Bone Woman: Conscious Eldering
57-63years
Septennial #9
After menopause, you are newly crowned, newly born baby Crone. After isolation, after death, you rejoin the community. In your isolation, you revisioned yourself.
Susun Weed.
Image: Ceremony celebrating 60 years.
This period of our lives prompts a desire to understand human evolution, tuning in to the deeper impulses and purpose of life. Appreciation of the bigger picture may come, with the ability to listen more, to see the truth of others in our orbit and to feel compassion for their struggles.
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As we travel through the autumn years, what is being harvested from the energy and effort we invested in our summer years (25-50)? Not just material things or career goals – what wisdoms have been gained?
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We may begin to feel the ageing process more acutely, and it may be time to think about our elder years while there is energy and health to plan well for them. Unrealised goals may surface, asking for either completion or release.
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Exercises
Respond to the following prompts in your journal:
What are you harvesting from your summer season?
What have you learned about yourself? About life?
How is your health? What health plans do you have going forward from here?
How have you managed to honour yourself? What is unfinished in this area?
How do you feel about ageing?
What tasks are still outstanding?
Do you have emerging plans for your future? How can you action them now?
After completing the prompts, divide a page into two columns. The headings for each column should be ‘negative’ and ‘positive’. In the ‘negative’ column, write a list of negative experiences, emotions, themes, actions and reactions from this first septennial. In the ‘positive’ column write the positive experiences, themes, actions, gifts, relationships from this septennial.
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Then, take a few moments with your eyes closed to feel into the negative list, considering each item you have written down. Then do the same for the positive list. Now, allow the two lists to merge – try to sit above or apart from the two lists and allow them to merge into one list, being, or energy – however you like to think about it. From this place, ask for a seed image to emerge, which represents the summation of this septennial, of the two lists and the merged lists.
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Your seed image may appear in your mind visually, or as thoughts describing the image, or in another way. Go with the first image that arises and open your eyes and draw it on the next round piece of paper.