Everyone wants long term success. But it is elusive for most.

Long term success is dependent on knowing where you are now and where you are headed. Then closing the gap. Frequently. Continuously.  Whether it’s your business, your career or your life at home., it’s easy to get off track, lose touch or get buried under. Without a true sense of where you are in the moment, it is impossible to realize your dreams or be a leader in your field.

Re-calibrate your profound knowledge

The only way we can take 100% responsibility for sustaining our success is to keep re-calibrating-in every aspect of our lives and organizations.

Key to successful recalibration is to acquire what my dear departed mentor, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, coined as Profound Knowledge. This umbrella phrase emphasizes understanding change and how to measure it, being aware of emerging trends and shifts, and learning how to apply this knowledge to leading and sustaining long term success.

Bottom line: If we don’t acquire Profound Knowledge we cannot know how to prepare for and leverage coming change, thus how to sustain our success long term.

Understanding change means understanding shifts in our personal world as well as tracking trends that capsize us, overtake us, or cause us to flounder.

Learning the Hard Way

Unfortunately one of my Gen X male clients learned this the hard way. A rising star in his field and recently married, he was planning far a great future for his kids, tons of time for fun and all the trappings of success. As if out of the blue, the rug got pulled out from under him. His “Happy Homemaker” wife fled, saying I’m out of here!

Somewhere along the way there was a breakdown or perhaps many small fissures below the surface. Had they been recalibrating an checking in with each other, communicating the truth of what was so for each of them…perhaps they could have saved their marriage…or at least ended it with love, grace, and forgiveness.

Even in the most secure relationships, unexpected change happens to ruffle our plans. A recently returned to work mother of teenage kids reported that her new career is now going gangbusters and she no longer worries about the empty-nest . But, the new ripple in her life is that her once very successful husband, in his late 40’s, now faces an unknown future. Surprised by the shifts in his industry, “suddenly” he and his business partner are facing the probability of closing their doors. What once appeared to be the sure path to their dreams, is no crumbling beneath them.

Change is inevitable. If you can learn what Profound Knowledge is and apply it you can avoid these same pitfalls and NOT LEARN THE HARD WAY!

What steps are you going to take to future cast your long term success?

Perhaps we should drop the label “senior” or redefine it. Clearly this term has helped to embed ageist stereotypes into our societal psyche. It used to be, as David Wolfe, author of the pioneering books Serving the Ageless Market (1990) and Ageless Marketing (2003), wrote,

“Senior is not an inherently negative term…Being a senior used to connote a superior standing in every context but aging.”

Sure, many don’t mind enjoying the “senior” discounts. And for those who do retire—fully or partially—the advantages of having more free time, fewer demands, and less stress overall are additional perks.

But of course we don’t have to wait until we retire to create this kind of lifestyle. We don’t have to retire at all.

In fact, many characteristics of the stereotypical senior citizen don’t really have much to do with age at all. Or at least they don’t have to be related to age, even if we as a society have somewhat arbitrarily decided they

One of the most important tasks we have together, all generations, is to change the story we tell one another and ourselves about aging.

These characteristics can include retirement, volunteer work, adapting our lifestyle to physical changes, having more control over our time and environment. All of these are choices we might make at any age.

So if we strip away other people’s definitions of what it means to age, what it means to be over 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100…where does that leave us? How do we define ourselves as protagonists in our own aging story?

We all have different comfort levels with various terms. Some shy away from “elderly” but don’t mind being seen as an “Elder.” Some don’t mind being called “older” but feel uncomfortable being called simply “old.” Yet another person might get fed up with euphemisms and actually demand to be called “old,” dammit!

I’ve always relished the term “Crone,” the idea of taking back its original meaning of wise old woman. Some, including those who have chosen not to have children, prefer to be seen as grandmother. In ancient times, the Crone was valued and revered as a wise and prophetic goddess in her own right. Traced back to pre-history, societies that are thought to have been the first “partnerships” between women and men lasted for about 20,000 years. Then as Riane Eisler describes in her underground classic, The Chalice and the Blade (1988), these early societies “veered off on ‘a bloody 5,000-year detour’ of male domination.” Along with these partnership societies, the Crone and all images of the positive feminine were devalued, leaving only the Divine Feminine (e.g., Mother Mary) as the preferred universal Mother image to survive intact into our modern day.

