Reflections Of An Aging Woman

Senescence

“You will never find the wisdom you seek as long as you insist on changing only what you know.  True wisdom comes only to those willing to change what they are.”
                                                                    Unknown

Psychologist James Hillman explores in “The Force Of Character” what is lost when artificial means are used to alter the age of one’s face.  If you imagine your face as a phenomenon…with its own destiny, then all that goes on there, after sixty especially, is a work in progress, building the image, preparing a face that has little to do with the faces that you meet.   A face is being made, often against your will, as witness to your character.

I found these words from Hillman this week and once again, down the rabbit hole I went, feeling my way along the tunnel intent on finding where it would lead me.  I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I’ve made.  To this end, I continue to peer into the mirror and check how I am doing accepting this face I am creating. 

I had an unplanned moment this week when by accident I was smiling at something my granddaughter was saying and saw my reflection in the car window and saw a stack of little wrinkles leading up my cheek to my eyes.   I was shocked but not in a way I would have expected.  I was shocked with delight at new evidence of my continued transformation!  Each day it seems I wake up to a new body with new demands and limitations.  These changes require me to adapt – to find resilience, “the body instructs the mind in patience and forbearance while the mind tutors the body in creativity and flexibility.”  At the moment of glimpsing these new wrinkles, I’m aware for an instant of how allowing the aging process to transform me is indeed at work and I feel connected to the mystical realms that surround all of life.

 Dr. Thomas in “What Are Old People For,” uses the word senescence to describe the period prior to old age when a new relationship with the self emerges. Botanists use the word senescence to describe the most fruitful events in a plant’s life cycle.  The senescent phase of plant growth follows the exuberance of early growth.  As the end of the growing season approaches, the metabolism of fruiting plants changes.  There is a loss of water weight in the stems and leaves.  The metabolism shifts away from growth and toward ripening.  Botanical senescence is what prepares grapes for the harvest.

Humans can be seen to ripen as well. Here are some definitions of ripe; fully developed, mature, fully prepared to do or undergo something; ready.

Instead of being marginalized (or marginalizing ourselves), those of us who sense we are in the throes of senescence can be aware of the sacred nature of the inner work we do.  We can be aware of the legacy this inner work will leave behind when life is over.

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What Is Wisdom?

Wisdom – Ability to discern inner qualities and relationships.

                                          Webster’s Dictionary

Having the audacity to claim wisdom as my destination, I went on a search this week for the essence of what I am embracing.  Shouldn’t wisdom be the one quality that elders should be able to claim?  Isn’t it happening everywhere, spontaneously?  Don’t we want to grow wiser to make good use of life’s final years?   A Chasidic idiom asserts that, “for the ignorant, old age is winter, for the learned, it is a harvest.” 

As far as I can tell, the one quality that brings us wisdom is our ability to reflect on our life and examine experience.  We cannot help but become wise if we use life to grasp the way of the world and our place in it.  How do we do this?  We do it through hard knocks, depression, pleasure, boredom, anxiety, tears and laughter to name a few.  Wisdom is what life gives us with every passing moment.  All we need to do is PAY ATTENTION.  When you find yourself going back over things that have happened, things you might have done or said differently, deciding how you will act in the future, you are developing wisdom. Well I can claim this definition.  I adore reflection!

Jung believed that aging people “should know that their lives are not mounting and expanding, but that there are inexorable inner processes that enforce the contraction of life.”  This contraction can bring on a period of depression.  When it arrived in my life I realized very soon that the distress was a call to reflection and change.  I chose not to ignore or repress my discomfort.  The real physical and social losses are being mourned and digested and I have come to know a new set of strengths to value and desire. 

Theodore Roszak in America The Wise says, “wisdom needs to be midwifed and given the courage to speak of what it knows.”  Some of the wisdom that is gained through life flies in the face of our youth obsessed, narcissistic culture.  My capacity to “discern inner qualities and relationships” is growing.  The bigger picture reveals that accumulating possessions and needing to have control limits the depth of meaning and satisfaction to be experienced in life.  The questions that are now being held in my heart are how do I reflect this learning (wisdom) back into the culture I am part of?  I am aware of the social impact that so many conscious older women will be having as our numbers grow.  What an exciting time to be alive.

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Wise Woman Ceremony

“The wisdom that we need to solve our problems lies encoded in the depths of our unconscious minds, but it must be evoked by elders who evoke our potential.  Without realized models to evoke our archetypal depths we are literally lost in the world.  Throughout history, elders have served as beloved pathfinders, beckoning us to enter the province of old age in anticipation of growing strength and usefulness to society.”

                                                                    Joan Halifax, Anthropologist

Thanks to Kori for the quote.  I like that, “realized models”.  My mind has been in a whirl this week.  I have a foot in both the past that I am bidding farewell to and the future, which beckons.  My awareness of my potential as an elder is deepening as I get closer to the ceremony I am planning for myself at the end of April.  When I first started thinking about a ceremony for myself I was hoping it would help me accept the changes that were happening to me.  Now, I can see that I have been in the process for two years of building a bridge to that new me and I am ready to cross over.

Traditionally, this ceremony is called a croning ceremony but I find myself still reluctant, after two years of thinking about it, to use a word that carries such negative connotations in our society. I could try to educate those around me as to the historical value of the term, however, I am already outside of my comfort zone by declaring I have arrived at a new and developing sense of self embodied as elder/sage/wisewoman/crone.  I want a word that I and other women will want to embrace and that encourages us to move forward into the profound transformation that aging can offer.  The word I choose is wise woman.  When I turned 40, I created a collage for myself with these words at the center.

