Crone – the wise old woman, the healer.
In the Celtic tradition of the three aspect of a woman’s life, or the triple Goddess, we see them as the maiden – the innocent child or youthful woman, the mother – the nurturer and the crone – the wise old woman. In some cultural traditions, women become crones when they reach the age of 50 and in others it’s when she enters menopause. Today, a woman becomes a crone when she dammed well feels she is.
I thought I might give you some clues that you may be heading in the crone direction of life so that when you see the signs you can ready yourself to embrace the most empowering part of your life.
But before I do, let me assure you that a crone is not a haggard, shrivelled up old woman. The crone has been given a bad rap in the past but times, they are a changing. For one, woman are living longer and in better health. The average age of life expectancy in Canada (other countries vary) is 80 years so your crone years, could in reality, be the longest part of your life. Even 50 years ago, which was 1970 by the way, we only averaged 72 years as our life expectancy. Today, women are living longer, we are better educated and we have more resources at our disposal to live a fuller, happier life. It’s time for the mature women of the world to fully embrace the senior years of their lives. Youth may still rule this modern culture but age and wisdom will always win out in the end.
The invisible woman
One of the first and earliest signs that you are moving towards your crone years is when you become invisible to society. This can be a big hit to the ego as a lot of women identify themselves by their outward appearance.
I remember with perfect clarity the first time I was walking out in public and noticed that men, both young and old were looking right past me. No longer being noticed for my looks, no longer capturing the appreciative eye of the opposite sex as they passed by me, I had become invisible.
Unless you are blessed with exceptional genes, there will come a time when you too will become invisible in the world. You will notice that flirting no longer achieves the results it once did. Your outward appearance begins to loose it’s power to attract, charm and beguile. If you are at all insecure, the loss of your outer allure can be devastating.
Sadly, we all age but in order to grow to the next stage of your life, you must evolve from your superficial, outer identity and create a new kind of beauty, one of confidence, power and inner knowing. Developed right, you can free yourself from societal expectations of how you should look and begin the transition into complete self acceptance of who you really are.
Your bullshit meter goes way up
Clarity and truth become superpowers and you begin to see through the crap people and society tries to feed you much easier. This might bring on emotions of frustration and anger. Emotions needed to motivate you to break free of the restrictions that life has saddled you with so you can begin to form your own opinions based on what you believe to be true. Words like “bitchy” may be whispered behind you back but you find that you just don’t care. In fact, you begin to care less and less what other people think and you may even tell them as much.
You become selfish
The mother archetype tends to be selfless. She’ll put the needs of the people and things she cares about ahead of her own needs. Her drive is to nurture even at the expense of her own fulfillment. But clarity and truth demands action and so the emerging crone in her may start to stick up for herself a little more.
As you progress towards becoming a crone, instead of being self – less you start to become self – ish. When you realize that you have fulfilled all the requirements of what society has expected from you; you were the good child, student, girlfriend, lover, wife, mother, employee etc., it is time to ask the most important question that you may ever ask yourself. What is it that I want out of life?
The search begins
This one question opens a Pandora’s box of possibilities and you may find yourself questioning a lot about your life. What do I really believe in? What would I like to do with my free time? Do I want to stay in this career, this marriage? Who do I want to be?
And so the soul’s search for answers begins. Some refer to this searching as a mid-life crisis. I prefer to look at this search as an apprenticeship for the new and improved woman that you are in the process of becoming. The key here is to remember to stay open and curious to the choices and possibilities that are out there for your life.
Intuition – your real superpower
Woman are intuitive beings. As mothers we are known to have eyes in the back of our heads but as we get older and we have less outer responsibilities to clutter our thoughts, our intuition really begins to ramps up.
We are becoming self-ish and beginning to get to know ourselves once again, maybe even for the first time. We are exploring our likes, our passions and hopefully, we are following our curiosity. We are relying on our gut instincts and using our intuition, our inner voice as our guide.
