🐜➡🦅 From Ant Medicine to Eagle Medicine

A special Yellow Breeches Creek day with my beloved son Andrew Hanson

Who Are We Becoming?

🌾 The Medicine of the Open Road

One of the things I absolutely love is driving through the countryside of Central Pennsylvania.

There is something deeply therapeutic to me about the open sky, farmland stretching into the distance, beautiful landscapes, and glimpses and sounds of wildlife. Driving through the country has been a source of relaxation for me since I was a young mother. It gives my mind somewhere to wander while another part of me becomes quiet enough to listen.

This morning, that open road became a place of reflection.

Yesterday, I completed an eleven-hour training. Yes... eleven hours! 😅

I am still marinating in it.

It was a business training, but the work went far beyond business. We explored mindset, personal development, patterns, limitations, and the deeper inner landscape that influences how we show up professionally.

And because of my nature, I cannot separate this kind of work from spirituality.

For me, everything eventually comes home to my soul's calling.

I know I am here to serve others in a particular way. My tools of the trade continue to be honed, refined, challenged, and focused. And yes, I continue adding new tools to my ever-growing tool bag because apparently I really do love being a lifelong student. 😉

What matters to me is becoming more skillful in creating opportunities for people to transform how they experience themselves~and, as Native Elders often say, how they relate to all their relations.

🌑 When Business Training Meets Shadow Work

Fascinatingly enough, much of yesterday's training centered around something I know intimately:

Shadow Work.

Well... now you have my attention!

The work was part of a process called Flowmapping, and I was fascinated by the opportunity to explore shadow through a professional and business lens.

What could this intricate and essential aspect of being human reveal about the way we create, lead, serve, make decisions, become visible, and build something meaningful?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

One exercise invited us to take stock of our personal and professional growth~to look at the trainings, experiences, challenges, lessons, and shadows that have shaped who we have become.

This morning, as I got into the car to drive through the countryside to a phenomenal local French bakery, my mind unexpectedly wandered toward my children.

Perhaps yesterday's work had opened a door. And I began thinking about how dramatically a human being can change.

🇧🇷 The Country Has Always Felt Like Home

I grew up in the suburbs outside downtown Rio de Janeiro, with many country areas surrounding my hometown. We had friends and family who lived on working farms, and throughout my childhood we visited them often.

There was something familiar and comforting about eventually raising my own family surrounded by country air and similar landscapes.

But raising children? That was another matter entirely.

As an only child, I had no frame of reference for what it would actually mean to raise a family.

Parenthood felt like one of those experiences where you roll up your sleeves and do the very best you can with what you know at the time.

Thirty-plus years ago, without social media and endless access to parenting experts, there was a certain amount of figuring it out as you went.

I was fortunate to attend a two-month parenting class after my firstborn came into my life. It was illuminating and tremendously helpful.

But helpful information still doesn't make it easy to show up every day and every night as the guide, protector, support system, decision-maker, boundary holder, and human being responsible for another developing human being.

Parenting required an enormous amount of mental and emotional energy.

And so much of it involved learning to accept just how different my children were from one another~and from me.

🐜 Ant Medicine | Growth We Can Barely See

This morning, I found myself thinking specifically about my beloved son, Andrew.

From birth, he was extremely sensitive to physical stimulation~both receiving touch and touching particular objects~and he was sensitive to sounds.

As a young boy, Andrew was cautious about climbing trees and fences. Getting muddy and throwing himself into dirty places the way other children did wasn't exactly his idea of fun.

When I look at childhood development through the perspective of Ant Medicine, I think about how incremental growth can be.

Tiny movements.
Changing interests.
Something tried and abandoned.
Another curiosity appearing.
A fascination becoming a hobby, then disappearing and being replaced by something else.

When you're in the daily grind of parenting, you don't necessarily see where any of it is going. You are simply tending to what is directly in front of you.

One tiny step at a time.

🔧 The Boy Who Began Taking Things Apart

Over the years, Andrew became fascinated with computers, gadgets, fixing things, and figuring out how things worked.

He spent years fixing and retrofitting computers and other devices. Eventually, it became clear that his interest in mechanical work wasn't a passing phase.

While in high school, he attended an internship in the mechanical department at Sears. That experience shaped him in ways I couldn't fully appreciate at the time.

And then came the cars.
And motorcycles.
And tools.
And grease!

Yes~the child who had been so sensitive to touching certain things began willingly covering his hands and clothes in grease while working on machines.

Life has a sense of humor. 🤗

🦅 Eagle Medicine | Seeing What Was Becoming

Now, more than thirty years later, I can step into the perspective of Eagle Medicine. I can rise above the individual moments and see the landscape.

And it is wild.

Andrew loves working mechanically on his cars and motorcycle. He fixes things around his home, including garage doors, and takes enormous satisfaction in understanding how things function, as well as maintaining them properly.

At one point, he took apart an entire car in our garage.

It was an adorable little used Miata he purchased with money gifted from my mother's inheritance. I don't remember exactly how long the project took. What I remember is watching in amazement as he stayed focused and invested in the process~from A to Z.

He took that car apart. And then...

he put the whole thing back together.

Even more impressive?

It worked! 🤩

Eventually, he sold it and reinvested the money into a nicer car. What mattered wasn't simply the finished car.

He loved the learning process.

He later bought himself a motorcycle while still in high school and has owned several since. He loves adding interesting, sometimes fancy and funky accessories to his cars and motorcycles.

