There Are Some Things Only Time Can Give...

The older I’ve got the more I understand about myself and the ever-evolving journey of life.

When I look back at my life as a young woman, a hippie, a young single mother, wife, mother to four adult sons, grandmother, cancer survivor, teacher, coach, small business owner I can see that through all my life experiences and roles, the sense of Self or essence that I was continually searching felt elusive. I knew it was in me somewhere. I just couldn’t quite grab it. Even though one of my character flaws is impatience, now, with hindsight, I can see that it wasn’t time. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have the tools, the insight, the maturity and the key to unlock not only my own sense of embodied self, but the secrets of the past that were a part of what was keeping me trapped in this evasive search.

The older I’ve got the more I understand about myself and the ever-evolving journey of life. I’m grateful for these insights for otherwise life’s experiences would be for nothing, and the passing of time would be uniquely about aging skin and bones.

A six year journey through peri-menopause turned out to be a great gift. It took me through cancer and deep into my psyche and my motherline. At the time, I was sure I would reach that illusory destination at the end. Although the transformation was tangible – I connected myself to the line of women who went before me, which gave me the sense of embodiment I’d been missing and my voice became more authentic, the transformation has continued.

A couple of years after peri-menopause, I hit my second Saturn return. “Ah,” I thought, “this is it, this is when I ‘get there’ and can sit back and enjoy myself – ha, ha!” And yet, you’ve guessed it, the journey has continued. This time with a beautiful sense of slowing down. Time has worked on my impatience and I finally understand the line from Ralph Blum’s ‘Book of Runes’, that I read many times as a young woman, ‘the reward of patience is patience.’

Joining up ends from my youth that I thought were lost forever seems to be the order of the day. Picking up important threads that in my youthful impatience, my need to flee anything uncomfortable, including myself had been lost along the way. Now, I know that the psyche doesn’t lose things. It integrates that which is finished and stores that which isn’t, for the right time in the future. Finally I’ve had to admit that transformation is NOT a destination. It’s a never ending journey of discovery. The older we get, the more of ourselves we find.

A recent piece that rose from these depths in a totally unexpected way is a passion for spinning and weaving that began in my early twenties. At the time, I was a young, single, penniless mum living in a yurt in someone’s field in the West Country in England. I spun raw wool on a drop spindle and wove wall hangings on a loom I’d made out of an old wooden deckchair. Like everything in my life at that time, I soon moved on to a new place, a new chaos, a new search for self and left my foray into fiber arts behind. When I bought a drop spindle at the beginning of this year and made a distaff, it was meant to be just a brief research for my memoir on the motherline. Little did I realize that once I’d got that ancient, unchanged tool in my hands how deep and fast I was going to dive.

Last week I had a dream. A dream that felt important.

I saw a sign for a weaving teacher and knocked on the door. A strong, older lady in an apron opened the door and I asked,“please could you teach me to weave.”

“Come back later, I’m busy,” she said.

“I don’t have time.” I replied.

The next thing I know, we’re sitting side by side on a bench in her studio. I’m surprised and delighted when she asks, “what do you want to weave?” feeling that something I never dared to dream of is now becoming a possibility.

I’m spinning a couple of long, yurt poles in my hands when they suddenly fly from my grip. I search for them in her studio to no avail. I can’t understand how they could have disappeared.

As I worked on this dream, a profound sense of ‘everything happens at the right time’ came to me. The older weaver woman felt like meeting my older, wiser self. Her energy was strong, but kind. She was present for me. She’s survived and has the patience that I lacked as a younger woman. She has a space for weaving together the threads of life. Most importantly, I’m ready to learn this slower, more intentional, tactile, embodied way of living from her.

The yurt poles I was spinning were once an important part of my nomadic, chaotic life – a time when I had little sense of self. They flew out of my hands. They didn’t clatter to the floor. They didn’t break. They disappeared because they were ready to be released. I was holding onto a past that had no place in the weaving studio of my wiser, elder self where I’m going to be learning to weave stability and an understanding of time and intention.

I’m grateful that my journey through menopause and onwards taught me that I needed to trust the Crone, the Dark Goddess - that buried, wise, feminine part of us. Marion Woodman suggested that she has been in hiding to prevent humanity from destroying her, but was coming back through the many dreams her analysands had of this archetype in different guises.

