My world has been rocked. Splintered. Ruptured.

I spent 30 years fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised, the forgotten, the poor, the addicted, the hungry, the mentally challenged–all the people who needed their Constitutional rights protected.

I challenged those who thought that “those people” had to conform to a singular way of living their lives. I challenged that someone had to act in a certain way, say the certain words, recite the societal parameters in order to get a little help.

And it seemed to be working. Slowly. But it seemed to be working.

Two days ago, it stopped working. The legal system that I touted as “not perfect but the best this planet has to offer” is now far, far less than perfect. It is broken. It no longer has anything to offer anyone. Especially if you are female, a person of color, or part of the LGBTQ community.

The anger and anguish was instantaneous. The rock that used to live in my stomach was back. This time it constricted my lungs. It took all feelings away and left the numbness that I had known as a female child.

But another thing happened two days ago.

Standing on my deck, contemplating the ills of the world, a sound caught my interest. A distant buzzing. There at the bottom of our hill was a large swarm of bees. Circling the oaks and chemise it moved slowly towards our house.

This had happened before. Several years ago a swarm came from the opposite direction and housed their queen in an open knothole in a great oak. They hung from that knothole for almost an entire day but managed to get every last one of them inside. They stayed for a few days, snacking on the available pollen, and then continued on their journey.

The same protocol was necessary with this new swarm. Stay inside and watch through the windows or go to the opposite side of the house. They chose the same tree but took over the internal hollow from a different knothole. And they didn’t hang from the tree. They hugged the tree.

We expected them to leave soon. But there was food to be had.

Those pictures were taken in our front yard that, every year, sports a major crop of California Golden Poppies. It is a banquet for the bees! And because it is such a GOOD banquet, they decided to move in.

During the late afternoon they not only tucked in the queen for the night but they built TWO honeycombs! They love poppy pollen!

Watching these little creatures go about their day, not knowing or caring about the cosmic shift in my life, brought me back to myself. It reminded me that I can build again. I can work as hard as I have ever worked and I can make a home for all those who lost their protections today.

There is honey on my rock.