Prune your bush, Crone!

Speaking, and writing, about the obvious

I’m writing a speech. A speech I am delivering on Wednesday, and today is Saturday and I have a full weekend ahead of yoga and travel and granddaughter cuddling… and this speech. I’ve started it, of course, as I do, in a rush and a flurry and chuckle because I’ve titled it “Prune Your Bush, Crone”, which gives me fits, because, bush.

It’s about strawberries. And blood. And the echoing cavernous depths of certain body parts that seem to cause us no end of trouble, and no end of endurance. It’s going to be a fun talk, about midlife women looking for more.

More health, more joy, more freedom from old lives and old stories and old ways of being that are making us feel… old. Being both the garden and the gardener. Prune that bush, Crone!

I love the word Crone. I embrace that particular moniker with relish. I picture myself draped in linen and cotton, vibrant colors, fingers stained with earth and paint, rubber boots on, hair wild, berries and bugs and small creatures nestled in my folds. I have a lot of folds now, for nestling. I used to be all angles and bones and acceleration, but now I am softer. Now I can talk fearlessly about blood, and know what I’m talking about.

But, back to the problem at hand, which is this speech. The rough draft is three pages of ramblings where I say things like “clots the size of grapefruits”… this is not for the weak of heart, friends. This is the stuff of boggy wombs and unmentionable oozings, closely followed by blazing fires burning untended, scorched earth, drought, and madness. Except it isn’t madness, it’s just menopause. And, of course, an acronym.

Pause.

Reframe.

Undead.

New growth.

Ease.

I read an article recently about a plane crash where it was written that several people “became unalive”. I blinked, felt the sadness of that tragedy, but blinked again at the, what? Fear of stating the obvious? The extremity of the euphemism?

Became “unalive”?

And I wondered about the extent of the unaliveness we are already experiencing, in our bodies, in our connections with others, in our fears of stating the obvious when it comes to what we are living through as women of a certain age.

I am writing a speech, for midlife women, because we are hot and bothered, and epic, and poised on the precipice of a bloody majestic transformation… and we are not unalive, not yet.

Stay tuned. I’ll have it nailed by Wednesday.

Click here if you would like to attend, or learn more:

Vibrant Woman Midlife Matters Speaker Series

Here’s a link to my new colouring book! She Contains Multitudes

And here’s a link to a FREE colouring sheet! Crone