Who is T.J.?

We are often asked, ‘Is T.J. a real person? Why is your company named T.J’s-Bees? Is there a meaning to the logo?’ Yes, T.J. is a real person. To understand the inspiration, you have to go back over a quarter of a century, before our co-founder Owen was even born. You have to go back to 1998, when a skinny teenager from the wrong side of the tracks, who went by Danny at the time, met a beautiful young lady with the initials T.J.

T.J. was from an upper-middle-class home, the daughter of a physician’s assistant and a teacher. She was the perfect embodiment of a free spirit personified. She lived life wholeheartedly, without reservation, and the young Danny was immediately smitten. The two began dating, and things went very well for some time. That is, however, until T.J’s father decided that things were getting a bit too real, as he watched his young daughter and this poor kid with a red Firebird and a penchant for loud music falling madly in love.

He forbade the two from seeing each other, and despite the young couple’s objections, time passed, and the two grew apart. This was a deeply formative experience for Daniel, as his first real love was seemingly stolen away from him for the simple crime of loving her too much.

Time passed. Teenagers became adults. Adults got married. Married adults had children. Marriages ended in divorce. Oddly enough, it was Owen Chaffin who got Daniel to create a social media account when they worked together, as Daniel does not have a social media presence. It was through this account that Daniel was able to once again reconnect with the now-grown T.J. The two quickly hit it off again, seemingly picking up right where they left off so many years ago. Discussions were had about a possible future. A farm in Colorado. A chance to live what they missed…what was stolen from them.

And then the news…

…cancer. T.J. wasn’t keeping it from Daniel, she just wanted to share a time with him where it wasn’t the entire focus of everything she lived. She said it made her feel normal. She liked feeling normal after all she had been through. She hadn’t felt normal in quite awhile.

T.J. shared a lot of herself with everyone who was graced to know her. She held no reservations about living each moment of life to its absolute fullest. She wore her heart on her sleeve for all the world to see, unapologetically. Even in her failing health, T.J. took on substantial financial obligations to create a lasting legacy for her children in the form of a successful, working farm in Colorado. In one conversation which still resonates in Daniel’s mind, she said to him, in regard to the considerable financial obligation she took on to make her vision a reality, ‘Danny, sometimes in life you just have to do things.’

Like a queen bee, giving her all for the health of her offspring, this simple line seems to elegantly capture the essence of T.J’s approach to life and living. It is this single line of conversation which launched Daniel into action in creating T.J’s-Bees. It was something in life he just had to do. For himself, and for T.J. He is honored to have Owen as a partner in making this vision a reality.

The logo is symbolic. It represents the fragility and fleeting nature of our time here on earth. It is meant to represent T.J. looking left, as to the past. While the bees and flowers in her hair turn slowly into dust and blow forward in the winds of time, signifying all of our return to our creator when our time is called.

Daniel Ridge

Born to a musician and a painter, Daniel Ridge is an old soul with a rebel’s heart. Raised to appreciate art and artistry, he is fond of genuinely contemplative soulful expressions of the human experience. Often misunderstood, even by those closest to him, he is a disappointed idealist trying hard not to be a cynic, but okay with being a Cynic.

A student of philosophy, he is a proponent of embracing the Socratic paradox so pleasingly put in Latin as ‘ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat,’ – or ‘He himself knows that he knows nothing.’ Daniel prefers to rely instead on the knowledge of those around him and constantly asks to be shown what others know. You are more likely to find him with his nose pressed into a book against the wall at a social function than actually speaking to anyone. He is not interested in the arbitrary selection of experiences with which one has been taught to identify oneself, often referred to as ego. At odds with convention, social constructs, and human institutions, he feels more at home surrounded by thousands of bees than anywhere else he has ever been. He is seeking to replace the buzz of the modern rat race with the buzz of a hundred honey bee hives.

He asks God daily to soften his heart, in an effort to restore his altruism to a point where it outweighs his cynicism. He asks to be made more like his namesake from the Bible, who shared the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and also emerged from a den of lions unharmed, based on faith alone.

Daniel also holds a fondness in his heart for stoicism and the works of Marcus Aurelius and other Stoic philosophers. Not because it is seemingly dark and indifferent, but because it so elegantly articulates the universal tragedy that is the human experience. Another Stoic, Seneca the Younger, is quoted as having said what to Daniel is one of the most profound and universally applicable quotes regarding human life – ‘What sense is there in crying for portions of your life when the whole of it is worthy of tears?’

This is not a depressing decree of defeat. It is a call to action to be more resilient, to weather the storm, and to embrace adversity and challenges as the stepping stones to growth rather than obstacles to reaching goals. So it is with dedication and stoic resolve that Daniel embraces his role in the lion’s den and prays each day for one more night of not being eaten alive. If God be for us, who can be against us?