Fortunately, today’s twenty-first century women are resuscitating the whole panoply of feminine archetypal goddesses, like those we have buried way below our consciousness carrying the powerful energy of the Black Madonna, the flip side of Mother Mary (e.g., Mary Magdalene, Sophia, Kali Ma, Kuan Yin, and more), so that we can reclaim our fullness by embodying the whole range of our womanhood.

I’ll tell you a secret. Every time I write—for my blog, for a workshop or keynote, for a book or article—I have to stop yet again and consider this issue: What do we call ourselves? Elders? Do I avoid the word “old” or use it unabashedly? Do I refer to us as aging or stick to euphemisms or numbers, like post-50? Maybe the over-sixties? But what about including 40-plus? Boomers…and older? Matures? How do we distinguish between the early and late Boomers, who are as different as the Brat Pack is from the Beatles? At what point do generational labels lose their usefulness?

Amazon #1 Best Seller Author of 11 books including The Ageless Way, Gray is the New Green, Visionaries Have Wrinkles, The Greatness Challenge and more.

A colleague of mine, another coach and consultant, recently talked about why people so often do not take that next step and act on their vision. He said they are fearful, and those fearful thoughts bring them nothing but things to fear. There is some truth to this. Perhaps you’ve heard it phrased another way, made popular recently by The Secret (although the concept has been around for much, much longer): Our thoughts create our reality.

The truth, of course, is much more nuanced than this—and much grander.

For one thing, the universe is a pretty big place. Earth alone, although infinitesimal in the scale of the universe, is itself an elaborate and complex entity. Did my thoughts create the increasing hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes sweeping the globe? That’s a little arrogant, don’t you think? Billions of people on Earth, and my thoughts are producing large-scale weather events?

On the other hand, our collective actions have certainly contributed to the climate changes that have led to these events. Their general occurrence was predictable (and predicted), even if the specific times and places were not. Not to acknowledge this would also be a little arrogant.

Our actions are a direct result of our thoughts, and even small actions can have a large effect. The Butterfly Effect is alive and well—one small action, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings, can cause a chain reaction of other small actions that build up into monumental events. Consider this as well: The absence of those flapping wings also has an effect. That particular chain reaction doesn’t happen, but another one does.

In other words, even our inaction has an effect on our world.

We all have a visionary inside us, but for some, it lies dormant in its chrysalis while their lives go on quietly around it. Imagine what the world would be like if we all completed our personal transformation, broke free from the chrysalis, and allowed ourselves to fly? What kind of chain reaction could we start with thousands, even millions of visionary wings flapping? Even the small steps we take toward reinventing our lives to have more meaning and impact could have a significant effect on our planet.

I think my colleague and The Secret have it half right. Our thoughts do create our reality. But we are complicated beings, with multiple voices giving rise to an elaborate web of thoughts. Before we start thinking our vision into existence, we need to make sure it’s the visionary within us who is dominating the conversation. Even then, all the visionary thoughts in the world do not produce change if we simply sit around thinking and waiting for change to come to us. When you think over all you’ve accomplished in your life, you know this is true. Your attitude and thoughts played a huge role, but you couldn’t have done any of it without one thing—action.

What keeps many of us from awakening that visionary voice and listening to it is that we are unsure of the actions we need to take. We want to make such a monumental impact on our lives and on the world that we can’t help but think every step must also be monumental—and that’s a little overwhelming. But that is where we’re wrong. Those first steps must be meaningful, but they can be as small as the flapping wings of a newly emerged butterfly. The results, if you just keep flying, can be nothing short of world-changing.

You are not alone in wanting to fulfill your purpose on Earth. The more of us who flap our wings, the bigger the effect we can have on our lives, the lives of our families and communities, and ultimately the world.

Amazon #1 Best Seller Author of 11 books including The Ageless Way, Gray is the New Green, Visionaries Have Wrinkles, The Greatness Challenge and more.

