Bone Woman: Conscious Eldering
The Empty Nest
What is it you plan to do with the rest of your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver.
Image: Empty Nest Workshop, Hearthground.
As families transition into a new cycle with children leaving home, feelings associated with that loss are often not acknowledged. It is an area of the life cycle that isnt spoken of a lot as for many there are mixed emotions.
There isnt a place for this expression of loss and grief within the busyness of our lives and with social media being our norm, there is the illusion that everyone is coping beautifully.
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The mothering role needs to recalibrate to move into the next stage of life. It offers a process of rediscovery. This is a potent time for women, and often coincides with peri menopause and menopause itself. It can be filled with grief, emptiness, lack of purpose.
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Everyone processes differently as some women can feel a sense of liberation and freedom to finally put their energies into new interests or revive things put on hold due to the mothering role.
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As families transition into a new cycle with children leaving home, feelings associated with that loss are often not acknowledged. It is an area of the life cycle that isnt spoken of a lot as for many there are mixed emotions.
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It is important to speak also of women who are not able to have children and women who have lost children when we speak of the empty nest and weave their stories into our collective consciousness. The biological drive along with the personal, family and cultural expectations challenge identity and purpose. A very painful meeting with the Bone Woman archetype.
The Empty Nest time whether its women who have children or women who are not able to have children is a threshold transition to recalibrate, to move into the next stage of life. Its a potent time for women, and often coincides with peri menopause and menopause itself. It can be filled with grief, emptiness and lack of purpose.
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There isnt a place for this expression of loss and grief within the busyness of our lives and with social media being our norm, there is the illusion that everyone is coping beautifully.
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If this time is met by the presence of a compassionate Other or through the healing process of ritual this next passage in the life cycle can offer a process of rediscovery. Everyone processes differently as some women can feel a sense of liberation and freedom to finally put their energies into new interests or revive things put on hold due to the nurturing of others. Dormant gifts not yet activated may emerge or dreams and wishes may take one into exciting and unexpected areas. Many women undertake further study to add to their toolkit to support their shift into their next Calling.
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And lets remember not all women want to have children... there are a multitude of ways the feminine expresses.
The Empty Nest time for me personally was very painful. I remember this stage of life I was consumed by a grief that I couldnt contain. I had reclaimed my sons old room and made it into a sewing and craft room....
I began a process of mending, I mended curtains, I mended holes in bath towels, I mended holes in tea towels I blanket stitched the fraying edges of blankets.
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I did this with head phones on and listenened to Dr Clarrisa Pinkola Estes series of the Dangerous Old Woman and the tears poured out of me. ​My partner brought my meals to the door and allowed me the space to be and to emerge when ready.
​The voice of this incredible currandera/story teller/healer was like honey for my grieving soul and I felt validated in my grief, understood and guided into my next phase.
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I emerged renewed.
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I have included an article called Last Blood and the Plum tree which includes in it how I processed my daughter leaving the family home.
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The simple ceremonial process described there made not only my empty nest easier to integrate but gave her also a space to honour the time she had in her family home and in doing so opened up the flow of possibility and excitement to welcome her new direction as an independent woman.
Last Blood and the Plum Tree: Infinite musings from the Disciple of the Hearth.
Descending into the last dark moon phase before Imbolc's gentle new awakening: 2014.
I remember, when writing last year round this time between winter solstice and Imbolc, that I noticed in circle and community, that women were experiencing the birth pains of transition, where the contents of the unresolved past get mixed up with new dreams and intentions for the unfolding cycle. Kind of like a traffic jam of emotion.
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Its almost like before the new cycle can fully be engaged with, that dismembered parts of the psyche call from the depths and tug on our garments to be re membered and consciously integrated. There is an alignment with this energy at the the end of the monthly blood cycle, there is an opportunity/invitation while one is still in liminal receiving space, to do a spiritual spring clean.
What I am witnessing at present is old generational wounds from the mother line making themselves felt through the women I come in contact with.
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The way I experience/ sense into this, is that there is an urgency, that stories that speak of our ancestral wounds need to be validated, expressed somehow, an acknowledgement not only of our past wounds but the wounds of the ancestors
What is coming to me is a kind of Sorry ceremony for our women soul......I can feel an outpouring on this subject but will keep for another time, but just need to share that there are many healing rituals for this. One lovely one is called the Gifts of the Ancestors.
