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Making and marking progress The Ritual of Golden Toes Discussion of the concept Other personal rituals |
I
have received a communication from Metatarsa (who does not have newsgroup
access) suggesting a fun way to mark one's progress through peri and post
menopause and into true Cronehood
By way of explanation, Metatarsa is a thoroughly post menopausal woman who says she's proud and happy to be deemed a crone which she sees as a "powerful, untrammeled and self-directing" woman elder. She claims that despite their often "ordinary, nay homely" exteriors there usually lurks within not only power but a "twinkling mischief, childlike sense of fun and delight in secrets". She has chosen to make this manifest in her own life by secreting within her "practical though not exactly orthopedic" shoes a set of metallic golden toenails. She says that just as only a crone can truly know the inner rewards and golden joys of being one, only she knows about her secret golden toes. Being proud and protective of her status of Crone, she believes that it is a state not to be lightly claimed, but to be worked for and approached in stages. Accordingly, in the best tradition of the Brownies et al, the following ritual marking of such an approach is proposed for anybody who cares to participate: 1st phase (silver)
NB Gold toes are earned at a specific moment in time when a significant event occurs
(Metatarsa is old enough
to be before the days of HRT so has no suggestions for how to adapt this
to people who never stop having a bleed, or indeed for those with hysterectomies.
She leaves that for others to propose
(click here to send your proposal).
Later clarifications in response to queries:
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I am not expressing this well. But the idea of being able to display with pride (in sandals of course) the various stages that begin to unfold after the last of the children are born and that culminate in crone is a wonderful thing. It replaces a big big void. And if not the toenails, could always do designs on the fingernails. Instead of the cult of youth, "crone cult". Wendy
In some parts of the world, unmarried girls wear flowers on a certain side of their hair, right? It's a signal: they're available for courting. What are some other signals for later? Is that it? Oh-- wedding bands, meaning: I am taken, and I was valuable to my mate. So all the purposeful symbols I can think of for indicating one's position have to do with mating. Actually, that is incorrect--teenagers have friendship bracelets, and apparently they collect these, to indicate popularity... The point of this rambling is that there isn't any symbolism which is respected and valued for older women! (I can think of traditional black dresses--all the colors gone, to indicate the end to frivolity I suppose). In fact, this passage has always been a quiet one, and uncelebrated. I like the idea of having an outward and visible sign of passage! But why a secret one? I think we should have crone bracelets, made of copper, then silver, then gold, then platinum (!), and then, if my wishes were to come true, those bracelets would give us instant status-- There's the rub, isn't it? Merely achieving a moment in time is not worthy of anything. It's the enriching inner life, the sense of arrival into wisdom, that is to be celebrated. In our current society, only the way we look is valued, all too often; we are still stuck at the young girl stage of life. After examining my own inner self, I figure I deserve--hmmm--a silver bracelet, but not gold yet: I still have some growing old to do in there! Today, Pat, I am off on a 4-day holiday. I will spend some time getting my feet looking lovely (!) and then go out and shop for silver toenail polish. JackieJ I am philosophically opposed to any jewelry that confers any sort of status.
How about getting a tampon bronzed to hang from our rear-view mirrors ;) ? Verdant
After
examining my own inner self, I figure I deserve--hmmm--a silver bracelet,
but not gold yet: I still have some growing old to do in there! Today,
Pat, I am off on a 4-day holiday. I will spend some time getting
my feet looking lovely (!) and then go out and shop for silver toenail
polish.
It is time to create outward visible symbols that represent content, substance, value .... not the void of grey, black, empty nothingness. Time to define this as a time of life to be valued. We have redefined many things ... time to redefine and renegotiate the contract of growing older as a woman. What a wonderful project! Something to do in the long wakeful hours when the rest of the world is sleeping. (Wendy )
Every cause under the sun, it seems, gets one of those ribbons -- like the pink one for breast cancer awareness. We could all wear purple ones, in tribute to the poem entitled "Warning!" Or pick a purple flower (violets, perhaps) and get ourselves a piece of jewelry that replicates the violet. Or we could carry fans and use them. ([email protected])
I'm not expressing myself
very well at all here, I'm sure. I've never had children. When I wanted
to have a child, it was clearly a sociocultural or hormonal imperative
rather than something from deep inside of me. My menopause isn't much connected
with the death of my childbearing capacity for me.
How does the 'world' describe the stages of a woman's life?
That is the void. Beginning to identify and recognize what happens between adulthood and cronehood will fill a big, big void.(Wendy)
The issue is, what value is placed on the nonreproductive woman? To me, cronehood (defined simply as being postmenopausal) is a stage of greater development and as such is worthy of celebration. To many others it is a stage of decay and failure. With such a world view it is only to be expected that it would be denied and hidden.
