Wonderful Wise Words about the Power of the Woman
Day 5: Celebrating Who We Are Now and Who We Will Become
The picture for the day is a sunset, an event facing all of us. We sit and watch the glories of colors, shadows, and lights for those few minutes. We know there will be another sunset the next night and the next and the next. We may not see the ones that come after, but we can assure ourselves that they will be there, watched by other women who know there is still work to do in our twilight years, as we await our personal sunset.
There are sayings for those of us in “elderhood,” “the twilight years,” our “kick back and do nothing” years. Most of them imply that we are “done” with our work.
(Stamping my foot…) I refuse to believe this. I know I still have work to do and a purpose to fulfill before I am “done.” Even then, I want to ensure that my work may live on in the actions, dreams, and thoughts of others.
Rabin Wall Kemmerer, in her amazing book Braiding Sweetgrass, has a chapter entitled “A Mother’s Work.” Let’s ruminate on these words together in chorus with each other. I read them few weeks ago, and they are foremost in my mind as I think about my place in the macrocosm around us. Kemmerer quotes from a book by Paula Gunn Allen in Grandmothers of the Light
“…of the changing roles of women as they spiral through the phases of life, like the changing face of the moon. We begin our lives, she says, walking the Way of the Daughter. This is the time for learning, for gathering experiences in the shelter of our parents. We move next to self-reliance, where the necessary task of the age is to learn who you are in the world. The path brings us next to the Way of the Mother…a time when her ‘spiritual knowledge and values are all called into the service of her children.’”
Our children leave our nests and begin their own circles of learning, and we now have a new task ahead of us. As women, we are never finished with pour work.
Allen continues:
“…our strengths now turn to a circle wider than our own children, to the well-being of the community. The net stretches larger and larger, The circle bends round again and grandmothers walk the Way of the Teacher, becoming models for younger women to follow. And in the fullness of age…our work is not yet done. The spiral widens farther and farther, so that the sphere of a wise woman is beyond herself, beyond her family, beyond the human community, embracing the planet, mothering the earth.”
Could we ask for a better purpose at the end of our lives on earth? We can shepherd our communities up the chain to our planet and possibly our universe, knowing we have the wisdom and experience to be a literal force of nature.
We are NOT done. We Crones have significant, important work to do in however many years we have remaining to us and to those we teach.
Consider commenting on the impact these words may have had on you. I hope to start an actual discussion thread shortly for our collective thoughts.
(Pages 96-97, 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass, Kemmerer, Robin Wall. Milkweed Editions)