The Wisdom of the Hive: Facing Fear and the Future Together
In this three-part Reimagine series, Michelle Cassandra Johnson and special guests explore themes from her newest book The Wisdom of the Hive (Sounds True, 2025). By seeing honeybees as our teachers, we can learn about our relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world at large. In times marked by grief, chaos and uncertainty, bees offer a powerful example of turning toward pain and fear, committing to better conditions for all beings to survive, and building a sweeter future where all can thrive.
Featuring luminaries from the fields of wellness, science, spirituality, and the arts, this interdisciplinary series includes panel discussions, sound and visual meditations, and tools to foster a more collective mindset, much like the bees, which function as a superorganism, not thinking of themselves as individual bees, but rather as a unified collective. Each session opens and closes with a mindful moment and practice inspired by a buzzing beehive of activity. Together we will cultivate the values of interdependence, strive for greater attunement to one another and the planet, and see the liminal space between darkness and light as a resource for growth.
And alongside this series we’re including programming hosted by our community of Reimagine Collaborators exploring related themes such as collective trauma, death loss and bereavement, ecological grief, and loneliness.
From September 30 - December 30, 2025, registrants to the series receive a 20% discount on The Wisdom of the Hive paperback on Bookshop.org Discount code: LetsReimagine20
#bemorelikebees
Upcoming Events
Do the holidays bring with it a certain amount of heaviness and pressure? Maybe you are unexpectedly alone this season, maybe the aloneness is long familiar. Whether you are missing particular people or circumstances, or missing the experience of connection over time, this season can bring more loneliness.
With self directed (optional) movement, meditation, and thoughtful conversation, we'll explore what the holidays mean for us, acknowledge the loneliness, and mourn what has been absent in our lives.
Empathic conversation, rooted in the principles of Non-Violent Communication, invites us toward a compassionate understanding of our lived experiences; creative movement allows for the embodied expression of long-held feelings.
This union of empathy, embodiment, and expression brings us from our heads ("figuring it out" thinking, getting through an endless to do list) and into our hearts (knowing what we feel and need), which invites us into a deeper level of self-connection, insight and presence.
No prior movement experience is necessary, movement is optional and self-determined, and stillness is welcome.
About Sasha Soreff
For three decades, Sasha has been supporting individuals of all ages, capacities, and comfort levels to connect to their bodies and emotions, fostering a powerful sense of self-discovery and soulful expression.
Sasha weaves relational neuroscience, embodied expression, and transformational principles together to support nervous system regulation, emotional clarity, and a greater sense of freedom.
Type:
Movement & Dance, Storytelling, Community Gathering, Celebration & Remembrance, Meditation,
The holiday season, a time meant for joy and connection, can feel particularly heavy and divisive this year. Many of us are carrying the weight of political and social tensions into our gatherings, feeling a sense of dread about potential conflicts or the strain of unspoken differences.
What if you could approach these events not with anxiety, but with a grounded sense of compassion and resilience?
In this one-hour experiential workshop, Rev. Jessica Sharp will create a supportive container to explore how we can bring more harmony to our holidays. We will draw from timeless mindfulness practices that are profoundly practical for our modern challenges.
This is not about avoiding difficult feelings or conversations, but about building the inner capacity to meet them with mindfulness and an open heart.
During our time together, you will:
- Learn Four Key Practices: We will explore the purpose and application of Mindful Breathing (for grounding), Tonglen (for transforming heaviness into compassion), Metta Loving-Kindness (for cultivating unconditional grace), and Ho’oponopono (a Hawaiian practice for reconciliation and forgiveness).
- Discover Practical Application: We will discuss when and how to use these tools—in the quiet moments before you walk in the door, in the midst of a tense conversation, and in the quiet reflection afterwards to release any residue.
- Build Your "Compassion Muscle": This is a participatory workshop. We will not just discuss these practices; we will experience them together in a gentle, guided format. This shared practice helps ensure these tools are accessible and ready when you need them most.
Join us for this nourishing hour to equip yourself with practical skills to stay mindful, open, and in harmonious relationship with yourself and your loved ones this holiday season. Come exactly as you are, and leave with a toolkit for peace.
Type:
Ritual & Ceremony, Workshop, Community Gathering, Celebration & Remembrance, Meditation,
In this three-part Reimagine series, Michelle Cassandra Johnson and special guests explore themes from her newest book The Wisdom of the Hive (Sounds True, 2025). By seeing honeybees as our teachers, we can learn about our relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world at large. In times marked by grief, chaos and uncertainty, bees offer a powerful example of turning toward pain and fear, committing to better conditions for all beings to survive, and building a sweeter future where all can thrive.
