GATHER YOURSELF
Decompartmentalize
Have you ever been in a social situation where you find yourself in shared conversation with people who know you from completely distinct parts of your life? Like, a co-worker and someone from your spiritual circle, or a conservative family member and a festival bestie, or the PTA mom who’s always bugging you about coming to meetings and someone from your writing group?
Circles impinge on one another. You’re the center of an unlikely venn-diagram. Worlds collide, star systems implode–all inside the secret confines of your chest. Just reading about it might make your breath go shallow, and your muscles involuntarily tighten. Suddenly, you’re unsure which role to play, or how to explain there are parts of you your friends have never met–or suspected!
If you’re like most women, you play a wide variety of roles that appear to be at odds with one another.
And, maybe you believe, “If I’m this, then I can’t be that.”
The Crone is big enough to contain, sustain, and nourish all her parts.
Join An Invocation of Crones.
Like: If I’m heart-centered and compassionate, I can’t be boundaried and full-throated. If I’m outspoken, I must not be contemplative. I’m quiet, not very sociable. I love trash tv, so I’m probably not that bright. I’m on the PTA, I can’t take burlesque classes. I’m liberal, so I can’t be racist. I work in corporate, so of course I’m not spiritual. I’m Christian. I mustn’t be pro-choice. I like to cook and keep the house, I can’t be a real feminist. I’m a lover, not a warrior. I’m a scientist, not a mystic. I’m a maiden, not a crone.
NONE of it’s true.
We don’t have to choose among our parts. We don’t have to stay stuck inside roles chosen for us, or those we once chose wholeheartedly but that don’t fit us any longer.
If the Crone is anything, she’s big enough to contain, sustain and glory in all of herself. She’s a both/and lady, a yes/and, thinker.
“Either/Or,” bores her.
