The novel, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, shows the tragic events in a young girls life and demonstrates how she overcomes her problems and finds herself. Lily Owens starts out as a troubled and confused girl. By the end of the book she overcomes her obstacles and becomes a confident young woman. Lily uses the pain from her father's abuse and mother's absence to mature into a young woman.

When the story starts out, Lily Owens is a little girl who has always been put down by her father and as a result has a lack of confidence and lack of hope for the future. When lily thinks she hears bees buzzing in her room she called for her fathers help and T-Ray said " I guess they must have flown out of that cuckoo clock you call a brain. You wake me up again, lily, and I'll go get the Martha Whites, you hear me?" (Page 31/734). This shows here that she was abused physically and mentally . Instead of receiving comfort from her father Lily was made fun of and threatened. Obviously from the quote, we learn that the emotional and physical abuse were already a pattern in Lily's life. Already Lily's strength of character surfaces. Although she was afraid of her fathers form of punishment her courage and boldness are demonstrated when she says "still I couldn't let the master go entirely- T-ray thinking I was so desperate I would invent an invasion of bees to get attention. Which is how I got the bright idea of catching a jar of these bees, presenting them to T-Ray and saying. "Now who's making things up""(page 31/734) Lily had the inner strength to stick up for herself by showing him the bees were real. The experience of her father abuse would prove Lily to be a person who did not let other people tell her what to do and how to live her life.

Equally important yet more complicated, Lily's yearning for a mother and the pain of growing up without one caused Lily to seek the warmth of a mothers love in other ways. Early in the story, lily recognized how much she misses her mother. She says "the oddest things chased me to miss her. Like trying bras"(page 51/734) she also says "The day I was twelve and woke up with the rose-petal stain on my panties."(page 51/734) Lily was very aware that she was alone when all the other girls had mothers to help them through the rights of passage in a young girls life. She held the secret in her heart yet would go on to overcome the pain and connect on the deepest level to the comfort and spirituality thought the connection of the sisters and the Divine Mother Mary. "I live in the hive of darkness and you are my mother I told her you are the mother of thousands." (Page 387/734) She is over coming the loss if her real mother though the Divine Mother and receiving healing as well. It is in this way that she is freed and able to go and mature. It was the Relationship with the Daughters of Mary that helped her as well. In a sense they were her colony. "A queen less colony is pitiful and melancholy community; there may be a mourning wail of lament from within.... Without intervention the colony will die. But introduce a new queen and those extras avenging thing will happen" -the queen must die: and other affair of bees and men. (Page 639/734) Lily's painfully pitiful childhood self died due to the naturing and love from the community of woman and their love for the Divine Mother witch introduced her as a new mature woman ready to take her place in life.

As a result to the abuse and neglect as a child Lily emerges as a stronger woman in the end. In the end she shows her strength and machinery when she stand up to T-Ray, witch is something she was never able to do as a child. The pain from her childhood has empowered her to be an amazing confident young woman who is in control of her own destiny.