Honey Colony ~ I invite you to join the waggle dance in 2012

About nine years ago, at the age of 29, I stepped into a cross walk and was hit by a Ford Explorer at 35 miles an hour. I actually dented the vehicle’s grill with my left hip, before bouncing on the hood, rolling off and slamming onto the cement. Somehow my left shoulder got caught between the asphalt and the front right passenger tire, and by the time the driver realized he’d hit a human, I’d been dragged fifty feet. I tore my rotator cuff, broke five ribs, my tailbone, my L-1 and had a metal rod and two screws placed in my fractured left Femur.

You could say the incident put a slight dent in things and hurled my life along a completely different trajectory.

I’d done well up until then as a single young journalist and former Montrealer living in Los Angeles. I’d recently quit a job producing online news for MSNBC so I could freelance as a features reporter. I covered beats like Tinseltown and the New Age for magazines like The Hollywood Reporter and Whole Life Times but mostly I used my minor in psychology, to delve into the minds of cult members, pimps and lower-chakra-dwelling souls. I worked as a researcher for British TV and then sold my ideas to magazines like Black Book, Maxim and Penthouse.  

While I did consider the development of my spirit important, I compartmentalized it from my career. After the near-death incident however, I floated aimlessly like a dandelion seed, embittered, confused and in tremendous physical and emotional pain. I no longer wanted to work on meaningless shit or try to figure out why seedy people did the seedy things they did. I needed to integrate the integrity of my spirit with everything else I did, especially  my work.

In the three and a half years that followed the crash I:

• experienced regular body aches
• underwent two subsequent surgeries on my leg 
• developed allergies to gluten, wheat, sugar and dairy from what i think was trauma/major stress due to ongoing physical pain. 
• developed wicked insomnia
• became sensitive to smell, sound and light
• was diagnosed with an ovarian cyst the size of an orange, which had to be removed with surgery 
• and was hospitalized with walking pneumonia

Let’s just say my body and I (which I separated to feel less alone) experienced a bit of a bad streak. The series of events became so outlandish that I was intent on writing a humorful memoir called The Medical Mishaps of Mimi (my nickname).  

I looked within and realized that gratitude, forgiveness and acceptance were the alchemical ingredients I needed to transform my life. That car did not take away the use of my legs or roll over my brain. I chipped away at my shoulder and became humble and appreciative. I visited healers and partook in Ayahuesca ceremonies until I realized that I held the keys to dissolve my demons. Nobody Else could heal me.

Life is what you make of it. Pouf; it’s simple. Playing the victim truly isn’t self-serving.

 

Change doesn’t feel comfortable. The more uncomfortable you get the greater amount of positive movement occurs. Greater good requires some form of sacrifice. The only way out is through and if you make it to the other side you realize that the shift in perspective is the true miracle.  

I changed my diet and cut out dairy, wheat and sugar and witnessed my mood and periods improve, along with the fog that lifted from my mind. Soon after, I pretended I was writing an investigative piece on metal hardware just so I could interview very busy orthopedic surgeons around the country and determine if I could remove the rod. (Getting a surgeon on the phone is nearly impossible unless you can whip out a press pass). I was convinced that the metal had literally changed my chemistry and contributed to my new state of sensitivity.  

After removing the rod, the pain that I’d constantly felt for three years vanished and my morale improved. I began reading all I could get my hands on about the healing properties of plants, vitamins, minerals and super foods.

Nutrition became such an important part of my life that I considered enrolling into school or studying herbal studies. But the bees flew in and I made Vanishing of the Bees instead.

Now that the film is complete, I’ve decided to combine my love for honeybees with my passion for nutrition and eating clean organic food. The result is Honey Colony, a social e-commerce site where hive and health cross-pollinate.

Today we have the chance to delete unnecessary programs and projections that have been impeding us from reaching our potential and realizing that we are the 100 percent. We’ve all played a role. And it is time to take responsibility.

Yes we are living in an economic storm; war is rampant, empires are collapsing along with stale systems and ways of being.  We we have a long way to go until we raise awareness on a massive scale and fix our poor nutritional habits, kick obesity and overcome our societal addiction to sugar. Until then let’s not be surprised that congress is perfectly content with counting pizza sauce as a serving of vegetable in schools as part of the National School Lunch program or that cafeterias continue to serve crap to our youth. 

“Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots,” as Michael Pollan has said.

My own sister for instance gives chocolate milk to my four year old niece every night before going to bed and then wonders why she has horrible bouts of asthma despite clean lung x-rays.  Maybe cutting out processed cow’s milk along with the dollop of Nestle Quick and giving her probiotics could have saved the child some grief.  

With that said, opportunity is sprouting forth. We are experiencing an expansion of consciousness along with a paradigm shift. We are living on the brink of a remembering and a forgetting of sorts.

Since making the Vanishing of the Bees for instance, I’ve witnessed an awakening in my own self and surrounding circles. Documentaries such as Food Inc., Food Matters, Forks Over Knives and Fresh offer a variance on the same message: Food is sacred medicine and we must abandon the current (unsustainable) agricultural model in lieu of a relationship with and a reverence for our plants, animals and earth.

It is time to put people and planet over profits. It’s up to us. And it is happening; we see it with the proliferation of green businesses, eco-friendly products and mindsets, transition towns, farmers markets, CSA’s, green movements, organic farms, and the list goes on. Consumer sales of organic food in the United States alone have reached $23.4 billion with a 8.4% growth from last year.  Meanwhile we are embracing self-care and natural therapies. The Nutrition Business Journal estimates that consumer sales of dietary supplements in the United States reached $28.1 billion in 2010.

So… let’s say you have decided to change your regime and further optimize your energy levels and health by adding certain vitamins, minerals, super foods and phytonutrients to your diet. Where do you start with the plethora of alternatives on the market, from shelf-space to e-commerce sites? And how do you know if the company you are buying from has integrity and that their products really work? 

I know that back when I started my journey I thought places like GNC were top notch. Today I realize many of their products are cheaply made with fillers and additives.

Here’s where Honey Colony helps. Members join the hive because they want to learn, buy and share information about high-end health products, including body care goods, super foods, and high-end nutritional supplements.   

Honey Colony will consist of an advisory board of renowned experts like Herbalist Susan Weed and leading nutrition coach Dr. Ro who will also evaluate and blog about products. And we will use a social media integration system named VOUCH to share user reviews and discoveries about new products. The site will not welcome corporate advertising, spam or coupons. 

Honey bees point each other to the best source of food available using a figure-eight motion better known as the Waggle Dance. By performing this infinity dance, foragers share crucial information with their hive about the best source of nectar and pollen in the field. Their collective effort maximizes the productivity of the hive, and ensures that the results are sweet. We too will point each other to the best nectar out there.

I invite you to join the waggle dance in 2012. Please visit www.honeycolony.com

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