We’ve been taught through thousands of years of patriarchy to be afraid of this power that is within us. The crone, the hag, the witch have been demonized to keep us from and make us fearful of this part of ourselves. Patriarchy has taught us a false sense of what it is to be feminine, that our value in society is in our youthfulness, our fertility, our serving of others, etc.

Menopause is, without a doubt, a feminine initiation, a portal to the ongoing transformative journey of becoming, of authenticity, and of befriending the dark. I am learning that the way forward is in turning away from the mainstream’s false narrative about feminine aging and to trust this force within us that has been so demeaned and scapegoated through history. Hecate is waiting for us at the crossroads with her hounds, her keys, and, of course, her lamp.

We don’t know before we start out on the path where she will lead us. My journey into fiber arts, which has barely begun crept up on me slowly, silently, invisibly until I was flowing with the daily advancements on a practical, tactile level and soulful level. Another phrase I remember from the rune book is ‘once a decision is made the universe supports that decision.’ I say ‘decision’, but it didn’t come from the mind, it came from my soul. What began thirty-five years ago in that lost, frightened girl has come back with a vengeance.

Preparing and spinning raw wool into fibers touches something profound in my soul. It brings back a balance that’s been missing in the last fifteen years of inner work, teaching, writing, coaching and holding space for others. It not only connects me to the roots of my motherline in Assam where every woman spun and wove silk, it brings me into the body, into the physicality of life. I feel these ancestral grandmothers in my bones and I can’t help but honor them, connect with them beyond space and time.

Where is your soul calling you? Are you listening and giving yourself the right to follow the call wherever it may be leading you? One of my friends has found hers roller skating and it is so beautiful to see the videos of her dancing on her skates, feeling the music in her body, gliding and flowing and rolling with such grace.

Perhaps your wiser, elder self is a painter, a gardener, a singer, a musician, a writer, a traveler. Your journey will be uniquely yours, but the call comes to us all – we just need to listen and follow it. The mainstream can be noisy. It wants us to feel overwhelmed, in difficulty, terrified of the natural process of aging, unable to move forward without the ‘industry’ its built around menopause.

This is not what our souls desire.

Within the chaos and trauma we see in the outer world, in the ecological problems, the political situations, the social injustice, it’s time to honor and celebrate that this deeply buried part of the feminine. The Dark Goddess is rising into consciousness, one woman at a time. She is coming through our dreams, our bodies, through the pull to slowing down, reinvigorating ancient crafts, getting our hands back into the dirt, letting art and creativity express her wisdom through us.

I honor those of you reading this, who relate and who are already expressing your personal myth through your own flavor of creativity or on the path to finding yours.

I acknowledge the slow, invisible coming to fruition of your soul’s yearning that takes decades, that takes life’s ups and downs to ripen, that embodies the knowledge that there are some things that only time can give us.

And lastly, I witness the natural letting go of that which is complete, of that which is no longer serving us, of that which will become humus for new life. My yurt poles symbolized a lost, dissociated part of myself who had no way to be stable, embodied, present. I love this lost part of myself, and I let her become the past, the hardened shell of the seed that needed to break so the new sprout within her could grow.

After ten years of guiding women through the alchemical stages to their soul’s path, here is a free video where I lead you into the wilderness of Northern New Mexico, the land that has held me for all these years. It’s about about the connection between nature, alchemy and menopause.

Nature, menopause and Alchemy

I believe that our individual and collective psyches are always evolving towards wholeness. Now is the time that women going through menopause and beyond are invited to listen to a deeper, as yet unknown guide within them, not to be frightened, but to trust this rising, feminine wisdom. Like Hecate, she knows the way. She has the experience and the tools, and it is her nature to lead us at this stage in our lives. Only she can do it. Whether she makes herself known through your dreams, a hunch, an intuitive knowing, a guided journey, the pull to a new creative endeavor, I encourage you to listen to her. She comes from your soul. She is showing you the next steps on your journey of personal myth. She is inviting you to spin the threads of your life into the uniqueness that is you.

“A life truly lived constantly burns away veils of illusion, burns away what is no longer relevant, gradually reveals our essence, until, at last, we are strong enough to stand in our naked truth.”- Marion Woodman