Maiden Blood and the Plum Tree.
This winter solstice saw the leaving of my daughter as she journeys to create her own hearth/home in town. The day she had collected the last of her things to spend her first night in her new home, was the last day of her menstrual cycle, to her credit, as she was very busy, she used a radpad (menstrual cloth) at my request and soaked the Last Blood of her time here at home, in water.
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That evening the moment came to say goodbye, we lit a candle and went to the ancient plum tree, stripped temporarily bare by winter and she poured her blood water onto the ground at her ancient roots. It was a moment held within time's stillness, like the centre of the lemniscate. She gave heart full thanks for all the nourishment she had received from the land, from family, from community and offered gratitude for all that came together for her to grow into her potential.
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It is now thirteen years since her menarche was celebrated here with a circle of truly amazing women, all with unending bucket loads of Love to share! As you can imagine it was a deeply tender emotional moment with tears and hugs.
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This simple ritual of completion set us both free, her to anchor herself into a new space and dream into her future and for me the tears washed me clean and space was made to nurture my relationship with myself and my own birthings.
Last Blood Rites.
I am now a post menopausal woman and would like to share with you my own Last Blood story, there comes a time before menopause where you don't know which will be your Last Blood. If you are a woman who tends this cycle that acts as an amazing guide, there is a kind of inner dance as the call to be reverent and make space for the wisdom of blood consciousness and being pulled by busy life schedules where the mind says don't worry there will be a next time..... well then one day there is no next time.
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I did this dance during the peri pre menopause stage, is this my Last Blood?
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How do I honour it?
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How do I continue Blood rites as an older woman?
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During my mother/summer phase I used to put my blood water into a watering can and walk around the perimeter of our Place and call in protection for my family, offering gratitude to mother earth. During the peri menopausal 'dance' with what I call the Bone woman phase, I put my blood into the compost, with the worms, the soil, the food scraps from our shared meals, the grass clippings and leaves. The sun, rain and air joined in , I can feel some say “Blood in the Compost!”
Well to be honest it was more of a homeopathic as my bleeding times became less intense and was mixed with water. Rather than a calling of protection I felt a sense of generous distribution that would go on to feed all the plants, my own personal biodynamics!
My inner shamana self called me to put a little of this blood water into a homeopathic medicine bottle with a large dose of our home made spirit/alcohol to keep its essence to use for future ritual. This offered me the ability to continue blood rites of returning gratitude to the land and still supports me to manage and honour my own continuing threshold moments.
Becoming the 'Power'
For some of us there is sadness and a sense of loss at the ending of our cycle.
There is a Native American saying that goes:
"At menarche a young woman enters her power.
Throughout her menstruating years she practices her power.
At menopause she becomes her power.”
From my experience becoming that 'power' and managing it doesn't happen all at once! Like all new beginnings there are growing pains....... I would find myself yearning for the release that menstruation brings. Without my cycle, I found myself turning into a mega many armed woman who turned multitasking into Olympian proportions!
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Living almost in an never ending summer land, burn out was on the horizon, I needed to integrate and distill this Power.
I found myself reclaiming my cycle again, my lunar return, where my fertility was a gibbous moon and my menstruation just before dark. I realised that I could still harnass this energy, that my energies were still aligned with the moon. I still feel an urgency to complete projects, tasks before dark moon, to settle and make peace with old stories, so that I can be free to create anew with the waxing moon.
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I remember Alexandra Pope author of the Wild Genie, having charged sacred mementoes with her blood and Lara Owen writes a lovely piece on returning blood to the Earth in her book, Her Blood is Gold. Both wonderful and inspiring reads for women who are in their menstruating years.
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The Sacred Pool
I have found the Blood Rites, described briefly above, to be so Healing, enabling a reclaiming of self respect (I endured multiple sexual abuses as a child). These processes activate a different way of being in the world, intuition and knowing are not only heightened but feel grounded in the body. I feel there is 'docking' into the very fibres of existence where one is made conscious of the connections not only with all creation but the part one plays in its unfolding.
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For me personally, it is an opportunity to clear the way forward for, not only my daughter, but for my bit of healing to join the collective pool of healing of consciously evolving women, everywhere.
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I believe that women who are awakening to their own conscious evolution, and return their blood to the earth with intention, prayer, reverence and gratitude are permeating the Earth/Gaia with their essence are connecting to her soul as a living being.
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