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What it Means to Be a Crone

By Mershon Niesner, PCC, CPCC
Professional Certified Coach
Author of Ribbons of Love – Affirmations for Abundant Living
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Many of the ideas for this article came from the book THE WOMEN'S WHEEL OF LIFE - 13 archetypes of woman at her fullest power by Elizabeth Davis and Carol Leonard

I frequently plan and facilitate Croning Ceremonies. Yes, we CELEBRATE a woman aging! Isn't that a fabulous idea? When I turned 50, my mentor, friend and therapist, Barbra McCoy Getz, did a Croning Ceremony for me and it impacted my life forever.

A Croning Ceremony is a ritual of passage into a time of wisdom and freedom. In a society that DIS-honors rather than honors its magnificent aging women, it is terribly important to me to do what I can to turn the tide and empower women as they age and acquaint them with this next wonderful stage of their lives. Women consider themselves crones at different ages, usually at the onset or end of menopause or later - 50, 60, 70. It is a ceremony of inner strength and celebration of the past and what the future holds.

1. Becoming a Crone means doing your inner work - finding your own value system, evaluating your life, and finding you did some really good things, and if you get rid of the garbage you've carried for years, you can do a lot more. It is the onset of coming into your wisdom. It will spur you on to a time of great personal growth and power.

2. It means teaching and healing by way of example, embodying wisdom rather than imparting it. When you speak your truth you instill wisdom in those around you.

3. It means coming to terms with your foibles and those of others because by this time you have learned to let life come and go as you come to recognize the repeating patterns of life.

4. It means becoming an active listener. As you move deeper into your core of being, you're able to truly "know" the people in your life. You learn to trust your intuition to an even greater extent.

5. It means surrendering the non-essential. As physical strength decreases, the simple process of aging causes you to focus on what is truly important in your life.

6. It means reclaiming your voice. As you pare away those things that alienate and confine you, you can undertake the finishing of the tapestry of your life. This will lead to simple truth telling.

7. It means becoming the mother of many. Not in a nurturing sense but by providing a point of reference for life.

8. It means finding a balance of taking in and letting go. For even as you pare down your personal life, you'll be called to open your arms to the world.

9. It means being willing to be alone (literally and alone in the sense of being unattached to the good opinion of others). For being a wise-woman and concentrating on what is truly important for you in your life is risky, it requires courage. Faith is the key.

10. It means as you pare life down to the essentials, and do the dance of yourself that is effortless in the larger scheme of things, as a Crone you will sow the seed of your own rebirth. You'll weaves yourself a cord, rather like the umbilical cord that holds fetus to mother, to carry you through to the great transition of death.