Featuring luminaries from the fields of wellness, science, spirituality, and the arts, this interdisciplinary series includes panel discussions, sound and visual meditations, and tools to foster a more collective mindset, much like the bees, which function as a superorganism, not thinking of themselves as individual bees, but rather as a unified collective. Each session opens and closes with a mindful moment and practice inspired by a buzzing beehive of activity. Together we will cultivate the values of interdependence, strive for greater attunement to one another and the planet, and see the liminal space between darkness and light as a resource for growth.
From September 30 - December 30, 2025, registrants to the series receive a 20% discount on The Wisdom of the Hive paperback on Bookshop.org. Discount code: LetsReimagine20
Session 3 looks at the resilient and sustaining nature of bees in a time of climate crisis, eco-anxiety, and grief. Panelists from the fields of thanatology, climate science, psychology, environmental education and activism will provide context for the ways in which bees model our capacity to survive and thrive across a long arc of history.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity consultant and educator, and intuitive and shamanic healer. She has led transformative work dismantling racism and systems of oppression, disrupting the wellness industry to make it more inclusive and accessible, creating space for healing in myriad ways, and through her work for over two decades as a clinical social worker. Michelle’s work centers on healing from individual and collective trauma, returning to wholeness, and aligning the mind, body, spirit, and heart.
https://www.michellecjohnson.com/wisdom-of-the-hive
Cole Imperi is the Founder of the School of American Thanatology, which has students in more than 30 countries, where she both teaches and conducts research under the school’s ThanaLab. Through her development of Shadowloss Theory and her pioneering work with the field of Thanabotany, Cole’s work seeks to bridge the gaps left by the decline in non-clinical, community-led bereavement support. She is the author of A Guide to Grief, for teens and tweens, and a forthcoming grief book for adults to be published by Penguin in 2027.
Cole has diverse experience from working in and around loss and grief since 2008 where she worked as a chaplain-thanatologist in one of America’s 25 largest jails, mortuary college professor, crematory operator, hospice volunteer, grief support group leader for children as young as 3 to adults, death companion, served on the board of a green burial startup, and as Board President of a historic cemetery and arboretum. She traveled the US and Canada for 5 years training funeral directors and embalmers, and co-founded a deathcare startup. She currently consults on bereavement programming for organizations, and publishes the popular column Grief or Madness.
Cole was the recipient of the Curtis Gates Lloyd Fellowship through the Lloyd Library and Museum and is a California Master Gardener. She is based in Los Angeles.
Naomi Ortiz (they) is a Reclaiming the US/Mexico Border Narrative Awardee and a 2022 U.S. Artist Disability Futures Fellow. Ortiz's collection, Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice, offers potent insights about the complexity of interdependence, calling readers to deepen their understanding of what it means to witness and love an endangered world. Their non-fiction book, Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice, provides informative tools and insightful strategies for diverse communities on addressing burnout. Ortiz is also a co-editor of the anthology, Every Place on the Map is Disabled: Poems and Essays on Disability. As a Disabled Mestize poet, writer, facilitator, and visual artist, they explore how we create meaning and connection within states of rapid change. ALT Text: Naomi Ortiz, a light-skinned Mestize, wears a bandanna, a V-neck shirt, with silver hoop earrings, and dark lipstick. Photo Credit: Jade Beall
LaUra Schmidt is the founding director of Good Grief Network and the coauthor of How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10-Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet. She is a truth seeker, community builder, trainer, program designer, and facilitator. LaUra has long been captivated by the human condition. She is a lifelong student, curator, and practitioner of personal and collective resilience strategies. Inspiration finds her in natural landscapes and honest, open-hearted dialogue. LaUra graduated with a BS in Environmental Studies, Biology, and Religious Studies. Her MS is in Environmental Humanities. She has earned certificates in “Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy” and “Climate Psychology.”
Alexandra “ahlay” Blakely is a descendant of Ashkenazi, Scandinavian, and British folk. She is an artist, singer-songwriter, communal grief tender, community organizer, facilitator, and ceramicist walking the path of ancestral healing and the reclaiming of lost cultural memory. Her community singing album Spells from the Unknown offers songs for collective transformation, inquiry, and living in service to the future ones. Her second album, WAILS: Songs for Grief, was recorded with a 200-person choir and is entirely dedicated to grief, inspired by the Whales of the Sea, the wails of our times, and Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow, especially “the five gates of grief.” Her forthcoming third album, Anthems for an Apocalypse, arrives September 2025 and explores themes of collapse, courage, and abolitionist love. Through her music and gatherings, ahlay invites people into deep feeling, collective remembering, and the restoration of belonging across time.
https://www.healingattheroots.com/
About Reimagine
Reimagine is a nonprofit organization catalyzing a uniquely powerful community–people of different backgrounds, ages, races, and faiths (and no faith) coming together to create a more compassionate world. We support each other in facing adversity, loss, and mortality and channeling life's biggest challenges into meaningful action and growth.