Clearly Global Warming is not a hoax. Even current POTUS finally admits, sort of, suggesting on 60 Minutes that we may actually have a BIG problem on our hands all around the globe!

Clearly his is not a dress rehearsal.

A Science (STEM) educator in my youth, I railed about “Greenhouse Gases”.  Now we find ourselves here. We are almost out of time to reverse. 10 yrs is a best case scenario before its catastrophically too late to reverse significantly?

Tell then why all this push to invest in fossil fuels (coal, fracking, drilling in National Lands, etc.) Only answer that makes any sense in light of science and

Human observation, is unadulterated greed and corruption.

It would cost us a lot less to retrain all our fossil fuel related workers to Green Energy related opportunities instead. Clearly a win-win-win for us all…around the world.

How about we plan for everyone’s greater future by investing in retraining our workers in tech and other higher skilled work, as well as repurpose those who

Are needed but need basic retraining from shop floor to a new use of their talents

And the best of the best we can tap and provide leadership development programs, plus ongoing professional development. Doing this will make us great again as a Nation (and the world) even in our tumultuous times.

I’ve always been an optimist. But when it comes to Global Warming, I am an educated pessimist.

A systemic breakdown does not automatically become a breakthrough. Only you and I must choose to ensure that out of these chaotic fast-paced times that we will not dissipate into the ethers. Rather that our whole system will evolve to a higher level of development into in to a coherent whole. What I coned as CoHERency.

Here in America our Mid-term elections have started, which will determine the fate of our democracy for a long time…for generations to come.

The new reports coming out recently and topped by this one today, tell of the drastic current and future impact of Climate Change – reads like straight out of a Cinemax horror documentary.

So for anyone to blow off, try to skirt around and outright cover their prior words about Climate Change being made up is denial and avoidance for green, power or both.  So the totally slim possibility that the severe weather striking worldwide isn’t caused by humans, per Marco Rubio, is absolute insanity mixed in with saying anything to hold onto his seat.

Trusting politicians is deadly. Trusting science in this case is our only real savior!

Whatever party affiliations you have, on this one issue of planetary survival, we must all agree to VOTE to turn out those uneducated Climate Deniers and/or those Deniers who know better.

Our current raft of Carpetbagger deniers in the GOP and with DJL leading the White House, EPA and Dept. of Interior clearly must want to party it out before its their end time. I guess they don’t worry about their legacy to ensure their kids, and grandkids have a planet to call home.  Why else then are they pursuing in earnest to accelerate the destruction of our planet?

VOTE like your life matters, cause it does! Vote like our Mother Earth matters, cause it does!

Our current leadership prefers seeking out other planets or other solar systems and galaxies to live on. All the super powers are now in a race to conquer yet again.  I ask, but for whom? Most of these old white conservative guys are too old to benefit from further space exploration!  Yet off theses carpetbaggers go, like some evil enterprise threatening the StarShip in a Star Wars megawar of the world!

Let’s replace these old white conservative guys who clearly have an axe to grind and are are hell bent on the destruction of what was great about America.  Distrubtion is great for technolocy and innovation, but it appears to suck royally when applied to governance. What we need now is new leaders who know that we are at a planetary turning point on every plane of our very existence.

So let’s put all we’ve got into retrieving our own planet first!

If beer is going to guide you when you VOTE , then so be it! 

Let’s raise our beer bottles to toast on this!

It’s crucial for all industries and fields to reach out to the 50-plus demographic; some of the most savvy are doing so. Higher education is no exception. Both Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter at Harvard and a spanking-new initiative at Stanford University are trawling for a new kind of student seeking to reinvent the next stage after midlife. Stanford openly espouses that it wants to attract proven leaders with twenty to thirty years of work experience on the hunt to reinvent their futures.
University and advanced adult education and professional development programs are the future. No doubt a proliferation of new higher education programs modeled off of the Harvard and Stanford programs will emerge over the next decades.

I’ve been known to get rather passionate when I speak about the paucity of career changers and younger generations enrolled or even interested in the field of aging. Both are leaving money on the table and growing opportunities in the dust.