You may find that you become more introverted and relish quiet time more. You may find that you prefer your own company and find peace with the thoughts in your head. You may find that you prefer your own counsel over that of others when making decisions because it just feels right. This is your intuition working and the more you use it, the stronger it becomes.
True Confidence
When you rely on your own intuition more than the opinions and expectations of others an amazing thing happens. You begin to truly stand in your own power and become the most authentic version of yourself. This is confidence and the reason this blog is called Crone Confidence. This is you expressing your beauty from within. People begin to notice you once again because you shine with a kind of power that attracts others to you.
The choice is yours now as to whether you want to remain invisible to the outer world and quietly shine your light to a select group or whether you want to stand in this power and show the world who you really are. It is at this time that many women take on a new passion or project. One that reflects the answers to the all the questions, all the searching and all the growth that has occurred during the transformation from mother to crone.
True wisdom
The apprentice has become the master. A crone takes everything that she has learned over her lifetime – all her experiences, her loves, her losses, her triumphs and her failures and synergizes them into her own unique wisdom. But it is not enough to be intuitive, confident and knowledgeable, the truly wise crone understands that she has a new role in life. That of the mentor. For what good is all that knowledge and wisdom if nobody else learns from it.
You see, one does not only become a crone because the maiden and the mother aspects of her life will always be inside of her as well. To be a crone is to manifest the best aspects of all three.
Crone is just a title. So is grandmother, matriarch, senior and old lady. They are just terms to describe a time in our life. The more important consideration is what this particular time represents to the individual.
You can dawdle off to your sunset years and retire into a life of quiet and peace and it’s nobodies business but yours if you do. Or you can evolve into the third act of your life and squeeze out every last drop of it as the grand being you have the potential to become.
And isn’t that why we chose to incarnate into human beings in the first place, to experience all that this human existence has to offer? So doesn’t it make sense that if we are constantly growing and evolving in life that we would come to a point of critical mass where we are at a level to take all that we have learned and manifest ourselves into a version that not only continues the learning process but freely offers the unique wisdom of our experiences to those evolving behind us.
That is the essence of the crone. Is she in you? Do you feel her awakening – becoming? Are you beginning to see the signs?
I’m reading this on my 58th birthday. If you aren’t sure who you were writing for, it was me! I am on an odyssey beyond my dreams as I embrace the Crone power in me. Each step out of fear and into trust breaks open my heart more so I can see into the vast universe within me. Thank you for this beautiful gift of words. I hear the song in them and I know the melody in my soul.
Happy Birthday to you! May the year ahead see you happy and healthy and experiencing many magical moments.
Thank you for your heartfelt comment. I wrote this post from my own personal experiences but believe them to be true for others as well. Your comments is a validation of that for me so it is I who thank you for this gift.
I am so glad you are embracing your Crone power as I feel the old wise woman has an important place in the healing and evolution of our society and as a species.
Best wishes to you.
Another great post, thanks Diana. It’s a good time to be reminded to keep searching and not to fall into a hole
Thanks Sue for the support. Enjoy the search and enjoy the magic.
thanks for your words of insight Diana 🙂
i look forward to the next crossing of our paths 🙂
I’m glad you enjoyed. 🤗
I am 23 but I understand this post so well, my grandmother was a beautiful and gorgeous Crone, and now my mother is becoming one just as lovely. I hope that I will be as lovely and wise when it’s my time. Thank you for writing this piece.
Thanks for for visiting and taking the time to be part of the conversation. Sounds to me like you are well on your way to becoming a wise woman already especially because you have/had woman in your life to show you the way. What a blessing. ❤️
For me, since I’m not straight, becoming invisible to men delighted me. In addition to taking a lot of hassle out of my life, it meant I could afford to be friendly.
I love it Ellen! That is one perspective I would never have thought of. 😋
Fabulous! As I read this, I kept thinking, yup, this is me! And this is me! And this is me, too! Thank you for this one!
