Age Like a Witch
This is how I embrace aging.
The truth is, I haven’t yet felt bothered by aging — not in the more superficial ways.
I don’t know how I’ll feel in the future, of course. But I felt great about turning 40.
So great that, at three months postpartum, I forgot I hadn’t drank in basically over a year and got just a bit caught up in the excitement of being with my best friends on a yacht in Miami. In hindsight, the magnum bottles of rosé may not have been necessary. But oh, was it fun.
Now I’m about to turn 41, and I feel equally good about it. Even better that I won’t be reliving that hangover.
But something did come up for me the other day that surprised me.
I was doing a meditation and asked to envision my life ten years from now.
In ten years, I’ll be in my fifties.
This one hit different. I struggled to imagine it. Why did my fifties feel so much different than my forties?
It was the first time I’ve ever felt anything close to mortality.
Suddenly I felt this pressure.
Would I achieve all that I wanted to in this decade? What would my life look like, no longer as a mom to littles which feels so intertwined with my identity now, but as a mom to two teenagers?
At the heart of it:
What if I didn’t have it all figured out yet?
Then I think back ten years ago, when I had a completely different career. My family who is now my entire being had yet to exist.
I think of Martha Stewart, who famously didn’t publish the book that put her on the map until she was 49. Or Vera Wang, who started a new career in fashion at 40 after an entirely different career.
A lot can happen in ten years, and a lot will happen.
But what comes next?
This is where I find relief in the Pagan triple goddess concept of Maiden, Mother, Crone. The three distinct phases of a woman’s life.
I am in my Mother phase, to be sure. Though this isn’t limited to bearing physical children. For me this phase represents fertility and creativity in all aspects of life — art, career, etc. All that we are making and building, contributing to the world.
I think, okay. There is still so much for me here, to experience and embrace.
And then onto Crone. Here is the magic for me. This is why I’m not afraid of aging, at my core.
We’re conditioned to fear aging, to resist it all costs. But the Crone gives us something to look forward to in our elder years.
The Crone is the wise woman archetype. She has lived, witnessed, no longer needs to prove herself. She may still be creative, but her relationship to it shifts. Now she can slow down and live inside this world she has built.
And when I view it in this lens, I find I soften into the idea of aging. It feels like an exhale.
The being after the bloom.
🌼