The Crone Calling
August, I said. I’ll go back to Substack, full of new ideas and thoughts and beautifully presented “stuff”, in August.
Yeah, about that…
To be fair, I do have a lot of ideas and thoughts, I just felt - until yesterday - that they weren’t ready.
If you know me up close, you’ll know that I’ve had a foolish insistence on things being ready, polished, and “just right” before I share them. Because that means I never share them and if I never share them, no one can laugh at them or call them rubbish or just plain ignore them. Most importantly, they won’t go out “wrong”. Being wrong might bring about the end of the world as we know it.
Overthinker, you ask? Yuh huh. Until I wasn’t.
There’s been a bit of a theme running through the last 12ish months for me and that theme is death. Sorry to be blunt, but it’s true, and the subheading has been “My own mortality”.
Swimming in these murky, undertow-y waters has been exhausting, frightening and not without a fair amount of over-dramatic splashing. Then I realised that I could stand up and the water only came up to my knees.
What helped? What helped was hearing again and again (and again),”We’re all going to die.”
The fanciest version of this eternal truth appeared in a conversation between healers that I listened to, where one of them observed that it’s not until we fully accept that whatever we do in terms of treatment, eventually we still die, that we can be truly open to an energetic engagement with healing (as in a return to wholeness, not “a cure”).
I ran with that and applied it to Life (*gestures a massive circle*).
As I write, it’s just short of ten months since my father died. It’s one month, five days and four hours since Digby (my beloved old dog) died. I’ve accepted that for both of them, life had become 98% miserable and it’s okay that they’re not here. I’ve not accepted that I will never see either of them again and it’s very much not okay that they’re not here. I suspect that I will feel that way forever. Previous experience tells me so.
Death is inevitable. Death is coming. Death is forever. Death can happen slowly and painfully. Death can happen fast and unexpectedly. Death is inescapable.
Once I hit the bottom of that, I realised…so what?
And thus began my personal energetic engagement with my return to wholeness.
I’ve accepted and de-emphasized my ageing. Acknowledged my internalised ageism and the nasty filter that was placing over everything, blocking out the considerable light.
I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m closer to death than I am to birth but also seeing that age plays a limited part in that. Death comes at all ages and I’m bloody lucky to have got even this far. Also, I’m 60, not 103.
I’ve decided to embrace the word Crone and all it can bring with it. I’m not 100% there yet, but I’m close. I believe I’m entering what will be my best era (frankly, I wasn’t paying attention in any of the others).
I have heard what I refer to as my “Crone Calling”.
I think perhaps all women have a Crone Calling. It comes post-menopausally, once you’ve stepped out of the deep waters, to give you a story for this next part of life. It tells you who you’ve always been under the responsibility for other people, roles or things.
I’ve seen women hear a Crone Calling that drew them to travel, to education, to a language, to a new profession, to volunteering, to dancing the night away, to retirement, to extreme sports, to divorce or marriage… We know it when we hear it. It’s probably, like mine, been whispering away in the background for years.
Mine comes from Earth. I instantly recognised her voice in ’s Hagitude, chapter five: A Force of Nature. I’m there in that version of the Crone/Cailleach.
“[The Cailleach] teaches the importance of understanding the language of the natural world, and the other-than-humans which inhabit it alongside us - because she exists in the wider flow of life, fully enmeshed in it.”
She continues:
“Like the mythic Old Women of our native traditions, our affinities lie with waterways, forests and seashores - with the heart of mountains and the ancient bedrock of our places. We are the Earth, and the Earth is us. That is the nature of the deep, embodied knowledge which we can pass on to our young.”
My language for this, my pathway, is plants. Plant medicine, plant energetics, plant beauty. I’ve been a student since 2015 (although my conversations with plants began as a small child) and picked up practitioner qualifications that I’ve never used - I was ignoring, and honestly pulled away from, my Crone Calling. I’ve got shelves of books on essences, herbs, nutrition, and just as many covered in actual plants, essences - bought and made, oils and teas. Plants have been Earth’s “lead magnet” to lure me in to her Crone Programme. Best funnel ever. Now I’m in, I’m connecting further and deeper into energetics beyond the physical bodies of animal, vegetable, mineral. Revisiting my energywork training.
It feels like coming home because it is.
So…we’re all going to die. Whatever we do, whatever we create, it’s all going to be in the rearview mirror quicker - in the universal scheme of things - than we can imagine. That’s what I’ve come to know while I’ve been out walking in fields and trees; out working in my garden; out soaking up what sunshine we’ve had; running from and then facing death.
What we do matters while we live and perhaps, if we’re lucky, for a while after in the hearts of people who have loved us, and then it’s gone. So what if it’s imperfect and messy? So what if it’s incomplete and not immaculately laid out? Have you seen Nature?! We must live - grateful for the wonder of it - while we can, and express who we’re here to be. Let Life live through us.
Hokusai Says
Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious
He says there is no end to seeing
He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself
as long as it is interesting
He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.
He says everything is alive–
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.
He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,or write books.
It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.
Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength is life living through you.
He says don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid.
Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.
~ Roger Keyes
It’s August and as I promised myself, I’m back here. Refreshed, inspired and guided by that Crone Calling. Expect more plants, more energy, more esoteric stuff that may well make you unsubscribe but may also feel familiar to a part of you that’s been waiting a long time to hear its mother tongue. Mostly though, if me responding to my Crone Calling inspires you to listen more closely for yours, then I’m happy. Especially if you share.
