Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees

Since life is never problem-free, there are full of difficulties and pains, people develop their own coping mechanisms to handle those painful moments. Everyone has different ways to relieve pains. When people use their unique coping mechanisms to deal with their emotions, their grief at that time may be healed. However, they will still suffer them if they do not fully face grief. Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees suggests that, in order to face grief, one not only needs a unique way to relieve suffering, but also the support of the community.

Even though May has her unique ways to deal with depressions, her coping mechanisms become ineffective without her sisters’ support. After her twin sister April kills herself, May becomes sensitive to others’ pain. Once she can’t bear the suffering, she will start humming “Oh! Suanna” and go to the wailing wall. The idea of her wailing wall is come up with by her sisters, August and June. It is just like the idea that the Jewish people go to their wall to mourn. May writes “all the heavy feelings she carries around”(98) on slips of paper and put them in the wall. “It seems likes the only thing that helps her”(98) in these years. This coping mechanism helps her to relieve grief for years with her sisters’ “companionship and support”(136) until she finds out that her sisters hide the truth Zach is put in jail. August knows that May is not able to endure this hard feeling, and she suggests to company with May to go to the wailing wall but May declines. Meanwhile, when she declines August’s support and decides to face the pain alone, she is isolated from her sisters. The epigraph “Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require its social companionship and s...

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...she is already one of them. Lily feel loved of being in the community. She even finds the mother love which she has been seeking for a long time in this community. At the end of the novel, Lily says “All these mothers. [She has] more mothers than any eight girls off the street. They are the moons shining over me”(302), which indicates that she figures out the mother love of the community can give her strength to deal with any struggles or pain in life.

No medication has the same function of love to heal people’s suffering minds. Love is the only way to help others get over their pain. It is not enough to only love ourselves. We should share our love to others, such as supporting them, because “every little thing wants to be loved”(92). We can never imagine how powerful love is, so “not just to love—but to persist in love”(289).

Works Cited

The secret life of bees