When the worker bee has to rest

Worker bees have many jobs. They work inside the hive and outside of it, and take on many different roles at different stages of their lives. They constantly have to adjust to this, and sometimes are swallowed up into their roles and forget to stop.

Many of us can relate to the way in which our jobs or roles can take over our identities, both inside or outside the home, whatever our family situations or relationships have

asked of us in terms of domestic duties. The last few years have intensified this for many of us too, focusing on our household, and also putting it under more financial pressure. The pandemic also caused health and wellbeing challenges to increase for many of us, and I am not alone in seeing the impact of that in our home and on myself and those close to me.

So how do we learn to rest well when the worker bee has to down tools? There is good practice in mindfulness and meditation, but if we are busy bees and need to take time out for health and wellbeing, how do we quieten our bodies and souls? I have found that creative tasks and taking up very hands on art challenges have been a way to find a way into rest.

The playfulness and purposeful (but not outcome led) satisfaction of working in acrylic or oil, or mark making with thread and joining with others in describing what I am doing has allowed me to ‘be’ with more freedom and abandon than simply retreating to boxset ville (for which there is a time and place). Rest has then become part of my rhythm of life more easily in recent years.

It has also become more of a call to arms and a necessity at times - a way of healing myself when so many others ways of finding health and wellbeing and connection have failed. I live with long covid and all my usual ways of returning to health through choosing exercise or patterns of recovery have failed. Rest is my only way into wellness now, and it is a revolution, one that is quietly won and one that is still going on in me. I am still a worker bee at heart, learning to be a Queen.

That is why the celebration of beauty and all that is good is so essential, for me and for so many. It is a gift of insight and connection. It is outside of ourselves and it is from ourselves and it is celebration. Art and creativity is a communal activity and it is also a key part of rest and recreation because it connects us to ourselves and to each other and to the part of us that seeks unity with the good which has made us however we describe them.

Why not have a doodle today? Or even reach for those paints, and find others who will share the experience with you. There are many of us around.