Evidently the idea has caught on with a few people, though it is no doubt despised by an equal number. I have had several emails announcing that the writer has awarded herself another golden toenail for whatever reason, and some asking does such and such qualify? To qualify, the occasion/act/event must be such that the footowner sees it as minor or major triumph, a definite moment in time when it is realised that a shift has taken place. Pure passage of time only merits silver, but it *does* merit because it *is* progress. Believe me, life is good this side of the so-called "divide" - more accurately at this place on the continuum! Pat (Crone)
It needs a little marker now and then to break up the monotony. Wendy My personal continuum is full of markers. If yours isn't, and you feel a need to break up the monotony of your life, that's fine by me. But just because you aren't doing it, don't assume that everyone isn't. anon Hypothesis: If we would be magnificent crones, then we need to get started on this 'early'. Just addressing it when we cease to be reproductive means we have lost many opportunities to prepare and practice, practice, practice. Magnificent crone needs to be an 'objective' so that we are aiming for something. Currently the most that many women aim for is the avoidance of looking old; that is not enough to become magnificent crone. Take Shelly's concepts of being involved, being active, discovering 'new things' and Grey's this is the time to begin to form an independent identity (roughly paraphrased) in a recent post, and you begin to have something that women can aim for. From the time that the decision is made to reproduce *no more* (God's or our personal decision), if we haven't done it sooner, we should begin to regard ourselves as something to be created, formed, refined ... made magnificent .. for content .. for substance. We should begin defining our cronehood. We should be sure that we will be regarded highly in our cronehood, and that we are worthy of being regarded highly. We should be sure that our voices will be heard and that our voices will be respected. We should be sure that we become the wise integration of what we have learned, and that we are able to focus that power and energy for the benefit of ourselves and others. Examine the powerful crones of the past. Isn't that what you see? They did not become that way overnight. Their power in cronehood was the fruit of their 'labors' - their post-productive labors - that probably began when either the last child was born, or when the decision to whelp no more was made. I believe there will be many things that we will want to qualify as making progress toward cronehood ... magnificent cronehood. Some will be overcoming of physical manifestations that occur in peri-menopause and menopause; others will be spiritual in nature; others will be indications of 'growth' of the mind and improvement of the body; whereas still others could be political in nature( eg. participating in the future as a magnificent, powerful crone ... read sitting on the board of a community college here). The void I see - we do not have models, recipes or road maps for becoming Golda Meir's. And I don't think it is rocket science either. I think it is a matter of focus. And that focus should begin around the late 30's, early 40's. These are only my ideas / feelings, and hopefully it conveys why cronehood and the ritual marking of progress struck a cord in me. Wendy
(anon) will of course have her own answer, but I'd let the woman do it, if she wanted to. Each woman. Oh, and (anon), I thought the "big, big void" referred to the complete lack of any formal rite of passage for menopause. I personally dislike large
formal society-wide passages like that, since they are rapidly taken over
by advertising interests and never seem to have anything to do with my
life. Planning a wedding was interesting, in that regard. But
it's true that there is no wedding or even "sweet-sixteen" or coming-of-age
equivalent for menopause, and I thought that was what the gold toenail
stuff was trying to address.
So this is what you want? Purple and gold toe rings, another Sweetest Day?
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Throw in candles, incense, herbs, a little wine, a little food and -- voila! ritual! Sometimes these things are private, and sometimes I share them with a few carefully selected friends. They can be solemn or silly (I remember one ritual I built with another woman to celebrate her divorce -- we almost peed our pants laughing, especially when she produced a pair of her ex's boxer shorts and a butcher knife and proceeded to cut them into ribbons ...). My love of ritual is
probably all mixed in with my love of theater and my Roman Catholic
girlhood -- I adored all that incense and candlelight; it wasn't
long after everything got "secularized" that I left the church.
Re your question about possible elements for a proper menoritual: Hmmm: Jung says bowls are very symbolic of the feminine in dreams. (I remember a dream in my first hot-flash days in which I set a hot bowl out on an icy porch and it shattered). Anyway, if it were my very own ritual, I would want a beautiful bowl--the best bowl would be made by a woman potter, I think, in just the colors I wanted. I would ask my friends to come--just women. We would wear beautiful flowing gowns (it's my party!), and stand in a circle, with flowers and green plants and cold clear water in jars and pots and vases. You are right: some incense (I like patchouli, from my hippie days!), and many candles...for me, music--something transitional. What do you recommend, RuthJ? I tend toward French music--how about the powerful Daphnis and Chloe? (Don't know the plot, just love its fluid intensity). Into this quiet, candlelit milieu I would read some stories from my journal about my past and then one by one put the scraps of paper into the bowl. Then we would all burn them up, because the past is gone. Then I would read journal notes about who I have become out of that past and who I hope and dream to still become. And I would place these into the bowl, and then we would all stand in our circle silently and listen to some hopeful and triumphant music... Then we would hug each other and each of us share our hopes and dreams, and have supper together! And that would be my very own menoritual for myself (oh, and I would have gold toenails...) This is just a thought. But thank you especially for your serene words: "I tend to create my own rituals...." Would that we all did! We would be the better for it. JackieJ |