God Save the Queen: On The Art of Not Being Disappeared

We need to reinvent the Triple Goddess to reflect the current reality of women in their 50's and 60's – who're running the world (behind the scenes of course). With great thanks to Ursula Le Guin.

It is disorienting being an eldering female in Western society. I have no comparisons of course, because we – older women – are summarily disappeared. I imagine in other places, places where there is a more in-tact human ecology operating somewhere in the soup of the culture, getting older as a female is a thing that is well represented. A thing that has a distinct place on the map of what it means to be human in the grand ecology. But according to Western society, I do not exist. Strange, because I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive.

Yet I can find no vital or true reference for who and what I have become. My Paleolithic foremothers didn’t live long enough to run into this dilemma.

According to current socioeconomic data, women in Western society will earn most of their money and be most productive in this stage of our lives. A stage when we’re wise enough to know what’s important (and equally, what is NOT), vital enough to devote ourselves to it with all our might, and powerful enough to achieve whatever it is we put our minds and hearts to. Thanks to the fact that females are living longer and have become more politically and economically powerful (despite the ever-increasing, stealth and cunning faces of misogyny), it’s no longer true that there are merely three stages of a woman’s life. No longer is the Maiden/Mother/Crone Triple Goddess sufficient to describe the modern woman’s experience of maturation. We need a Quadruple Goddess: Maiden/Mother/*Queen*/Crone. This may sound like some spiritual bologna only relevant to those who believe in the tarot and that sort of thing. But actually, what I’m describing is a socio-cultural phenomenon, the miracle of which is likely the only reason humans still exist on the planet. The stages of life I’m referring to (Maiden, Mother, Queen, Crone) are actual ecologically necessary roles, without which the world as we know it would completely fall apart. More specifically, because of the unique set of attributes true about the Queen, she is likely largely responsible for most of the hard work.

What’s the difference between the Queen and the Crone, you ask? Why not simply embrace the title of Crone and be done with it? Not on your life! I say ‘not on your life’ not because I’m scared of becoming a Crone. I delight in the eventuality of my Cronehood. Rather, I cannot claim it because I haven’t earned it yet. To me, Cronehood is the last frontier of my female embodiment in which, rather than being focused almost exclusively on my offerings and productivity here in this world, I’ve turned my attention toward being a bridge between this world and the other worlds. A life stage that has me in a devoted, fertile conversation with and actively feeding the other world – the one I’m about to join – even as I’m still here.

No, I’m no Crone, yet. This stage of my life is a highly productive one. In fact, I am even more productive than I was in my twenties, thirties and forties. This is true, no doubt, because I am not bleeding every twenty-eight days, nor am I actively mothering any longer. But I’m also more productive because I’m spending less (and less and even less) calories on giving a single fuck what other people think of me. To be fair, this is a thing that has come easily to me for much of my life (not caring what others think). But, it is breathtaking how efficiently untethered I have become from the utterly erroneous endless warnings offered as kind advice especially from other chronological Queens who are frantically trying to get themselves back to their maidenhood. Whatever you do, DON’T make this mistake with your eyeliner!!!!!!! Thank the goddess you told me! I can’t imagine what would have happened if I’d made that mistake with the eyeliner I don’t have!! Either you know what I’m talking about or you’re offended in this moment. If the latter, you’ll especially want to keep reading, even if it’s uncomfortable.

It is no wonder female elderhood has been strategically erased (the way the truth about our US history has been erased and replaced). It turns out we, in the US, are really good at avoiding anything difficult or uncomfortable. The last two stages of a woman’s life – of Queen and Crone – are terrifying to men. Ursula says that while virginity is scary to men, they have invented a cure for it – “fucking”. But they have no cure for the Queen or the Crone. Faced with a fulfilled elder woman, all but the bravest men “wilt and retreat, crestfallen and cockadroop.” Yes, I experience this routinely as I watch men my age date women our children’s age. It makes perfect sense and I’m so grateful there are generous Maidens out there ready and willing to scoop up these cockadrooped men, resuscitating their flat-lined egos and their deflated…well…you know what I’m talking about. Just as Queenhood is no place for sissies, being the partner of a Queen is no small feat either. Western society has been so busy catering to men’s fragility that, sadly, many of them are ill-equipped to meet the challenges or the opportunities for intelligent and robust physical, spiritual and emotional engagement.

“Menopause Manor is not merely a defensive stronghold, however. It is a house or household, fully furnished with the necessities of life. In abandoning it, women have narrowed their domain and impoverished their souls.”

I haven’t bled for more than seven years, but I would say these last two or three years have been the real threshold crossing for me, into life as a very different sort of woman. More bravery, more honesty, more grief - a kind of bottomless grief – all so well balanced with a commensurate amount of delight, joy and a newfound innocence I don’t believe I ever had, even as a child. It is true – there is so much that I know. I am so wise. And somehow, simultaneously, I know so little. The world has become vast and infinite while also breathtakingly, intimately known to me, all at the same time. It is difficult to shock me even as I’m endlessly surprised and awed. So many paradoxes. And that, to me, is what female elderhood is all about. Endless paradoxes in a beautiful, ever-more-silvery, strong and soft package. I could weep just thinking about how beautiful and powerful that package is. Nature is a brilliant vixen.

