Journaling Prompt: Does your Dot Lyon know she's actually a tiger? 📔🖋️🐅
What's lurking in that midlife shadow self of yours?
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Fellow Empresses, How the hell are you?
Sorry for the re-send. Post-op is interrupting the daily schedule here and we have been having technical issues on multiple fronts.
Following is a mash-up of thoughts and quotes born out of wintering, reading, recovering, and thinking about Empress archetypes that fuel our collective cultural visibility as midlife women—as well as our respective narratives.
Maybe it’s that we have a new neighbor next door who is a total stomper (I mean serious CLOGS and all), but I’ve been thinking a great deal about the shadow self lately as it pertains to women’s rage. (Plus, I just can’t wait for the final episode of Fargo this week.)
Men seem to get all the glory when it comes to rage.
We often speak of men and their rage as if it is to be applauded. Grrr… Logan Roy wins the prize, yet again. Also, men can get angry and shove each other in a bar and then it's magically over. What is that?
Women who do the same are crazed bitches, forever branded, who can never let it go. After all, where would they even put it? What church? What organization has the space? Has the capacity or empathy to deal with yet another rageful woman? So, often this rage gets subsumed into their shadow selves. Neatly tucked away. (We see this in marvelously layered characters like Dot Lyon from Fargo.)
I find solace in the stoic, the comedic, and the curious.
How it works:
The Nancy Drew sleuth in me is curious enough to interrogate my dark side, my shadow self, "And then, what happened?" My natural leaning towards stoicism lets me explore all 'the dark feels', but then reality (or absurdity) always drags me back up to the comedic level to express the one thing that everyone is thinking, but typically won't say because it's too impolite or too on the nose... and so all three aspects work in service of each other?
I’ve also found a way to write the thing I’m totally afraid of, the scenarios that still completely scare me, humiliate me, and then channel them toward comedy—that this is working—somehow?
But that’s just my current wiring?
Your prompt this week: Write about your shadow self. What has it taught you? Or maybe there’s matter still there to excavate? 🤍
Some poetry by Sian Wilmot, courtesy of @apprenticecrone… in case you need inspiration.
Not everyone is dealing with the same degree of feminine angst or restrictive narratives, but having the agency to delve down into the deep muddy now and then could unearth a tiny feral cat with survival skills you might not have anticipated.
On the flip side, by not engaging with it—we risk surrendering ourselves to greater cultural invisibility—and as midlife women, this prevents us from thriving. More on that later this week!
Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
By the way, as a disclaimer, I am not a therapist or a physician. I’ve only been to the medical school of me so please take all of the above as mere musings and not at all legit medical advice.
Thank you for sharing that piece of poetry - it's by Sian Wilmot who is @srwpoetry on Instagram. And thank you for your exploration of women's rage. As a postmenopausal woman, I'm in my IDGAF stage and speaking my mind is becoming, much to my suprise, second nature. Be gone oestrogen and your mollycoddlying ways!
Funny coincidence: my next Monday essay is about a book that speaks directly to the female shadow, one that blew my mind and made me rethink some things about female anti-heroes. Looking forward to your feedback :)