An Extended Legacy: Reflections on “I Feel So Connected”
Lessons in Beekeeping
Welcome back to Music in Conversation, where we explore documentary songs as windows into what it means to move through the world together. As we continue our exploration of “EXTEND,” we invite you to consider how connections reach not just between people, but across time, species, and how hope persists even in the face of loss.
This month’s song was written by Lexx Davis, in collaboration with Renovare Music as part of their annual documentary songwriting project. Lexx is a member of My Sistas Keeper, a Black women’s beekeeping collective based in Cleveland, OH, who is working with Renovare this year to write a collection of documentary songs titled “A Hive’s Song: The Frequency of Sisterhood.”
Lexx’s song “I Feel So Connected,” tells the story of how maintaining a hive in her backyard became a family activity that brought her closer to her children through their shared stewardship of the hive. I love the gentle conviction of this song: Lexx’s quiet wonder for her backyard hive, and the gratitude she feels for the unexpected gifts that she found through beekeeping.
Growing a Legacy
In listening to Lexx describe how beekeeping transformed from a learning opportunity into a cherished family ritual, I found myself drawn to the way her personal journey expanded into something much larger. “It became a family event / the kids go in the hive with us,” she writes, describing how sharing honey “has brought us closer.” What began as curiosity evolved into a practice that now is integrated into the rhythm and rituals of her family’s life.
This intergenerational passing of knowledge reminded me of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s discussion of “seven generations” in Braiding Sweetgrass—the idea that decisions we make today should consider their impact seven generations into the future. When Lexx teaches her children to tend the hive, she’s not just sharing a hobby; she’s offering them a relationship with the natural world that may extend far beyond her own lifetime. Her stewardship becomes a living legacy, passed from hand to hand like the frames of honeycomb they carefully inspect together.
There’s something quietly revolutionary in this approach to time. In an era when many of us struggle to think beyond immediate rewards, Lexx reminds us that meaningful connection often requires a longer view. When she says “I feel so connected and I don’t wanna let go,” I hear not just present joy but a commitment to future flourishing—an acknowledgment that what we nurture today may continue to bear fruit long after we’re gone.
The Wisdom of the Hive
The relationship between individual and community that Lexx discovered through beekeeping offers powerful lessons about belonging. Her experience mirrors what poet Sean Borodale captures so beautifully in his Bee Journal collection, where he observes a single bee drinking water. He notes its “pulsing abdomen” and recognizes how this individual creature drinks water “not solely for itself” but rather as “one part” of a greater whole. The bee’s existence is simultaneously individual and collective.
This same recognition echoes through Lexx’s song when she sings, “One of the sisters met with me / divine alignment.” Her individual journey into beekeeping connected her with a collective of women who share this practice. What might have remained a solitary pursuit instead became a point of convergence, bringing together people who might otherwise never have met. Through their shared stewardship of the hives, they’ve created what she beautifully describes in the final verse as “a family”
Both Lexx and Borodale remind us that true connection often involves recognizing ourselves as part of something larger—whether that’s a family, a beekeeping collective, or the intricate network of relationships that sustains all life. The hive offers a living metaphor for how individual purpose can align with collective well-being, how separate lives can become meaningfully intertwined.
Hope Beyond Loss
What remains unspoken in Lexx’s joyful song is the grief My Sistas Keeper experienced this year. This past winter, neither of the collective’s hives survived Cleveland’s harsh weather—a loss that exists within a much larger crisis, as commercial beekeepers reported a staggering 62% colony loss nationally this year. This shadow of loss gives her refrain—”I feel so connected and I don’t wanna let go”—added weight. That refrain carries no just joy but resilience, a determination to maintain connection even when what we love is threatened or lost.
There’s a certain courage in this kind of connection—one that persists through difficulty and loss. When Lexx describes “the li-ttle moments” that “set us up for what we have now,” she acknowledges that even impermanent connections leave lasting imprints on us. The bees may not have survived the winter, but the relationships they helped foster—between Lexx and her children, between members of the collective, between humans and the natural world—continue to flourish in ways both visible and invisible.
This willingness to remain open despite vulnerability reminds me that connection always involves risk. To extend ourselves toward others—whether human or non-human—is to become susceptible to loss or hurt. Yet to withdraw from connection entirely would be a greater loss still. Lexx’s song honors both the joy of connection and the courage it requires, especially in a world where so much feels fragile and uncertain.
The Courage to Connect
What would it mean for each of us to extend our vision of connection as Lexx has done—across species, across generations, across the boundaries of loss itself? How might we, too, recognize the “divine alignment” that sometimes appears in unexpected encounters?
Perhaps it begins, as it did for Lexx, with simple attentiveness—noticing the lessons waiting in our own backyards, being willing to learn from creatures and experiences we might otherwise overlook. Perhaps it requires us to redefine family beyond conventional boundaries, recognizing how connection can flourish between unlikely companions. Or perhaps it asks us to hold both joy and grief as natural extensions of the same deeply connected life, neither diminishing the other but each lending the other depth and meaning.
Listening to Lexx’s song, I remind myself that extending ourselves toward connection—whether with people, with nature, or with future generations we’ll never meet—is always an act of hope. Even when hives don’t survive the winter. Even when the world seems fragmented. We extend ourselves because, as Lexx’s story so beautifully demonstrates, these connections become the very substance of our lives, transforming individual existence into something richer and more meaningful, in our lifetime and beyond.
Her song becomes both testimony to what she has experienced and invitation to what we might discover—an open hand extended toward possibilities we may not yet imagine. “I feel so connected,” she sings, “and I don’t wanna let go.” May we all find the courage to extend ourselves so completely.
If you would like to hear the full collection of documentary songs written in collaboration with Renovare and My Sistas Keeper, please visit www. renovaremusic.org/calendar to find dates for upcoming concerts. All concerts will also include a panel with the members of My Sista’s Keeper.
We’d love to hear your own stories and reflections on the theme of “EXTEND.” How have you extended connection across unexpected boundaries? When have you found hope extending through grief? Share your experiences through this link or email Caroline at [email protected].