In a world that has become ever more oriented toward youth, it is sometimes difficult for those of us in mid-life to figure out where we belong. As the first gray appears in our hair and those tiny wrinkles show up on our face we are besieged by radio, print and television ads exhorting us to 'look younger in just 14 days!' as if not looking younger will cause us irreparable harm:
Signs of old womanhood are not supposed to be seen. Women are socially and professionally handicapped by wrinkles and gray hair in a way that men are not. A multibillion-dollar 'beauty' industry exploits women's well-founded fear of looking old. This industry spends megafortunes to advertise elaborately packaged, but mostly useless, products, by convincing women that their natural skins are unfit to be seen in public. Every female face must be resurfaced by a staggering variety of colored putties, powders and pastes. Instead of aging normally through their full life cycle, women are constrained to create an illusion that their growth process stops in the first decade or two of adulthood...
~~ Barbara Walker, The Crone (Women of Age, Wisdom and Power)
In many ways this is true. Just ask any woman in mid-life who's looking for a job! Society has decided that younger is better so we color our hair, put on our creams and lotions and try to convince the world that we aren't all that old. It wasn't always that way, though:
The Crone's title was related to the word crown and she represented the power of the ancient tribal matriarch who made the moral and legal decisions for her subjects and descendants. It was the medieval metamorphosis of the wise woman into the witch that changed the word Crone from a compliment to an insult and established the stereotype of malevolent old womanhood that continues to haunt elder women today.
~~ Barbara Walker, The Crone (Women of Age, Wisdom and Power)
In Native American culture the role of Crone is one of stature. Such women are looked to for counsel in all areas of daily life. They are respected and revered:
When our elders step across the threshold of the Grandmother Lodge, leaving their bleeding behind them, they become the Keepers of the Law. No longer is their attention consumed with the creation and rearing of their own family... Thus their attention turns to the children of all Our Relations: not just their own children, or the children of their friends, their clan or tribe, but the children of all the hoops: the Two-Leggeds, the Four-Leggeds, the Wingeds, the Finned, the Green-Growing Ones, and all others. Our relationship with this great circle of Life rests ultimately in their hands. They must give away this responsibility by modeling, teaching, and sharing the living of this law -- in everyday life -- to men, women, children -- that all might come into balance.
~~ Brooke Medicine Eagle, Women Of The 14th Moon
CWWE was formed as a place for we women who are in mid-life to come together and share the wisdom we have gained throughout our years. It is a place of security where we can support and love one another. It is a place where we can discuss the issues that affect our lives.
I am extremely proud to be associated with this fine group! If you are interested in finding out more about Crone~WiseWoman~Elder please click on this banner.
If we are to be well, we must care for ourselves. We must not cast the old woman out, but become her more abundantly.
~~ Germaine Greer, The Change
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1998
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