Sisters, I missed y’all a couple of weeks ago when I shoulda been writing a newsletter. But I needed to take the last month to get used to being a queen.
You see, many months ago I realized the phrase I heard most from women over 45 — whether whispered or hollered or whined, or making itself heard loud and clear through resentment, exhaustion, or depression — was...drum roll, please...
What about me?
Sound familiar? How many times have you asked that question?
- When everyone else knows what they want to do with their life (or even their free Saturday afternoon), and you don’t have a friggin’ clue
- When you realize you’ve spent the last several decades nurturing everyone else’s dreams, and you wonder where the *&% yours went
- When you see others taking exquisite care of themselves, and you wonder when it’s your turn
- When you look out your window and know that you want more from life than this
When I’d heard this lament for the thousandth time from my clients, I decided I’d had enough. Not enough of hearing this, mind you – it’s actually music to my ears. It can be a huge turning point in a woman’s life just to ask this out loud.
No, I’d had enough of not being able to dream a life-giving image for this time of our lives. That previous stage – caring for others, and caring for others, and caring for others – now has a name, thanks to Dr. Louann Brizendine in The Female Brain (highly recommended!)
Pre-menopause, we had “Mommy Brains,” “programmed by the delicate interplay of hormones and brain circuits to care for, fix, and otherwise help those around her. The urge to connect, the highly tuned desire and ability to read emotions could sometimes compel her to help even in hopeless cases.” I don’t know about y’all, but Mommy Brain called my shots for a loooong time.
And then comes the hormonal earthquake of menopause. Hormones reduce our Mommy Brains to rubble in a biochemical cataclysm. There’s a new reality brewing in our brains, says the good doctor, and “it’s a take-no-prisoners view.” This can be a time of increased freedom, creativity, and control over our lives. But before this, most of us first have to flex our vocal cords and rally forth with the new cry, “What about me?”
After finishing The Female Brain, I asked myself, so what’s this next stage about? If my biochemistry has fired me from my previous 24/7 job of being everyone’s mommy, what’s my next job description?
I considered the traditional words for this stage. Crone? Nope. Not there yet. Elder? Better. Like the wisdom, but it lacks a quiet verve I’m enjoying these days.
So I sat down in my favorite chair, looked out over the garden David and I are creating and re-creating, and vowed to keep sitting, so to speak, until I was given a juicy image of a woman in all her ripe and powerful prime.
And I sat. And I sat. And I sat. Finally last month it came to me:
Queendom.
Listen up, sisters: We’re all queens at this stage.
Queens reside in the center of their queendoms (read: their lives). They don’t tiptoe around the outskirts. They don’t apologize for taking benevolent care of themselves, for they know that the health of their queendom directly depends upon their own health: physical emotional, mental and spiritual.
All the old myths confirm that the vitality of the queendom is the direct result of the vitality of the ruler. If the queen or king is out of whack, the crops don’t grow. The moral is loud and clear: if the country ain’t working, look to the ruler.
All the sages and wizards in the stories know that if the queen’s happy, the crops grow, the rain falls, and babies are made. (Yet another version of “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy.”)
So, sisters, if our queendoms – our lives – are lagging, it’s high time to take our thrones and restore ourselves to the center of our own sweet and sacred lives.
For many of us, taking our thrones means deposing whomever – or whatever – we have allowed to usurp our rightful place. For some of us queen-in-hiding, that’s over-lavish caretaking of others. Others of us have turned our queendoms over to fear, to self-hatred, to our credit cards, to the next diet.
How can we expect our queendoms – our relationships, our creativity, our juiciness, our spiritual lives – to thrive when we’ve unknowingly abdicated our crowns? Listen: your queendom needs YOU. You don’t have to know how to rule wisely and beneficently (though you have that already in you, believe it or not. You were born with it, and you’ll go to your grave with it). All you have to do is be willing to take your throne and learn from there.
So how might it be to take your rightful place on your throne at the center of your queendom, treasure your precious queen-self, and rule your queendom from your juicy and wise heart and soul?
One of my favorite sayings is an old Norwegian one: “In every woman there is a queen. Speak to the queen, and the queen will answer.”
Well, queens, I’m speaking to you. I invite you, from your hearts and souls, to answer.
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