The Empress Book Club: Hagitude📚👑
Finding Pleasure and Power in Your Age. And YES! The Diplomat is BACK!
✨ A vibrant space for midlife women, The Empress now reaches over two million readers through our networks of networks. ✨ From bestselling author Alisa Kennedy Jones. ✨ If you enjoy content about midlife, humor, and agency, I’d love to welcome you as part of our community. ✨ For only $50/year ($4.17 a month!) or $5/month, you’ll gain access to all my articles, Monday columns, book clubs, and virtual events.
Fellow Empresses, How the hell are you?
Feeling stressed about Tuesday? Understandable.
I am home sick as a dog, but loving Hagitude in between new episodes of The Diplomat.
I LOVE that Keri Russell’s midlife hair is never combed, that her pants are always held together with a paperclip, and that she is so real and fallible! That is ME, man!
But amid all that, how about some richly fabled midlife distraction from our favorite folklorist and Jungian, Dr. Sharon Blackie? This week, we have an interview with Magnificent Midlife’s Rachel Lankester and Sharon on reconceiving narratives.
This Week’s Book Group Questions!
How do you feel about the changes in your body as you become older? How do you come to terms with this?
When was the last time you experienced everyday ageism and what form did it manifest?
Can you think of any examples of healthy anger, expressed by women, that has changed things for the better?
Do you think it’s possible to think of menopause as a transition to a new kind of womanhood?
How would you like to transform? What would you like to do more of as you approach elderhood?
For my part, the initial changes to my body during perimenopause were beyond alarming—I wrote a whole book about it. Coming to terms with it took years of narrative reframing, humor, self-compassion, and speech therapy.
Ageism is my everyday. I am constantly dealing with loathsome patriarchal shitheads who think my skills, knowledge, expertise, and wisdom have gone to pot. It’s a constant annoying task, reminding them that I’m still good to go.
Healthy anger? Lately, I have seen midlife women's rage friend groups growing on WhatsApp and it seems like an interesting outlet to help women feel more seen/heard. But also, when it’s channeled, creatively, for books like The Change by Kirsten Miller—it can give voice and power to a whole new cohort of women.
I do think menopause is a chance to transition to a new kind of woman, which is exactly why I started The Empress. Approaching elderhood, I would hope that we can create more opportunities for midlife women to thrive, to found new ventures, and to create greater financial security.
But what about you? What springs to mind with these questions?
About the Book
RADICALLY REIMAGINE THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE
For any woman over fifty who has ever asked “What now? Who do I want to be?” comes a life-changing book showing how your next phase of life may be your most dynamic yet. As mythologist and psychologist Sharon Blackie describes it, midlife is the threshold to decades of opportunity and profound transformation, a time to learn, flourish, and claim the desires and identities that are often limited during earlier life stages. This is a time for gaining new perspectives, challenging and evolving belief systems, exploring callings, uncovering meaning, and ultimately finding healing for accumulated wounds.
Western folklore and mythology are rife with brilliantly creative, fulfilled, feisty, and furious role models for aging women, despite our culture’s focus on youthfulness. Blackie explores these archetypes in Hagitude, presenting them in a way sure to appeal to contemporary women. Drawing inspiration from these examples as well as modern mentors, you can reclaim midlife as a liberating, alchemical moment rich with possibility and your elder years as a path to feminine power.
Stay tuned for more commentary on Hagitude and don’t forget questions for midlife therapist Kimberly Wilson!
Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
For more info on the Empress Book Club, its mission, and how it works, click here.
p.s. If you are so inclined, follow us on IG for flash content & upcoming giveaways. We’re at @the.empress.age. We’d love to see you there!
I love absolutely everything about and in this post. YES to The Diplomat. Ever since I discovered it earlier this year, I've been CRAVING more. So excited last night to finally have another show that I could sit with my bowl of popcorn and a smile before it even began...because you just KNOW it's going to be good. I watched two episodes last night and Keri Russell's messy (realistic) hair was one of the things that kept me smiling throughout the show. I'm going to savour every bit of it and try not to binge. Even though I want to!
As I was reading this, I was playing with my chin hairs and I noticed, to my horror, a very thick hair poking out from my upper lip. My upper freaking lip!!! I've had to pluck the odd one here and there, but not like THIS. Where the hell did this come from?? I interrupted your newsletter programming to go investigate in the mirror and to my further horror, as I went to search and destroy (aka pluck) it, I realized there was more than ONE. Egads. What the actual fuck man. So, this whole midlife change thing is never-ending at the moment. I did finally give in and go and buy jeans the next size up after realizing that I wasn't going to easily (or soon) fit into my jeans that I now realize are over five years old. As my daughter has reminded me...styles change mom. Ya, ya, ya.... But, holy SHIT!! The cost of jeans??!! What the hell? I paid almost $400 (rounding up) for a pair of stylish jeans. The only thing I can say is thank the good lord the current style is baggy and loose. For once, a style I can get behind that fits my current condition.
Regarding the book Hagitude, I've put it on hold for when one comes due from my library. I'm on a budget, but perhaps I'll make an exception and buy this one as it seems it might have some wisdom I want to keep around in book form for awhile.
As for your last two questions, I am slowly and deeply leaning into the fact that in 2025, I will be turning 60. I am excited about having 'Helen Mirren' grey hair, but alas, my hairstylist friend says it may be awhile for me yet. So, I will live in the weird, not quite coloured and not quite grey middle for the next however long? But, as I'm in my yoga class with ladies who are mostly 70 and older (including a 90 year old who looks fantastic), I am envying their beautiful silver, shiny hair. One day.
Inspired by a note I read from my friend @Dina Bell Laroche about ceremonies, I'm going to create a "crone" ceremony for myself in 2025. I know you had some thoughts about the word crone in an earlier post, but I learned a few things that has me now embracing the word.
Well this turned out to be way longer than I thought! Perhaps because I was coming to sit down and write a post, inspired by a few things I've been watching and reading lately. And one of them was The Diplomat and now your post. Time to get writing mine for next week. ;)
Sorry to hear you are feeling under the weather. You, my dear, are the Supreme Empress and I love you to bits. 🤍🩷🤍
So excited for the new season of The Diplomat. Hope you’re feeling better. 🙏