The Maiden, The Mother, And The Crone. A Woman’s Cycle Of Life.

The freedom in being the Crone

I’m the Crone and my daughter is the Maiden. And I damned sure I know where I’d rather be. Gone are the days of being the Maiden with all its self-doubt, the expectation of being sexually available and attractive. The first fumbling relationship with the opposite sex with all it’s petty rows over this and that. God, I wouldn’t go back there at all.

Thankfully the world is changing and it is not the expectation of women to just jog along at a little job until they meet Mr Right, or Wrong for that matter. In a lot of cases, women have moved on from all that nonsense. They have forged careers, been self-sufficient, and have made a life for themselves free of the expectations of men and society.

And still, there are those folk in society that don’t like it. The young woman forging ahead in a career, she will get to a certain age and then the questions start, “isn’t it time you met someone and got married?” These questions are so bloody intrusive that it says more about the asker's opinions than the person being asked. Suddenly the single Maiden is everyone else’s concern. “Why hasn’t she got married yet?”. “She's going to be left on the shelf” as if being single was going to send you to hell. In past years the words “spinster of the parish” was hardly a flattering description. The implication was that you failed, yes you failed to bag yourself a husband.

And for those women that didn't “fail” to get a husband the next step of life would be marriage and children. A lot of women were happy, but equally a lot probably weren’t. Divorce many years ago in ordinary folk was rare and frowned upon. “You’ve made your bed” and all that crap came from disapproving family and friends if you dared to admit unhappiness. Certainly, drugs like Valium came into being as “Mother’s little helper”. Anything to shut Mother up and keep her quiet and these tablets were willingly dished out by male doctors in all probability.

Although a woman has the gift of being able to grow a life inside her it is also a curse. For those that don’t want to procreate, it is an expectation that at some point in their lives of course they will change their minds. “Don’t be silly darling you are still only young, you’ll change your mind”. For women trapped in marriages years ago, baby tended to follow baby and then for good measure throw another one in the mix. By the time a lot of women were in their forties they were haggard shadows of their former selves with a flock of children behind them tugging on their skirts.

For these women, although menopause can be a battle, the cessation of menstruation was probably a blessed relief. Gone was the fear of pregnancy and another little person to look after. And if they were really lucky their husbands paid them less sexual attention and demanded little of it. As the children grew Mother knew there would be no more to take her back to the beginning of sleepless nights, nappies, and the like.

At this point probably the most freeing point in a woman’s life came to pass. No longer the Maiden, no longer the Mother, she was now the Crone. An elder member of the family to whom younger women came to for support and advice. The Crone was once those young women, but no more, she’d done her time and was now free to be herself if she was lucky.

Luckily for the most part times have changed. Contraception has resulted in planned pregnancies. God forbid a mistake happens abortion is an option. Women in many parts of the world have more power than they did decades ago. But not all women, in some countries the family dog is higher up the hierarchy than the woman. Even a miscarriage can be seen as a crime in some countries. You expel that growing fetus out of your womb and you can expect a jail sentence. Sometimes for years.

The soul sings when you hear of women making life choices for their very selves. The choice not to have children, to travel, to make a career, to do things with their lives. To not only be defined as a wife or mother but to be defined as someone who matters for themselves and lives life their way.

Yes, I chose to be a Mother. Indeed, I offhandedly suggested to my husband that marriage might be a good idea and so we did taking our neighbors with us as witnesses. But I chose this on my terms and my terms only. There is only one lesson that I wish to teach my feisty daughter and that is to live life on her own terms. Anything else is a lie to herself and will eat away at her soul as it did to those that came before.

She remains the Maiden for now, but I was once where she is, and in time yet to pass she will come to where I am. Forever I will remain her Mother but I am now the Crone and am happy to be so at this point in my life. Free of any demands and free to be me.