Track:
Wellness, Spirituality, Grief, Anticipatory Grief, Collective Grief,
Topic: SUPERGRIEF for the Holiday Season
The Peregrine Lodge: A Virtual Retreat for Grieving Parents & Others
(Peregrine is a new universal term to describe a parent who has outlived their beloved child.)
Join us at 1PM PST, 4pm EST Hosted by The Lost Travelers Club, and moderated by LTC Founder Henry-Cameron Allen, CTAA, IHTCP Certified Grief & Survival Counselor, Author of The Lost Traveler's Field Guide. RSVP
As fellow griefwalkers we will share stories, hold space, and discover new ways to honor our loved ones and our sacred paths.
This retreat provides:
- A supportive, empathetic community for grieving parents
- Opportunities to share and be heard
- New ways to celebrate resilience and reignite purpose
All are welcome in this inclusive space, regardless of ethnicity, faith, physical ability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
Join us to connect, reimagine, and find purpose in our collective journey.
DONATE HERE TO SUPPORT THE LOST TRAVELERS CLUB: https://www.unitedcharitable.org/fsp_daf/the-lost-travelers-club/
Type:
Ritual & Ceremony, Talk, Panel, & Conversation, Storytelling, Community Gathering, Celebration & Remembrance,Past Events
November 19, 2025
In this three-part Reimagine series, Michelle Cassandra Johnson and special guests explore themes from her newest book The Wisdom of the Hive (Sounds True, 2025). By seeing honeybees as our teachers, we can learn about our relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world at large. In times marked by grief, chaos and uncertainty, bees offer a powerful example of turning toward pain and fear, committing to better conditions for all beings to survive, and building a sweeter future where all can thrive.
Featuring luminaries from the fields of wellness, science, spirituality, and the arts, this interdisciplinary series includes panel discussions, sound and visual meditations, and tools to foster a more collective mindset, much like the bees, which function as a superorganism, not thinking of themselves as individual bees, but rather as a unified collective. Each session opens and closes with a mindful moment and practice inspired by a buzzing beehive of activity. Together we will cultivate the values of interdependence, strive for greater attunement to one another and the planet, and see the liminal space between darkness and light as a resource for growth.
From September 30 - December 30, 2025, registrants to the series receive a 20% discount on The Wisdom of the Hive paperback on Bookshop.org. Discount code: LetsReimagine20
Session 2 will focus on bees as spiritual guides, doulas, and time travelers. Michelle will facilitate a conversation with individuals who work at the edge of birth, death, and the liminal space such as birth and death doulas, beekeepers, artists, and healers.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity consultant and educator, and intuitive and shamanic healer. She has led transformative work dismantling racism and systems of oppression, disrupting the wellness industry to make it more inclusive and accessible, creating space for healing in myriad ways, and through her work for over two decades as a clinical social worker. Michelle’s work centers on healing from individual and collective trauma, returning to wholeness, and aligning the mind, body, spirit, and heart.
https://www.michellecjohnson.com/wisdom-of-the-hive
Omisade Burney-Scott (she/her) is a seventh-generation Black Southern feminist, storyteller, and reproductive justice advocate. She is also the Founder and Chief Menopause Steward of The Black Girls’ Guide to Surviving Menopause (BGG2SM), a multidisciplinary narrative and culture shift project focused on normalizing menopause by centering the stories of Black women, transgender, gender-expansive people, and other marginalized groups of the Global Majority.
Established in 2019, BGG2SM's core program offerings include a podcast that provides guidance and support for marginalized communities through the various stages of menopause, curated intergenerational storytelling gatherings, and a digital zine titled "Messages from the Menopausal Multiverse." She has been featured in multiple prominent media outlets, such as Oprah Daily, Forbes, VOGUE, WebMD, NPR, InStyle Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Additionally, she has written articles for Yes! Magazine, Blavity, Oprah Daily, The Honey Pot Company, and Ms. Magazine.