“A Wise Woman, moving into her maturity, her ripeness, will see that movement as an achievement.  The mature woman is one whose inner self radiates joy, beauty, appreciation and kindness – her mind probes for the meaning behind her experience and each passing year brings her that much closer to the essence of God and Life.  Every year brings more to her – more life, more wonder, more experience.”

I had the courage to claim the words wise woman as a destination I wished to reach way back then.  It feels arrogant to claim the possible achievement of being wise but if I don’t proclaim it as my path and goal then how could I possibly arrive there?

 Not every woman will choose this path.  Not every woman will be prepared or interested in the challenges of the journey.  But for those, like me, who do enter the transformational cocoon, willing to be delivered as a new form of self,  you may find yourself thinking about what word best captures this essence.  I have even gone so far as  to envision this person I am becoming – I see what she looks like and she has told me her name.  I can call on her whenever I stumble and she whispers in my ear that life isn’t fully lived until I complete the third phase.  I trust her as she  leads me backward to some primitive archetypal depth as described in the quote, as well as forward into the mystery.

Stephen and I included in our wedding vows this phrase.  “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be – the last of life for which the first is made.”

At the time this sounded so romantic to us.  I now see that the purpose of growing old is to come to a completion.  And so, with my soon to be experienced ceremony, I welcome the completion phase of life.

If you would like to read the comments of others or to add your comments, please click on the comment button in the footer.  I look forward to the conversation.

Soul Making

“Aging is for soul making.  Aging is for becoming the magnificent human spirit.  It is a spiritual enterprise, a godly thing.”

I have been pondering Kori’s comments all week and reflecting on the direction I want to take the conversation.  First of all, I absolutely agree we are a product of a culture that is dominated by the white patriarchy and that we have all bought into the “mass culture’s standards”.  It is indeed the reason for the our discussions which, when approached with curiosity and a willingness to learn from our experience, can lead directly to the authenticity that Kori has discovered.  Where I take issue, I guess, is the importance I place on being willing to perceive the slights and resulting wounds that have been visited on us by virtue of being raised in this culture.

I expect to fully embrace the third phase but not without consciously recognizing what is lost to me and the excess baggage I carry because of the hurdles the larger society has erected to honoring myself in this new place.

Here are some comforting thoughts I pulled from Marian Van Eyk McCain’s book, Elderwoman.  “The sense of self worth a woman feels has been driven for so many years by how she looks that when the aging process demands that she scrutinize her value, she begins to see the power the outer shell has had in her life.  The fading of our beauty, as it is defined by our popular culture, can be a very large issue for many of us.  Though we may have grumbled at times about being “just a sex object,” there is an ancient, instinctual part of us that enjoys the mating dance and feels a sense of desolation when we notice men not responding to us in the ways we are used to.  Within us all, at forty, fifty (and even at 60), still lives that little girl who wants to enjoy her reflection in the mirror and longs to be told she is pretty.  This is a little death – one of many that pulls us away from our ego identification.” 

It is my observation that in our culture we often run away from our pain rather than meet it with an attitude of inquiry into its message.  All through this process I have known that simply allowing each new piece of awareness to shape me, would lead to the deep and profound transformation I am seeking.  I need not rush the process and, in fact, sense it is detrimental to do so.  I am giving this shift from adult to elder a lot of my time, energy and attention, ferreting out all inner and outer messages that will not serve me as I move into this new dimension.

I am including here a picture and a promise.  A promise of undiscovered beauty in our next developmental life phase - just like we see all around us in the cycles of life reflected in nature.  Take some time today to recognizes the invisible beauty around us and in us.  Thank you Marlene for the image.

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Magical, Mystical Change

“The transformation to Wise Woman is not attained through the mind – it’s attained through surrender, authenticity, forgiveness, faith, honesty, acceptance, vulnerability, humility, willingness and non-judgment.”

                                                          Marianne Williamson

Every once in a while I see I’ve taken a great leap in my knowledge of who I am and I have a clear and precise sense of that “grand design” I spoke of in the recent post “Story of Acceptance”. 

This week I’ve had a deep understanding come over me regarding a personal change I knew I had to make.  It started four years ago when I quit my clothing design business.  I was psychologically, spiritually and artistically DONE!  It created great havoc as we didn’t have a way to support ourselves so we started exploring different business avenues and made it through quite a few failures before we landed on a working model that could sustain our lives.

The guiding principle in this exploration was my inner need to change. I didn’t know exactly why or how.  All I knew for sure was I desperately wanted a change.  I just kept moving forward in surrender and trusted that what I needed to know would be revealed.  In “Wise Woman’s Way” Berta Parrish reminds me “for any transition to be a psychological and spiritual passage, one must consciously choose the adventure, not merely endure it.”  I chose the adventure.

Balancing our masculine and feminine aspects is considered a task of eldering.  This is one of the ways we find and reclaim our authentic selves.   I had identified with masculine attributes after my divorce at 30 in order to make my way in the world.  These masculine energies served me well in the outer world where I struggled for success, money, possessions and power.  But then came the disillusionment and a sense of something missing. 

What I see now was my souls longing to embrace my feminine side and, in order to do that, I needed to put down the mantle of “the woman who makes things happen”.  I needed to enter the flow and quit trying to push life around.  It was hard to quit doing this as I was quite good at it but I was also exhausted!  I had relegated my softer side to the dungeon as I used my middle years to make a mark and it was now time to descend the stairs and reclaim that part of myself.

This realization has made me more able and willing to trust the unfolding that is happening.  How could I have known 4 years ago that listening to the inner urging for change would help prepare me for the aging journey? 

Have you thought of the two sides of yourself and how they operate in your psyche?  Are there any adjustments you sense are needed as you prepare for the third phase of life where owning your masculine and feminine attributes brings you closer to wholeness?

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