Listen to Advice, originally uploaded by amypalko

I have a circle of wise women who I turn to when I need advice. They range in age from 12 to 80. They come from a whole range of different backgrounds. They have lived very different lives. From the outside, they look like they have absolutely nothing in common… and yet they do – they each embody the crone.

The wisdom of the crone cannot be underestimated. In her archetypal form, she embodies the sum total of the lived experience of all women. She is the one we tap into when we seek guidance, when we get real quiet and listen to the soft cracked whisper of a voice that spirals back through the ages. You know that voice; it’s the one that speaks with such a fierce compassion that it cuts through all of the fluff and all of the bullshit. The voice that strips everything back to reveal the kernel of truth that lies within.

The crone is the fourth life-stage archetype of the feminine experience, and as such she draws upon all she has learned as a maiden, a lover, a mother, and in her current incarnation as crone. So, I guess you could say that, as this is the final post, we are in the crone stages of our goddess series here at Roots of She.

If I could leave you with two pieces of crone wisdom from this entire series it would be that age ain’t nothing but a number, and that our connection to the life-stage archetypes will often stray from the stereotypical.

You can connect strongly with the maiden goddess and be in your sixties. Or you may have chosen not to have children, but you are a prolific artist – you, my darling, are connecting to the mother. My 12 year old daughter frequently connects to the crone, often surprising me with the ancient depth of her wisdom. And the lover… well, the lover is an archetype available to any one of us, at any time – and life is so much more luscious when we do.

I do so hope that you’ve enjoyed this series of posts – my own learnings from writing it have been huge and I will be forever grateful to Jenn for inviting me to contribute to Roots of She, and to all of you who have contributed so graciously and thoughtfully to the discussions that have arisen in the comments box and in the wider world of Twitter and FaceBook – a true circle of wise women.

It’s been an honour to share my words with you and I hope that we continue to connect both here and on my blog.

Sending each and every one of you so much love
Amy
xx

Untitled, originally uploaded by brookesb

She gets on the bus. Small, slightly bent back, lines carved deep into the skin of her face. Her hair is carefully curled, a perfect silver. Her clothes range in shades of beige, her tights gathering in rolls around her ankles, her swollen feet uncomfortably cramped into sturdy pumps.

She shows her bus-pass to the driver, before slowly making her way to a seat. Gingerly, she lowers herself down into those seats specially allocated for the elderly and infirm, sighs deeply, adjusts her bifocals and turns to gaze out of the window. The ghost of her reflection gazes back with unseeing eyes, twice mirrored in the lenses of her spectacles.

Absent-mindedly she raises her fingers, ringed with the love tokens of a bygone age, and traces the lips that once knew what it was to be kissed quickly, with innocent desire at the back of the cinema, the scent of popcorn and caramel clinging to clothes and skin.

Another deep sigh rises from the very roots of her soul, and her breath fogs the window, clouding the glass, obscuring her reflection, resigning memories of first kisses to the long distant past that occasionally felt so close, so there….

She sits there as the bus rattles along, stop after stop after stop. People get on. People get off. But no-one looks twice at her. In fact, no-one even looks once. And she thinks, some days, most days, her world of reverie and memory is a friendlier place. At least in that world she doesn’t feel invisible.

There, she gets to be the main attraction – the heroine of her own story, the one who stands in the spotlight, the object of attention and affection. Just like she once was in this everyday world fifty years ago.

But here, in this world, she closes her eyes and disappears. Just another old lady, ignored, unseen, transparent. A premature ghost in a world that only has eyes of the beauty of youth.

One of the saddest aspects of our society is the way that we treat elderly women. We disregard them as though they are some embarrassment of the species, a blot on the landscape of the everyoung, rather than the true treasures that they are.

We don’t even have to train ourselves to ignore them. It’s almost as though we instinctively allow our gaze to skip over them, these crones of Western culture. And yet, if we look back at the way the crone has been represented in the ancient past, we see a venerated wise woman; we see Hecate.

Hecate was the crone goddess that completed the divine triumvirate: Hebe, Hera, Hecate; Selene, Artemis, Hecate; Persephone, Demeter, Hecate. She represents the completion of the cycle – our movement back towards whence we came.

And, perhaps, this is why we avert our eyes from her in contemporary culture. We have become a civilization fixated on the appearance of youth and the aspiration of longevity. We have ignored the cycle of life in our futile attempts to arrest the process of age.

But with this, we have lost, and continue to lose, so much: perspective, wisdom, community, respect, dignity, compassion… For us to truly see our older women, our glorious crones, it will take an enormous adjustment of our culture’s value system. The wonderful thing is, is that it starts with just one person – you.

That woman on the bus… she hasn’t spoken to anyone all day other than the cashier at the checkout. The world rushes past her oblivious to her presence, uncaring of her troubles, deaf to her voice. Speak to her. Let her know she is seen, that she is heard and that her voice is still valued. She needs to be acknowledged, and you need to hear what she has to tell you.

Start with hello. You’ll both feel better for it.

Mother and Son 2, originally uploaded by amypalko.

In Scotland in the wintertime it gets really dark really early. You frequently find yourself hurrying through the gloom, trying not to fall on the slippy pavements coated with wet leaves illuminated only by yellow, fluorescent streetlights. The wind gusts past, whipping your damp hair around your head, and your hands turn red raw in the biting cold.

It was on an evening such as this that I learned just what I was capable of.