I want to rant and rave that the aging field is not all about changing bedpans. Don’t get me wrong; personal care for the frail elderly and disabled is a critical task for one of the fastest growing careers today as a health care worker.

Rather, what I’m so excited about are the enormous possibilities for meaningful work in serving the maturing 40-plus market, and those succeeding generations who will soon be 40-plussers themselves. That’s why in this chapter I’m compelled to include the trend information relating to new careers in aging.

Yet we continue to read and hear from the media that Millennials have no opportunities before them, or that Boomers and Millennials will continue to fight for job positions. Give me a break! There are so many untapped career opportunities in the aging field (and it’s tangential fields) that no one needs to be out of work! That is, not if they are trained and skilled, especially those with a long career history.
Just take a look at the numbers: The United States Census Bureau and Civic Ventures project reports that by 2030, Ameri- cans age 55 and older will number 107.6 million, 31 percent of the population. Those over 65 will account for 20 percent of the total population. The Nielsen study reports that by 2017 Baby Boomers will control 70 percent of America’s disposable income. This is a market to be reckoned with, so it’s best to get on the new millennium job growth curve in the field of aging sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you may miss an incredible opportunity of these times for your career, your business, or your organization.

Please be advised that everything in the field of aging is morphing rapidly, creating an exciting plethora of emerging opportunities in a variety of specialty roles and services. Not only because of the swelling ranks of the over-50s, but because the field of aging is evolving at warp speed. It’s not just bedpans anymore.

My goal here is to make sure you stay with me and not get turned off to this meaningful, high-impact field as your possible “what’s next” or as your new marketplace to increase your market share. So I’m going to ask you to stay with me while I share an overview of the aging field’s history right up to today…and tomorrow.

As I write, there is a great deal of healthy Creative Destruction going on in the aging field. The new “older adult” demo- graphic of Leading-Edge Boomers is wreaking havoc on the longtime preferred and universally accepted disease model of aging that has long been the underpinning of the field.
I’m a rabid fan of transforming the language, symbolism, and narrative around aging. Our languaging, especially around hot-button topics, reveals what’s not being said out loud or what is still unconscious and informs how we perceive or imagine things to be. So let’s start off with the languaging, including commonly accepted definitions and how they are integrally entwined with the history of the aging field.

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Stop talking about my age! Your age always has to be mentioned and men don’t really get that for some reason.

It’s not like you see Joe Schmo, 37.

~ Jennifer Aniston

Wherever I show up, especially as a speaker, I’m asked the same questions that catapulted me on my own Ageless Quest in my youth. However it’s phrased, it comes down to the same over arching question for everyone, no matter their generation: “Who am I if I’m no longer young?” This question is most often followed by exasperated pleas: “I still have so much I want to do. I want to make a positive difference while combining doing well with doing good. I want to be relevant and self-sufficient! What’s next for me? And how do I get there?”

To find some new answers to what it means to be a visible older woman and to ascertain our new role in creating a future that works, I spoke with women all over the United States about their views on aging and living a full life. In particular, I interviewed women visionaries over 60 years old—I was seeking answers and guidance that I wanted to share with other women asking the same questions I was asking.

The best of these Ageless conversations with visionary women are collected in my book Visionaries Have Wrinkles: Conversations with Wise Women Who Are Reshaping the Future (2012). The women I interviewed not only tell it like it is, but also show us how it can be. Their voices are those of interesting, everyday women who have lived, and are living, extraordinary lives.

The women whose stories I share in Visionaries Have Wrinkles have been creating their legacy for those of us who follow for a very long time. Several have passed on since I first started my interviews years ago. Some are still spreading the word. These conversations and personal encounters helped me reframe what it means to live passionately, impactfully, and consciously at every age. These women gifted me with knowing the importance of re-storying a triumphant ending to our ending stories. I hope they can do the same for you. Check them out and see for yourself.

Amazon #1 Best Seller Author of 11 books including The Ageless Way, Gray is the New Green, Visionaries Have Wrinkles, The Greatness Challenge and more.