Well welcome to the Crone sisterhood them. 😂
I believe that the older, wiser woman is the most powerful brand females come in. So don’t be afraid to use that power. 😉
Exceptionally useful. Keep up the articulation please.
Thank you Rachel. Their almost 400 articles on my blog. I write two a month. You are welcome to sign up and you will receive the new ones when they are posted.
Thanks for coming by and being part of the conversation. 😊
I wrote a haiku the other day:
Is this what it feels like?
Withering; mother to crone
When does wisdom come?
It sent me looking to Google for answers…. Google very rarely provides such beautiful concise true answers when I’m looking for them thank you so much.
Thank you Jen for reaching out. I am so happy you found my site.
Honestly, your haiku, while beautiful, leaves me sad. Cronehood is the most powerful stage of a females life. While I don’t know your age, or your life circumstances, I will offer that personal power always comes from within and harnessing that power is where the wisdom grows from. So to find wisdom, call your power back to you.
Blessings to you.
Diana Frajman
No. I’m 43 and definitely not even close to wanting any of that yet. I just don’t relate at all. After years of illness I want to finally have the opportunity to focus on others. I’m ready for love and family and for relationships to come first. I’ve spent days on end in complete isolation in the last twenty years. The urge to nurture has been unbearable. If you’ve been through years of active adulthood already then fine, you might be ready to retire from your duties but if not, an entirely selfish life just feels empty.
Cronehood is not retirement. It is a state of mind. It’s when you break free of the binds of society and finally become the unique person you are truly meant to be. For you perhaps, connection and nurturing are major themes of who you are meant to be. Illness aside, that is why you crave it so.
As for being selfish, I think that word has been vilified. How can you give of yourself to others if you don’t first spend some time on your self to figure out what you want to give? Think of it like a second youth when you spend some time exploring the world once again. In fact I think we all should regularly pull our heads out of the sand and have a look around to see how we’ve changed in relationship to how the world has changed. Things change and so must we but for the vast majority of woman, their adult years are spend helping others whether through family, or jobs. I don’t consider taking some time before you move into your elder years to consider what you finally want out of life selfish in the tradition sense, I consider it a necessity.
I would never presume to understand the challenges you have faced through the last 20 years of illness, but I will invite you to consider this: One of the gifts of cronehood is wisdom. I can only image that enduring years of illness and coming out the other side of it has offered you many chances to learn patience, grace and strangely enough, how to suffer. These are gifts that you can use to reach out, connect and nurture others with. We use what we know. Because what I do know about the word selfish, is when we don’t share ourselves to the world, then we are keeping our gifts to ourselves and that is selfish. That’s how humans connect and there by nurture others in return.
I want to thank you for taking the time and reaching out. It is only through understanding another’s perspective of life that we can learn compassion. Your words remind me that not everyone is in the same situation as I am, that we all have our own road to walk. I wish you love and grace as you continue on your path into your crone years even if that is a few years off. My only piece of advice is that you keep yourself open to the possibilities of life as it might surprise you yet.
Blessings,
Diana Frajman
I have been doing research on what this time of my life is. I’ll be 53 this year. I have 2 children and 3 beautiful grandchildren, a blessed life really. I’ve been reading books on stages of life and Women. The Three Goddesses, or Sisters.
I don’t know what lead me to your blog. But like most commenters, I felt pulled in this direction. Your words are Gold. You’ve described me to a T. The selfishness, yeah, totally me. I done for others before myself for so long, it was like an awakening! I Love myself again and your blog confirmed it for me.
Diana, Thank You. From the bottom of my heart, Thank you!
I am so happy that you found my site Michele and that this post resonates with you. Thank for reaching out. 😊
I would also like to add that my latest post (published today in fact) is about the need for more gratitude (which is an energy of love) in the world and I was just telling my husband about the little magical gratitudes that I experienced while out shopping today. Right at that moment, my phone sounded that your message came through. Talk about receiving a dose of gratitude!