My kids were all much younger then, the youngest just 3 years old. I could feel his small chubby fingers gripping onto my rain-wet hand as we stumbled through the drizzle to collect his sister from her Brownie Guide meeting. His brother ran on a little bit ahead, stopping at each of the curbs to let us catch up so we could cross the road together.

Running slightly late, we burst into the village hall where all the other mummies and daddies were picking up their excited little girls, and my girl rushed up to me, hugging me tightly round my waist. She was full of excitement and chatter, and as we were bundled back out into the dark, my attention was divided between trying to navigate the car park, following my daughter’s constant stream of news and keeping an eye on her brothers, who were running back towards the curb.

My heart fluttered slightly when I thought the boys weren’t going to wait, but they stood, toes to the curb, waiting impatiently for us to catch up. Once again, I felt those small chubby fingers holding tightly to my hand, as I looked both ways into the wet dark night. One set of headlights glittered faintly in the distance, and so I told the kids to cross the road.

We got to the white painted line in the centre of the road when he fell. Tripped over his wellies. Which was so typical. He was always stumbling over his own feet. I could see that the headlights had approached closer, and so I hoisted him to his feet and told the older two to keep going to the other side of the road.

We continued to cross, but the car was much closer now. And then he tripped again.

The car was almost on top of us, and so I picked him up, and with strength I never knew I had, threw him the last couple of feet to the pavement, completely losing my balance in the process. Before I knew it, I was lying flat on my back in the middle of a dimly lit road, in the rain, dressed all in black, with a car only moments from running me over.

And then everything slowed right down. I couldn’t move – couldn’t roll myself out of the way. I just remember thinking at least he’s safe – that at least my little boy wasn’t the one lying on this rain-soaked road. His words which he always said to me when I put him to bed – You look like a rose and you smell like a rose – drift through my head like a ghost of a dream. And I remember thinking, this is it – this is how I’m going to die…

I don’t know how he did it, but the driver stopped just in time. I managed to pick myself up and take myself to the pavement towards my near-hysterical children, and together we walked the rest of the way home. By the time I’d got them changed and tucked them into bed – You look like a rose, and you smell like a rose – my husband had arrived home from work and my carefully kept composure crumpled. I sat in the middle of the kitchen floor and sobbed.

It was only later, much later, that I realized what I’d done – I’d passed the test. I now had a definitive answer – I would throw myself into the path of danger to save my children. I had channelled the fierce mother: that strong feminine energy that courses through our veins when our babies are threatened. That energy which demands that we face peril, that we sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our little ones. Fierce mamma love – undiluted, all-consuming, self-effacing love.

If ever there is a moment at which the mother goddess reaches down and takes control of a woman’s actions, this is it.

And once again, while it is easiest for us to view mothers, as our conditioning dictates, as women birthing and raising children, I want you to expand your perception of this immensely powerful archetype. When we give birth to something, when we nurture something, when we care for it, raise it towards independence, we access this archetypal energy. And make no mistake, if the object of your care is under threat, then the fierce mother goddess in us all is activated and it is then that we discover just what we are made of.

Fierce mamma love – there is no stronger, more powerful force out there in the known universe. No other force so capable, so compassionate, so courageous. No other force so contrary to self-preservation. An adrenalin fueled, goddess given force – the force of fierce mamma love

Hydrangea Blooming, originally uploaded by amypalko.

I can sense a stirring in the creative cauldron
we all hold deep inside our bodies.

Melding and merging.
Combining and catalyzing.
Swirling and sparking.

I hold this space inside myself where new life leaps
from dark oblivion into sentience,
into actualized being.

Coiled in upon itself,
this embryo of life begun
spins out its own lifeline,
threads itself into the text,
inscribes its meaning into palimpsests of presence.

And all the while, I hold the space in which it grows.
That cauldron stirred by our wisest selves
…hubble, bubble, toil and…

Cells double and divide, double and divide
watched over, worried over, worked over
by the mother part of me.

I can sense a stirring in the creative cauldron
we all hold deep inside our bodies.

When we talk about mothers and motherhood, some women, those who can’t have children, those who have chosen not to, those who have chosen not yet, often feel left out. They believe that when we speak of mothers we do not speak of them.

I want to say right here, right now, that whether or not you choose to consciously acknowledge and express this part of yourself, you are a mother – you hold within you that creative cauldron. You are an intrinsically creative being, and you can decide to allow the archetype of the mother to play throughout your life in whichever way you choose.

And yes, it may be that you give birth to a baby, or it may be that you give birth to a book, or a painting, or an inspirational blog post, or a… or a…

My point is, is that you draw upon this archetype whenever you engage in a creative act. From experimenting with new ingredients to make a beautiful meal, to playing around with your photos in a digital editing suite, you are the archetypal mother.

I am thinking here of the Ancient Greek goddess, Gaia – who we may now know as Mother Earth. Gaia was so fertile, so brimming with creative potential, that new life over-flowed the rim of her cauldron and spilled out to form the beautiful lush rainforests, the teeming coral reefs, the sheer diversity of life that marks our planet out as different from all other planets that we know of.

We would never think of limiting Gaia’s creativity, her undeniable evocation of the mother archetype, merely because it did not fit the mould that we so associate with the definition of motherhood. And we shouldn’t do this to ourselves either.

Honour your creativity as the expression of archetypal mother energy that it is. Honour it and release it into the world where it can grow and thrive and transform and sing. Honour it for that’s what it deserves.