However, from the vibrating heart of our dissipating structures comes the promise of our true greatness: a greatness of awareness and action that will change the world. From the midst of the evolving Great Transition, we leave the Great Recession and the uplifting Obama era behind us as we enter an unknown, unchartered new cycle of populism and extreme radicalism ripping our valued democratic tenets to shreds and putting each of us on the line.  This Great Shift demands that we each unlock our potential for greatness which lives in each of us, and we are being called to make a difference. That is the premise of The Greatness Challenge, in which I offer a template for embracing and embodying our unique Signature Greatness DNA^SM to unleash our personal and collective greatness.

The Greatness Challenge is a manifesto for the growing wave of us who want to add value in all we do and who are being called to personal and collective evolution—from dentists to doctors, executives to engineers, artists to teachers and visionary leaders and futurists who are looking to redesign their lives so that every moment counts . . . for those of you who seek work that not only fills your bank accounts but your “values” bank as you yearn to do well doing good . . . for leaders who seek a pathway to visionary leadership, so the impact you have is of the greatest benefit for all.

To be one of the first to hear about The Greatness Challenge when it releases join us in the Secret Facebook Group here.

If so, you’re a lot like my clients.

One woman client, Ms.Clio, recently did something extraordinary. I know you’ll enjoy reading about what she did to take my breath away.

It’s mid-afternoon on the day of the once in a lifetime (every 99yrs) seen Solar Eclipse over a wide swath of the U.S.A. I was in total awe witnessing this cosmic spectacle unfold.

To maximize my experience and its impact on my psyche, I read both astrological and mythical interpretations of this cosmic event. What I gleaned is that whatever comes up during the darkening phase is to be released as “completed forever more.”  Equally vital to contemplate, is that whatever shows up as the moon’s shadow moves over and away from the sun to reveal its brilliance, a new phase begins, heralding new opportunities for months and months to come.

Long ago I embraced the mysteries and gifts of messengers and auspicious events.

Just as I looked away from the darkening sky, my cell phone pinged. To my total shock an incoming email with the subject line: “57 Greene Street Soho” showed up. I read the “out-of-the-blue” message just as the moon’s shadow moved out of darkness into its last phase of the solar eclipse. It was a message from a female client, Ms. Clio, who I hadn’t seen or heard from in 42 years! As Clio reminded me, she came to work with me when she was desperately in a need of a lifeline. It was the ‘70’s when American women were birthing the 2^nd women’s movement. American Feminism was taking hold. Not all of us were “bra burners”, but all of us were seeking emancipation, our place at the boardroom table, and equal rights and pay.

She wrote:

 It‘s been so many years, but I am sure you will remember me.
I was so frightened of where I was going, and you seemed so sure, I fed on your strength and grew strong. It was a very transformative time in my life, thanks to you, a very positive experience that put me on the right path. Your words still guide me today.

I am so glad that, so many more women, are being given the opportunity to be guided by you, into a more enlightened way of living and being.

With love and appreciation, “Clio”

Reading these unsolicited words moved me deeply…they brought me to tears of release and joy, rooted in times long past. The timing of her outreach is auspicious.  I, like the sun, am moving out of the shadows of my late middle years, now moving further into my last phase of my (working) life.

After being off-road for a couple of years to write The Ageless Way (now a #1 Amazon Best Seller), the timing of the eclipse message of “letting go” and “closure,” better yet, “completion,” could not have come at a better time.

The generosity of my long-ago client and mentee to chose to reach out across the decades to express her thanks was more than enough to keep me keepin’ on.

Just in case I didn’t get the complete message of the solar eclipse, with great grace Clio took me back to a time long ago that had drastically changed my life and my family’s forever more. True to the interpretation of the meaning of the Solar Eclipse is that it’s now time for those heart-wrenching challenging years to be completely released…with gratitude, grace and generosity.  

I’m so grateful that Ms. Clio reached out now, right smack in the middle of the Solar eclipse!

I raise my glass to Ms. Clio! Life well done. She truly embodies generosity, gratefulness and grace to the max, along with the necessary amount of grit essential to making dreams come true. Thank you Clio for allowing me to help you along on your journey, and for mirroring back to me the transformative shifts I have been blessed to catalyze for you…and for so many others since those many years ago. xo

Now as the Solar eclipse recedes from my top of mind, I am filled with continuing awe and immense gratitude for the fulfillment of the “promise” of the Solar eclipse which heralded the many new opportunities emerging from the shadows. Now new and long ago clients are returning to brighten my landscape just as did the sun as it moved from the darkness of totality to re-emerge brightly.

