The Chronic Chrone

When the coat of mortality wears a bit thin.

Mar 01, 2026

Embracing the beauty of the world on Thailand’s Andaman Sea coast.

The night before I left for this holiday, I dreamt I was burned at the stake.

No, don’t worry, I’m not going to give you the whole breakdown of the dream—ain’t nobody got the time for that—but I do think it’s what Jung would have called ‘a big dream’—ie: one where archetypal elements are strongly communicative.

There were two of ‘me’ in the dream—a younger version of me walking off into the distance to her pyre, and older me, me now, standing on a bridge watching her go.

I’ve been ill for almost a year now—and for want of any other diagnosis, we’re going with Long Covid—maybe other neurological things too, but even after a stay in hospital, tests remain inconclusive. I’m not a newbie to chronic illness, having lived with pain since a workplace injury in my late twenties, joined by wickedly bad insomnia beginning in my late thirties with a perimenopausal flourish. However, what is different this time, is that on top of the Long Covid fatigue (which has many similarities to M.E.) I have an increasing array of brain-based symptoms, ranging from dysautonomia (sympathetic nervous system not feeling very sympathetic) to cognitive disruptions impacting speech, language and memory.

When my GP rang to give me the news about a worrisome brain scan, what I remember most was how upset she was about it; I could hear she was close to tears. ‘I never expected this!’ she said, and I realised in that moment that my mortality, despite having had a reasonably sanguine relationship with it since a near-death experience as a child, was no longer purely ‘theoretical’ somehow.

In that moment, the sound of my mortality came into focus, like an old grandfather clock that’s been ticking in the hall your whole life, a sound so woven into your reality that you can’t hear it anymore. And then you do.

And I realised I was not afraid. That everything in my life has prepared me to meet this moment. That once again I’m going to have a chance to find out what I’m made of, and how I can use it to be of service to others, because, as Katherine E. Standefer shared with me recently, quite matter-of-factly, during a shamanic consultation session: ‘You’re a death medicine carrier.’

A close relationship with childless grief, and helping many others navigate that, as well as an affinity for working with dying childless clients in my psychotherapy practice, would seem to back that up. But at its core, I think it’s because I’ve long had a felt sense of being both of this body and of this spirit too. I have had some horribly abusive and scary experiences in my life, and in a couple of life-or-death crisis moments, each time it was a connection to that larger, ancient part that saved me; something which stepped forward and, by the look in the eyes of those who would have annihilated my spirit, something pretty formidable.

Communication—whether it’s speaking, writing or therapy—are my core skills, identity markers and coping mechanisms. Words have been both my anchor and my escape hatch since I learnt to read around the age of four, and the experience of losing the capacity to lean on them these last few months, and the possibility that there might be a neurological process going on which could erode them further—that’s the kind of death medicine that chills me to the bone.

Because who would I be without my words? How would I understand myself and the world, without language?

But the wiser woman on the bridge knows more than I do, and she reminds me that the fire burns away flesh, not spirit. As Vanessa Machado de Oliveira said in a recent interview with Kaméa Chayne:

…we don’t then understand language first as something that weaves reality, but doesn’t represent reality, and that has many meanings at the same time. It moves. It’s an entity. And it’s an entity that is not just verbal. It’s an entity that operates through embodiment as well. And it’s an entity that connects.

Should I lose my language (and it’s a fear, not yet a confirmed diagnosis), I will not be annihilated. Instead, I would become a different version of ‘me’, but the core of my spirit will remain. I saw how, when dementia took my mother’s language, it revealed her soul to me in a way that her personality and trauma had concealed. And should something similar happen to me, perhaps the wild child in me who once was one with the natural world will step forward again? Perhaps my heart and soul will be what communicates, and not this mark-making tangle of signifiers?

This cold blast of air whistling through the thinning coat of my mortality is pure Crone energy. I’ll be 62 this year, and she’s been making her presence (and displeasure) known more and more clearly in my life for the past several years. So much has already been swept away by her fierce broom, and it looks like the housecleaning isn’t over yet.

But on this reminder of my mortality, she is calm and clear in her no-bullshit strength: Choose wisely, she says. You may not get another choice point in this life.

Let go of those things that you do to satisfy your ego, or to try to stay relevent or liked in this world. Get over yourself, and get to work. Love those who deserve your love. Finish that novel while you still can. Let the soulful parts of you that live below the words you so prize emerge more fully. Plant seeds and embrace the land, as it prepares to embrace you again. Cherish life and death.

As that woman on the bridge in my dream, I am watching the fire consume whatever vestiges of my midlife persona remained; the one who thought she still had time.

Gateway Elderwomen

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?