The Empress Book Club: Hagitude📚👑
More questions and what does it all mean now?
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Fellow Empresses, How the hell are you?
It may be a trying week to navigate with family especially given the current climate, so if you feel like retreating into our wonderful book club selection, I’d thought to send out some questions from Sharon…
What do you find less relevant as you get older? Which behaviors and habits would you like to let go of?
Sharon was able to draw solace from an ancient yew tree when she underwent treatment for cancer. She also named the red kite above her house ‘Old Bone Mother’: she who calls our dismembered parts back from the dead, conjuring life anew. What natural places or beings have given you a sense of groundedness, company, or comfort?
During her time in the valley of the shadow of Death, Sharon discovered the gifts of kindness, of slowing down, and of learning to befriend Death. If you have experienced a serious illness, did you find it brought you gifts? What were they?
As I seek to further evolve into my Helen Mirren era, I’d like to step up into my power and let go of my people-pleasing ways. I’m over showing up for things and people who make me feel like sh*t. So now, I call out the bullies when I see them and preserve my peace. I think it’s even more now that we see so much emboldened misogyny in our culture. Because some things just take the cake…?
Like Sharon, when peri/menopause resulted in a catastrophic health crisis—a seizure that left me with a shattered jaw and face, I drew tremendous solace from singing as part of my speech and physical therapy to relearn how to speak. We focused on the classic American songbook and jazz standards. It gave me so much joy as it was my way of conjuring my voice anew. My favorite song was…
That said, during that time, the recovery process felt like it stole everything… my health, my income, my relationship, my driver’s license… But a clever therapist recommended grief counseling for the loss of my old life and through that, I learned how to process what had happened, as well as how to better befriend my nervous system, and how to slow the heck down—which was such a good thing long term.
But what about you? What springs to mind with Sharon’s questions? And what do you fear right now—given things might change so dramatically relative to the ACA and women’s health? Don’t hold back.
About Hagitude
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.
In the meantime, we wish you a warm, nurturing, hopeful, cozy, and restorative Thanksgiving—however you celebrate it. Stay tuned for more commentary on Hagitude, and don’t forget your holiday stress questions for our midlife therapist Kimberly Wilson! She’s absolutely stellar at practical solutions. We’re talking on Dec. 15th—right before all the relatives descend!
Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
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To Kim's comment, I just met a hairdresser who specializes in helping women transition from using hair color back to their natural gray hair. So they are out there. I love it. My hairdresser already "blends" the silver and gold. As far as Helen Mirren era, feeling less reactive about other people's stuff and focusing more on what I'm putting out there. Focusing on relationships with places, people and energy. And tuning into what I can specifically offer to the world and what I want from the world in the context of those relationships.
I love it..."as I further evolve into my Helen Mirren era." You know Helen Mirren is my everything. As I move into my 60's next year, she's my IT girl. I keep wanting my hair to go grey faster, but despite imploring my hair dresser to try to make it so, it's just not happening. (although I have converted to using the purple shampoo to try to make the grey I do have more silver-y.)
As for Hagitude, I just started it and I loved how it talked about the crone years and in a positive way. I am embracing that definition of crone, not our current one! I find most everything less relevant as I get older. I've stripped away stuff and people and I like this new way of being.