What showed up for you during the Solar eclipse? Did you have the sacred opportunity of releasing or arriving at completion of something from long ago? Post eclipse are you experiencing new opportunities coming your way? What role have messengers played in your life and work? Are you open to their appearance? What’s happened when you have paid attention versus when you have blown them off? Who do you need to reach out to so you shine the light on their gifts to you when you needed a lifeline?

Amazon #1 Best Seller Author of 11 books including The Ageless Way, Gray is the New Green, Visionaries Have Wrinkles, The Greatness Challenge and more.

“I want to make every moment count.”

“Life is short.”

“It’s got to matter or why bother?”

One of my clients exclaimed during one of our recent sessions, “Oh my G-d, I just got it… I have less time before me with my wife than we have behind us. We have got to change how we are doing things!”

By the Year 2025, there will be more than 1 billion people age 60 or older. Three quarters of them will be in developing countries. And many of them right here in the United States. By the year 2020, 76 % of Americans will be 50 years or older.  With age comes many challenges but also a heightened appreciation for life and a greater thirst for meaning in work and relationships.

Psychologists Jung, Erickson and Neugarten left us developmental models to track our growth as we move through our life course. Anyone 38 or older is in what Erikson described as the “last two seasons of life.” Since most of, much of our citizenry in developed countries is over 35, this is important in understanding our times and what moves us to action.

Research confirms that accomplished and affluent Americans and Europeans in the post-9/11 and -3/11 era have become more intent on adding value, seeking meaning and significance in their lives and work. Wisdom comes with greater reflection.

Each of us is age-appropriately seeking “significance.” The highest rung on psychologist’s Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is “Self-Actualization.” With our basic needs met, we yearn to reach for more…for transcendence.

Most of our leaders, at the helm of our most powerful corporations and governments are in midlife, in one of these last two seasons. Here lies a monumentally rich possibility: We in these last two seasons can fuel the movement towards meaning, significance as well as both midlife and later life greatness.

We need a new paradigm as well as tools for midlife course correction. Baby Boomers always drive change. Now they drive a shift to lives filled with significance.

With $10 Trillion in assets being passed down to Boomers and 50- plusers, they will hold financial control of the new paradigm. What a wonderful opportunity for the savvy leader and organization to leverage this knowledge! By championing greatness, Vanguard Leaders will trigger transformation and innovation the likes of which we have never seen… and desperately need.

Fostering greatness in our schools, at home and in the workplace, is what will empower us to stay ahead of the curve, to retain our lead as innovator and model democracy.

Our gray hair could be the start of a whole new revolution. What a fantastic opportunity for those at the helm.

Where will you start?

Amazon #1 Best Seller Author of 11 books including The Ageless Way, Gray is the New Green, Visionaries Have Wrinkles, The Greatness Challenge and more.

She cackles and crows, her sounds call to me. Sounds that vibrate within. I feel a quickening that pierces my soles, moves up from my toes, through my spine into my pelvis. I am a cauldron of fire, the vapors spreading within. I am moved to dance, to swirl. As I turn in a dervish of sacred dance, I look to the mirror. Looking back is the image of an old, old woman. She stares at me, through me and back again. Her dark eyes tell me that my time is coming. “Prepare yourself!” I almost hear her say. I am startled. Then, as quietly and mysteriously as she appeared, she is gone. This old, old one–the Crone– is a harbinger of what is yet to come.

A decade later she comes to me again. This time I invoke her, call her to me on this special occasion. Incense wafting, curling up my nose. I inhale deeply, lifted to another state of being. Candles flicker and the procession moves toward me. It is the celebration of my 50th year and my initiation into the last phase of womanhood.