So I may have affirmed you becoming a Crone with this blog post but you affirmed in me that when you live in gratitude, life gives you reasons to be grateful. Your have made me grateful that my writing really does make a difference. So thank you for that. 🙏
Bright Blessings,
Diana Frajman
Modern Crone
It’s like magic that I was lead to read this blog of yours this morning, and I do believe that this is the message my guides wants me to hear to validate the challenges and lessons that creates the wisdom I gained throughout the years of my life As I am now on my healing and shadow works, it’s such a gratitude to know that I am becoming greater than I am. Used to doubt my worthiness of this greatness, not anymore in knowing that many of us are on this way of GREATNESS.
So much Gratitude Love and Light
Namaste 🖖🤍🤍🤍
Krystal Legaspi
I’m so glad that this post has resonated with you Krystal. Becoming a sovereign being and then alchemizing it with one’s acquired wisdom to become a Crone is a journey that never ends. But it’s one hell of a ride and gets better and better as you go along.
Thanks for taking the time to read and then send me a comment.
Bright Blessings to you,
Diana Frajman
Everything you have said is true. From the glances received when young, motherhood and all goes with it and then becoming invisible. I have made my contribution to society and not burdened it. I am now in the “bullshit meter and the I don’t care” phase. . I’ve passed the life expectancy for my state and every day is a gift. I have time now to follow my own pursuits, I love this stage of life and I have no problem being a crone. I may put that on a t-shirt, lol.
Welcome to the club!
Being a Crone in today’s world unfortunately brings responsibility for it us the wise ones who must hold the reins steady on a world gone crazy. But now you get to do it on your time and maybe with a cocktail in your hand. 😉
Thanks for coming by a being part of the conversation.
So grateful for your thoughtful insight of this crone passage. I’ve recently been self initiated into this world and new to using the word crone, and fkn love it. I intuitively knew I was stepping into my wisdom, sovereignty and voice and been preparing myself to share with others. It’s bubbling up so loud within me to bring crones together, share knowledge, celebrate. So, I’m starting this path a crone circle. I’m new to you, having just found this blog. Any advice or resources you could share for a newby starting a crone circle? Grateful for your sharing 🙏
Thanks for finding me Debra and congratulations on embracing your Cronehood. 😊
As for Crone circles, I would first decide the purpose of the one you wish to create. Is it for spiritual practice, or will the focus be of a social affair. The agenda will dictate the type of ladies that you might invite.
I don’t follow a practice. I don’t identify as a witch or Wiccan, Druid or any other. What I follow is a belief of empowering others by being a beacon of light. A simple concept that dictates my actions.
I do have a group of mature women who I meet with regularly because I also believe in the human need for deep connection.
While I don’t know you (yet 😉) or your circumstances, my advice is to embrace your gifts and acquired wisdom and use it in whatever capacity you feel comfortable or are able, to vibrate love out to those you encounter, whether that’s through a circle or solitarily.
When you embrace your inner Crone, you embrace a way of being. One that is both unapologetically authentic but also understands that we are all part of the whole and that there is a responsibility as the matriarchs and wise women of our society to leave our unique legacies for a better world.
That’s my perspective at any rate.
Blessings to you Debra, however you decide to create your Crone circle, if it comes from your heart, you can’t go wrong.
Diana Frajman
love your perspective and advice, thank you Diana. What’s become clear to me is I’ve been in the process of embodying and integrating my lived experiences which has fine tuned my intuition, wisdom and truth within my amazing body instrument. I’ve organically moved in this direction and similar to you, my actions are guided by this foundation. The more I step into this and my strength and voice (which happens within each micro moment of my life) the more I am finding I am like a tuning fork for others, and they for me. Seems I’d love to bring a group together to raise awareness of this, share knowledge & experiences and further this vibration. Blessings to you too Diana
I am Crone!! Thank you for helping me find the way.
Welcome to the club. It’s an awesome place to be!
Thank you for taking the time to come by and be part of the conversation. Much appreciated.