The Croning

contributed by Deb Bowen

There are moments, even in bright sunlight, when grief overcomes me and I sob, wailing in a voice I’m too proud to let anyone hear. I weep, thinking of all I have left undone as I become increasingly aware of my mortality. I howl, thinking of roads not taken, life not experienced.

“I’m too young to be this old,” I said recently to my friend Joel the crystalologist as we were remembering the first time we heard Neil Young’s Harvest album.

“How many years ago was that?” he asked.

“I dunno.  Maybe twenty,” I said. We Googled it.

1972. Forty-seven years ago. Really? When I see posts on Facebook about how long ago the 1980s were, I laugh. They were just last week. The 1990s, yesterday. The 2000s, this morning.

Where have forty-seven years gone? What have I accomplished? Who was I? Who am I now? What’s changed in my life? I can’t even talk about how much the world has changed!

I am old. I look in the mirror and see, not my mother, but my grandmother, staring back at me, her eyes twinkling in her wrinkled face. I am old. I’m invisible in the grocery store, my gray hair glistening in the harsh store lights. I am old. Body parts we don’t discuss in public are wearing out and breaking down.

And yet……would I go back to the person I was in 1972? A resounding NO.

I am grateful. I have friends and family and Mother Ocean around me every day. I have sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, and that amazing sixth sense we call intuition, and they all function nicely.

I am happy. I have learned much, and still have more to learn, and in learning, to teach and share.

I am a Crone, a wise one. I am wise enough to know I don’t know, but can share life and experiences with others. I am wise enough to know that every day is a day of celebration.

Come celebrate with me. On Sunday, May 5, we’ll gather at Mystic Elements in Wilmington, NC for a rejoicing of our journeys to Cronehood. We will create sacred and safe space. We will talk, and honor each other’s stories. We’ll create an altar that represents who we’re becoming. We’ll make crowns and we’ll be crowned as the wise Crones we are.

You can see details at https://debbowen.com/product/3623/ .  You can register at https://mysticelements.com/workshops/croning-ceremony-with-deb-bowen/

At what age are you eligible to be a Crone? As old or young as you want to be! Come on, this gathering of Crones will be fun! And as Bob Dylan said, “oh but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

Blessed be,
Deb