The women enter the sacred temple, created out of my transformed workspace, each carrying a candle denoting the bearer’s phase of womanhood. White is symbolic of the premenstrual, virgin-maiden; menstrual red the procreative, mother-adult woman, and black for the postmenopausal, crone-elder. The circle forms, revisited over the millennia. Introducing myself as the daughter of Adelaide and the granddaughter of Sara, we each say the names of our maternal Mother and Grandmother, re-connecting to our personal and collective matrilineal ancestry.

This is not an isolated incident. Mass Croneings are taking place from Coast to Coast. Women come forth, in similar circles, proclaiming their Cronehood, one after another. This is no witches’ coven; no black magic is conjured up. It is a time of reverence for a major transition. And this elevated state is no longer limited to women over 70; now “Baby Crones” are being initiated as they turn 50 or so.

As the last wave of female Baby Boomers edges further into midlife, they are at first grasping, then demanding, that patriarchal definitions of an older woman be redefined. They are not satisfied with the traditional dictionary definition of a Crone as withered old woman, a beast-hag creature. This is, indeed, a term of abuse!

Now, many women are reaching back in history to claim a lost female identity that views women in a positive light. Mythological defined, she is the Wise One, the one who knows. Personified in myth by Hecate, Medusa, and Kali Ma she carries the darker mysteries. As La Lobe and Sophia, she represents Mother of all. Whatever persona she embodies, she is our midwife into life, death and rebirth mysteries. She is both the creator and destroyer of life.

In my search for the elusive phantom-like Crone of the mirror, I have come to find that Cronehood is not limited by chronological age, but is rather a summation of feminine life experience. The onset of midlife accelerates the emergence of this aspect of womanhood. Menopause may be the initiatory bridge into Crone time.

In the olden times, the Crone represented the post-menopausal time of a women’s life. It was believed that women became very wise when they no longer shed the lunar wise blood, but kept it within. Perhaps now, as then, it is these women who will serve to midwife us into this last phase of life’s journey. Ultimately, the taking on of the mantle of Crone is a sign of a personal transformation of great magnitude created from each woman’s soul journey.

The symbol of the old woman is the most widespread archetypal personification in the world. In fairytales, she is portrayed as an old hag witch, as in Hansel and Gretel or as the kindly wise archangel, as portrayed by Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. In our culture, the image of the powerful child-eating witch is conjured up when referring to an older woman’s power. The innate fear around this power is residual from the burning times. As Jung pointed out, when the figure of the Virgin Mary became most important, society was cut off from the Great Mother’s shadowy destructive side, and then the witch burnings took place. All that was denied and repressed was projected onto women, especially those older women who lived their womanpower as healers, midwives, teachers and guides.

The kindlier version of the Crone has kept us jailed in the invisible background. Banding together to reclaim both aspects of the Crone, women are beginning to mobilize for change. It is this shadow aspect that Hecate of Greek mythology carries. She is the third aspect of the Triple Goddess and is most well-known as Goddess of the Crossroads. She guides us as we come to choose points on our life journey and she acts as midwife for our life, death and rebirth. In the story of Persephone, the abducted daughter of Demeter, Hecate is the one who accompanies the virgin-maiden when she returns each year from the underworld.

If Cronehood has no proscribed steps and is not suddenly conferred based on age or ritual, then what does it hold for us as maturing women and as a society undergoing great chaos? As a symbolic summation of feminine life experience, the Crone may be more a state of being than a time of life or specific age. True Cronehood may be bestowed on those women who serve as our teachers, healers and guides to our inner spiritual terrain. And, as we move towards our individual and collective crossroads, they are the wise ones who guard the vision for the future of our children and our planet.

The work of the Crone today is not very different than that of our historic mythological role models. Cronework can unfold in many ways. What remains the same over the millennia is that Crones are motivators and activators bringing forth life affirming moral wisdom. Rooted in tradition and values passed on generation to generation, they are the ultimate truth tellers.

As guides bearing the light of truth on our inner dimensions and as midwifes to death’s door, these wise ones have learned to tend the fire in their own bellies. They are moved to their Soulwork in answer to the Old One’s cackle and caw at major crossroads in their own lives.

Amazon #1 Best Seller Author of 11 books including The Ageless Way, Gray is the New Green, Visionaries Have Wrinkles, The Greatness Challenge and more.