within me to abandon what felt right for me, especially when faced with a differing opinion; which is the perfect recipe for early adulthood depression. “You’re too sensitive, you’re too emotional.” And so I became convenient, and pretty damn good at being alone. I spent my lunch hour in the library, in the same spot every day; looking out the window, (while lost in a book.) And when the opportunity surfaced to finish off high school online? Well, I simply just didn’t go back after my Junior year; graduating online and bypassing the ceremony with my classmates a year later.
Around 2011, I had found a soft landing for myself in the form of nannying. I have 5 teachers in my immediate family, and so caretaking for children felt natural and rewarding. I had started my college journey, and was stacking up credits at a community college to apply towards my dream of becoming a teacher. Truth be told, not a whole lot about that “dream” had too much to do with the classroom. What I *really* wanted, was to raise a family in the northwoods of Wisconsin, in a small town, where I would be able to have summers off with my children. I had found the non-denominational church, and even though I didn’t agree with many of their rules; it had felt like a place of belonging. Finally, the soul within me had a rock to cling too; and my faith became my Home.
The day I was assaulted began like a Hallmark Christmas movie. We had connected online, he was quite a bit older, but the young woman in me was flattered to be getting attention from an older man. I remember feeling beautiful in my dress, he picked me up in his car, and together we went to church; he held my hand while we sang Amazing Grace. After the service, we made plans to get together again that night at his apartment. There were no warning bells, no blinking internal lit up sign saying, “Beth, don’t go.” And when I was offered a drink that I didn’t think twice about, my world turned upside down. There are no words to describe that night, I just went away. In the morning, I woke up, got my things, and went to my hair appointment, (which I was late too.) I was eighteen years old.
I carried that night around, inside of me, like a weighted blanket; a badge of self-blame that stated “I should have known better.” I’d found ways to fill the ache inside of me, and coped with food. My life continued, but something inside of me stayed frozen. My intuition banged on the doors of my inner-sanctuary, demanding to be recognized and named. By that point, I was twenty years old and living with my now-husband & beloved, Dustin. We had renovated a small lake-home together with his parents, and found ourselves experiencing spiritual phenomenon that couldn’t be ignored. I am indescribably thankful for his presence throughout those experiences, because otherwise I’d have thought I had gone mad. .
Eventually the experiences at our house led me to finding answers, I didn’t know what was happening, but did know I needed help figuring it out. Around the autumn of 2015, I found myself e-mailing a local medium, impressed with the amount of reviews she’d gathered over the years on her google business page. She encouraged me to join her and a group of her students later on that week, and by Wednesday evening, I was gathered in a semi-circle of chairs, occupied by about twenty gifted channelers. She hadn’t remembered our email exchange, but let me know that I’d found myself in a room full of mediums. I told her that I didn’t know “what” I was, but that the experiences I was having had led me there. She encouraged me to stand at the front of the room, and to allow the messages to make their way through me, and to share them with the class. This was easily, the most terrifying request that has ever been asked of me, but I stood up and said, “I’ll give it my best shot.”
I walked through the door that night into the subtle realm, and felt for the first time in my life, what it was like to be empowered through connection. I spent the next two years learning alongside a brilliant group of talented channelers & teachers, working with sensitive individuals and curious seekers; my understanding of intuition and connection expanding far beyond what I had ever known to be possible. I volunteered with paranormal teams, dove into the world of tarot, astrology, and began offering my channeling services publicly. And for a long time, many years, I was happy to seek endlessly.
The healing journey is not linear; and I am a firm believer that I am a “Jumping Healer”.. this is to say, that I’ll jump into a pool of my own healing work only to towel off before the work is done. I don’t know if there is a right way to heal or not, maybe there is some form of poetic literature written in the sky that says, “hey guys.. this is how you do it, step by step!” But I haven’t glimpsed it yet, maybe there’s a cloud in the way. My wakeup call back into my body rang like an off-key bell when the scale on my bathroom floor revealed that I weighed three hundred pounds. I knew in that moment that I needed to move back home, to Appleton. Dustin and I were living in Beaver Dam at the time, and I was in the thick of my agoraphobia chapter; absolutely terrified of being seen and only making my way out of the house to go to work. Dustin and I had been married for about a year, and had just bought our home in Beaver Dam about 6 months prior. And now everything in me felt like it was screaming to move again, like a crab without a shell, I felt like a smushy, vulnerable creature skittering about. True to his incredible capacity for love and understanding, my husband assured me that we would find our way through, and agreed to pack up and move to Appleton.
I didn’t know it then, but this was the beginning of a new kind of remembering. One that asked me to bloom anyway.
There’s more to tell—about what it means to return home, not just to a city or a house, but to the body, the voice, the soul. About what it took to choose myself again and again, even when the mirror felt like an enemy and the world asked me to stay small.
But that’s for next time.
For now, I’ll leave you here, at the edge of that lavender field—where something sacred first stirred. Where the buzzing didn’t ask for permission, and neither will I.
Elizabeth Modene 