Somewhere in all of this soup of fertile female elderhood is my sexuality, the stream of my erotic nature and impulse that expresses itself through my genitals (in addition to all the other places), and a desire to conjugate with other genitals, to sweat, roll around, lose our minds, to laugh, to weep, to get feral. I have been a very sexual creature from the moment I incarnated in this lifetime. My sexuality, my sexual pleasure, has been a very important aspect of my life since I can remember remembering. I’m a Scorpio, so perhaps my astrology is somewhat to blame? But really, it’s just plain smarts that has me honoring our human sexuality and the pleasure it offers. To me, our pleasure, and specifically our sexual pleasure, is some of the most irrefutable evidence that we live in a mysteriously benevolent world. Built into our physical structure is the capacity to remember our belonging in a way so profound it’s a true miracle we are such an utterly fucked species. An endogenous pharmacy simply waiting to produce the chemistry of our unassailable belonging, 24/7. Needless to say, I’ve been a devoted self-taught pharmacist almost my entire life, tending to the elixirs and tinctures not merely in my own pharmacy. It’s been one of my missions in this life to help others learn how to tend to theirs, because again, why wouldn’t we avail ourselves of the chemistry of our belonging? Especially when we create it ourselves at the stroke of a…well…whatever tickles your pickle.

As a student and guide of sexuality, of course I know that the differences I’m experiencing as a Queen now in my sexuality are likely due to, at least in part, a significant shift in my pharmacy’s production of hormones, and both the physical and emotional changes this creates in the landscape of my pleasure. Like every other woman I’ve talked with (literally, every other woman) who has ventured across this threshold, both my erotic and arousal maps have shifted. Nearly everything is different and here, I’m required to slow down, to listen, to relearn. It’s likely that most of us are required to learn for the first time because who among us has actually had the opportunity to genuinely learn their erotic and arousal maps? In fact, do you even know what I’m talking about when I say that?

But who tells us this? We’re told to keep comparing ourselves to the experiences we’ve had up until now; the ones driven by an endless supply of chemicals that are produced at the mere thought of an exciting moment in a body whose tissues and glans are ready to respond like Apollo 13 on the launch platform. We are told to see ourselves in comparison to the old (younger) version rather than to approach ourselves as the brand new creatures we’ve become. Instead of the endless invitations to simply work around the things that no longer work the way they used to, I have found it infinitely more generative and pleasurable to take a step back and start from scratch; unlearning everything I just mastered for the last forty-five years of my life as a consciously sexual female. All bets are off. It’s a whole new world – one my own culture can’t afford to acknowledge.

“There are things the Old(er) Woman can do, say, and think that the Woman cannot do, say or think. The Woman has to give up more than her menstrual periods before she can do, say or think them. She has got to change her life.”

Of course, as it turns out, it’s a thoroughly brilliant world. It’s as dark and deep as it is shimmeringly innocent and playful. No one told me it would or could be like this, and I can find not one shred of a reflection of my experience in our pop society’s endless messaging to women about becoming elders.

“The woman who is willing to make this change must become pregnant with herself, at last. She must bear herself, her third self…not many will help her with this birth.”

I am left to explore this newfound erotic being of me largely without human guidance. As I have always done, I’m turning to the wild world for examples of what it looks like to be a wise and wild elder-woman, whose fire is as strong as before, but burns in a very different way, requiring different fuel. There is a cedar tree on a trail run we (my two dogs and I) frequent, in the foothills here in Boulder, Colorado. Like so many of these old beauties, one half of it is dead and the other is very, very much alive. The dead half is terrifying. The alive half is joyful, whimsical and unapologetically asymmetrical, and boisterous. But of course, that alive half is so vulnerable. It is relying on the dead half for its uprightness just as it’s relying on its own vibrant root system. The alive part is feeding on the already-composting dead half, which is slowly returning to the soil to become something new. Someday, eventually, it will all return to its source. To fade, and to fall. I can’t not stop as we round the corner on this beauty. Each time, it takes my breath away. It infuses my eldering Queen’s body and soul with permission and possibility. Don’t leave anything unspent. Give it all away. Go for broke. Don’t worry that many will look at you with horror and even disgust. Others won’t even see you for how you might remind them of their own mortality.

“Anyhow, it seems a pity to have a built-in rite of passage and to dodge and evade it, and pretend nothing has changed. That is to dodge and evade one’s womanhood, to pretend one’s like a man. Men, once initiated, never get the second chance. They never change again. That’s their loss, not ours. Why borrow poverty?”

Why indeed?! An essential part of this going for broke, seizing this second-to-last initiatory opportunity (for death is surely the last one we’re so generously offered), requires that I not treat my sexuality the way my society tells me I should – a kind of take what you can get and be grateful for it message. Contrary to the way I’ve explored my previous new-to-me- landscapes, this exploration is quieter, more thoughtful. There’s no rush or requirement. I am not trying to get anywhere. I’m already there. I feel the slow-burn of responsibility to learn, pay attention; to gently gather the threads of wisdom and weave them together. According to Ursula (and I believe her), this is the opportunity of my lifetime. And I’m not going to pass it by.    

(All quotes come from Ursula k Le Guin’s essay ‘Space Crone’, published in Dancing at the Edge of the World,1989)