While many people regard the word “crone” as having negative associations, I have viewed it in more neutral terms. I do not see being a younger person or being an older person in terms of quality. Both are equal to each other and carry different but equal benefits. For me the word “crone” is more of an esoteric way of describing the aging process. A term that describes the changes that occurs within, rather than focusing on the external or physiological changes. I am not simply an older person I am a crone which carries with it implications of eldership and experience. I have heard some older people saying that they don’t feel any wiser now than when they were young. They say they feel the same as they did when they were 18, which to my ears sounds like a life not lived. If one feels the same in your 50’s as you do in your late teens then it means that nothing of any real significance has happened with you in 30+ years.
Having had a bit of a rock and roll lifestyle I can say that I feel nothing like I did at 18. I would say that I am a very different type of person now, and yes, although I say it myself I do have an understanding of the world now that I did not have then. I have gained in wisdom. While I can still manage a few foolish and many silly things, none of us are infallible, it’s true that I know more about the world than my younger self. My younger self often got very stressed as she navigated her way through adult themes and various situations for the first time. Me in her 50’s can still get stressed but less so as I am more used to surfing the stresses and strains so am more relaxed when the crisis points arrive as they invariably do. A culture that values youth however, will not tell you about the advantages of aging so as we find ourselves reaching the age of the crone we are needing to find these advantages for ourselves.
So what exactly is a crone and when do you know you have become one? We will all define that differently, some may say when you have reached retirement age or reached a certain state of mind. I define it as having come through the worst ravages of the menopause, when you have not bled for 2+ years you can then take on the mantle of crone ship. This may be different for women who for various reasons may have started young with the menopause so they may set their markers of crone ship differently. For me it’s one of those things where when you have reached it you will know. As a ray of hope for anyone currently going through the menopause, I can say having gone through it and have reached the other side, I have been able to experience a clarity of mind I have not had since before puberty. It’s a good place to be in.
Having survived the raging menopause I felt that I had reached the age where I was beginning my crone phrase. A young crone perhaps but a crone all the same. This led to some questioning about what is a crone exactly. How do I define the term, what exactly does the term crone mean to me? I was pondering that at the turn of the New Year, in 2023 into 2024. Shortly after the New year celebrations I had a conversation with a young person. This conversation was about the New Year. What we had done, how we had celebrated, and then the conversation turned to the millennium, when we all partied like it was 1999. My young person did not remember this as she was a baby in 1999. So we discussed the big party, how all the prices went up in the Nightclubs that year and strangely those prices never came down again. It’s been a stupid price to go out for New Year ever since. I told her about the millennium bug and how everyone was anxious that their tech would stop working on the 1st January 2000 and about the conspiracy theories about the end of the world set to occur in 2000, and when that did not happen in 2000 how it changed to 2012.
My young person had not known about this piece of history and as we were talking the words fell out of my mouth, “and just think, in years to come you will be my age telling someone your age about the pandemic, because they won’t have any lived experience of this as they are not born yet, or are babies.”
My young person was like “Noooo” and I was like “Yessss”. I suddenly recalled myself as a 22 year old woman listening to pieces of history my 54 year old friend was telling me. How she told me that one day I would be where she was, telling stories about life to a younger person. As that memory came back to me in a flash I felt a circle closing and I knew that for me the crone would always be the keeper of the stories. The people who hold the history, not only of my life but bits and pieces of people that I had met along the way. Ensuring that some of the lessons learned by my own generation would be passed on to the next, for integration and interpretation within the current climate.