And now? One of his passions is unicycle riding, which he taught himself.

The little boy who was cautious about climbing and physical stimulation learned to balance himself on one wheel. I cannot make this stuff up. And then there is his tiny car, the size of a small go cart~which, naturally, he has also retrofitted himself.

The Ant could never have seen all of this.

The Eagle can.

🪞 And Then I Saw Myself

Somewhere along that country drive, my reflection about Andrew turned toward me. And yesterday's training came rushing back.

Who am I now?

And perhaps the more interesting question:

Who am I becoming?

I honestly cannot recognize myself from who I used to be in certain areas of my life.

The level of studying and learning I now undertake simply to provide better services~especially online, in an industry that continuously shifts~sometimes makes me shake my head.

For more than five years, I have invested tremendous amounts of time, energy, and financial resources into trainings. And numerous times it has felt like quicksand. The more I studied, the more I understood. And the more I understood, the more I realized how much more there was to learn.

Business.
Technology.
Communication.
Marketing.
Online education.
Human behavior.
Somatics.
Trauma-informed approaches.

And underneath so much of it:

the Self.

🧪 We Are Still in the Laboratory

For many years, I have used the concept of the laboratory in my own work and with the initiates of the Beehive Mystery School.

We are the laboratory.
Our lives are the laboratory.

Our relationships, reactions, triggers, triumphs, shadows, mistakes, breakthroughs, and choices continually show us what is asking to be examined.

If we are truly in the business of deep healing~genuinely invested in our own transcendence~we are continuously evolving bodies of work.

I certainly am.
I am still in the lab.
Still experimenting.
Still questioning.
Still studying.
Still shedding.
Still integrating.
Still becoming.

And I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities Spirit continues to place in my path. I keep saying yes.

Not blindly.
Not without discernment.

But with a willingness to keep meeting the places in myself that are ready for greater clarity.

And strangely enough, clarity often comes not from adding something new, but from releasing another rigid belief, another blockage, another old version of who I thought I needed to be.

💻 From Avoiding Technology to Building Something New

There was a time when I wanted absolutely nothing to do with technology.

Nothing.

It wasn't even that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, that I had to learn how to send and receive emails. I come from very humble beginnings indeed.

And now here I am~studying technology, online business, content creation, digital education, and tools I once would have avoided completely.

Perhaps my greasy hands simply look different from Andrew's. His may be covered in evidence of a machine being rebuilt. Mine may be typing on a keyboard while rebuilding another piece of my life's work.

Both require curiosity.
Both require humility.

Both require the willingness to take something apart, examine it, learn how it works, and discover whether it can be put back together differently.

🧘🏽‍♀️ When Someone Else Sees the Change

Yesterday, while I was on the hot seat during the training, one of my coaches reflected something back to me.

He told me that my ideas were solidifying beautifully, that they were congruent with my long-term vision, and~perhaps most meaningfully~that I appeared peaceful and excited at the same time.

That stopped me.

Because in my language, there is a name for what he was witnessing:

Neutral Mind.

It is a concept I learned through Kundalini Yoga~the capacity to observe beyond the immediate pull of fear, attachment, excitement, or resistance and meet what is present from a more centered place.

It isn't something I believe we can simply perform.
It is cultivated.

For someone else to recognize that quality in me~without knowing that language~floored me.

There have been times when sitting in a Zoom room filled with other business students activated insecurity and feelings of inadequacy in me.

Maybe some of that has diminished.
Maybe another layer has been metabolized.
And who knows?

Perhaps some of it is finally ready to dissolve for good.

🐜🦅 What We Cannot See While We Are Becoming

This morning, Andrew reminded me of something without even being there.

When we are living from the perspective of the Ant Medicine, we see what is directly in front of us.

The next problem.
The next lesson.
The next uncomfortable stretch.
The next tiny choice.
The next thing we apparently need to learn.

It can feel slow.
Sometimes painfully slow.

But Eagle Medicine reminds us that there is another perspective available. Rise high enough, and suddenly you can see the road.

You can see that the child who didn't want dirty hands became the man happily rebuilding machines.

You can see that the woman who wanted nothing to do with technology became the woman investing years in learning how to bring her life's work into an entirely different world.

You can see that the things we once considered limitations were not necessarily permanent identities. And perhaps this is one of the gifts of Shadow Work:

It allows us to stop confusing who we have been with who we are capable of becoming.

✨ Who Are You Becoming?

Maybe there is something in your own life that feels painstakingly slow right now.

Something you're learning.
Something you're unlearning.
A relationship you're approaching differently.
A boundary you're finally holding.
A dream you're building.
A technology you're fumbling through.
A shadow you're learning to sit beside instead of running from.

Perhaps today you are simply too close to it to see what is happening. That's okay. There are seasons for Ant Medicine.

And there are moments when we are invited to borrow the eyes of the Eagle.

Look back.
Look wider.
Take stock.

Who were you five years ago? Ten years ago? Thirty years ago?

What can you do today that an earlier version of you might find astonishing?

And then ask yourself:

Who am I now~and who am I becoming?

I don't have a finished answer to that question. I am still in the laboratory. And perhaps that is exactly where I am supposed to be.

For now, I know this:

I have to continue showing up for myself~and for the people I am here to serve.

There is certainly more to be reviewed, integrated, learned, released, and embodied.

And I am grateful that there is.

🐝 Bee Bold, Bee Wise, Bee Present!

With gratitude for the becoming,

Jaque Hanson