Over the past 30 years, Omisade’s work has been rooted in social justice movements focused on the liberation of marginalized communities, starting with her own. She has been active in movement space since 1995 and has served as an organizational culture and capacity-building consultant for 20 years for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. She currently serves on the advisory boards of Elektra Health and the Honey Pot Company Pulse. Omisade is a member of the 2023 Open Society Foundations Soros Justice Fellowship cohort, working to expand the narrative shift work of the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause for formerly incarcerated and system-impacted individuals. Omisade graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1989. She resides in North Carolina and is the proud mother of two beautiful sons.
https://blackgirlsguidetosurvivingmenopause.com/
Ariella Daly is a writer, natural beekeeper, and dreamwork teacher with 25 years of experience in spiritual ecology, feminine rites, and animist practice, and 15 years as natural beekeeper. She is the founder of Honey Bee Wild, a sanctuary for women’s ancestral remembering through bees, dreams, and myth.
Trained in oracular dreamwork and shamanic ritual, Ariella’s work weaves practical hive tending with deep spiritual inquiry. Her long-form programs—Tending the Sacred Hive and Dreamer’s Sanctum—have guided hundreds of women into direct relationship with the sacred through beekeeping, dreaming, seasonal ceremony, and ecological devotion.
Ariella teaches from the ground of lived experience: as a beekeeper, a dreamer, and a lifelong student of the sacred feminine. Her work is known for bridging myth and practice, rooted in reverence for the unseen and the more-than-human world.
She lives in Northern California with her daughter, where she teaches, tends her hives, and writes beside the oaks.
Aditi Sethi, MD is a hospice and palliative care physician, end-of-life doula, and the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Conscious Living & Dying. She is devoted to bridging the sacred and practical dimensions of living and dying, offering compassionate, community-supported care that honors the dignity and interconnectedness of all beings.
Featured in the film The Last Ecstatic Days, Aditi is emerging as a powerful voice in the movement to transform our relationship with death. Her recent TEDx talk in Asheville, NC—“The Art of Dying Before You Die”—reflects her passion for inspiring a holistic and sacred approach to the end-of-life journey.
Her work is deeply influenced by her Indian heritage, spiritual practice, and a lifelong love of music as a path to healing and transformation.
https://aditimusic.com/aditi-sethi-md
About Reimagine
Reimagine is a nonprofit organization catalyzing a uniquely powerful community–people of different backgrounds, ages, races, and faiths (and no faith) coming together to create a more compassionate world. We support each other in facing adversity, loss, and mortality and channeling life's biggest challenges into meaningful action and growth.
Track:
Wellness, Spirituality, Grief, Anticipatory Grief, Collective Grief,Zoom
November 11, 2025
This book club honors the legacy of Dr. Jane Goodall, whose life’s work with chimpanzees continues to guide us toward more compassionate ways of being human. Together we’ll engage with Subversive Acts of Humanity by Ken Breniman, where applied primatology offers wisdom for grief, resilience, and connection. Each gathering blends reflection with embodied practice to help us live these lessons fully.
What we’ll do together:
- Opening check-ins to ground and connect
- Small-group sharing and reflection on book themes
- Mirror work for self-awareness and compassion
- Ape-inspired yoga movements to embody primate wisdom
- Guided meditation for presence and surrender
- A soothing sound bath to seal the wisdom into our beings
If Ram Dass taught us “Be Here Now”, this circle reminds us: “Be Ape Now.”
Your copy* of Subversive Acts of Humanity can be obtained at most booksellers and audiobook locations. https://www.kenbreniman.com/books
Contact your host kjbreniman@gmail.com if you need a book scholarship/discount code.
Type:
Movement & Dance, Ritual & Ceremony, Music & Sound, Storytelling, Celebration & Remembrance,Zoom
November 4, 2025
This book club honors the legacy of Dr. Jane Goodall, whose life’s work with chimpanzees continues to guide us toward more compassionate ways of being human. Together we’ll engage with Subversive Acts of Humanity by Ken Breniman, where applied primatology offers wisdom for grief, resilience, and connection. Each gathering blends reflection with embodied practice to help us live these lessons fully.
What we’ll do together:
- Opening check-ins to ground and connect
- Small-group sharing and reflection on book themes
- Mirror work for self-awareness and compassion
- Ape-inspired yoga movements to embody primate wisdom
- Guided meditation for presence and surrender
- A soothing sound bath to seal the wisdom into our beings
If Ram Dass taught us “Be Here Now”, this circle reminds us: “Be Ape Now.”
Your copy* of Subversive Acts of Humanity can be obtained at most booksellers and audiobook locations. https://www.kenbreniman.com/books
Contact your host kjbreniman@gmail.com if you need a book scholarship/discount code.
Type:
Movement & Dance, Ritual & Ceremony, Music & Sound, Storytelling, Celebration & Remembrance,
This event is in honor of Dr. Jane Goodall
Zoom
