What does 'Renewal' mean to you?
Join us for this free online discussion on Wed 21 December as this crazy beautiful world turns at the winter solstice.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice on/around 21 December is the shortest night of the year and is celebrated as such by our ancestors. They knew it presaged the return of longer days and shorter nights and the return of the 'Sun/Son'. It was a festival of rebirth and renewal to honour the gift of another year of warmth and food to come. The light had won - again.
Join us at 8pm GMT on Wednesday 21 December to sit by the Zoom Fireside with a powerful group of childless elderwoman I am honoured to bring together. Together we will ponder on what arises for us personally at this turn of the year, and how that resonates in collective consciousness too. It won’t be as ponderous as perhaps it sounds because one thing I’ve learned from these women is that irreverence and wisdom definitely go together!
Click here to register to attend live and/or to receive the recording.
But what does Renewal mean to you?When I allow myself to let it in, renewal feels like a warm and heavy blanket placed lovingly over me as I sit in a dim, fire-lit room. My body longs for that soft quiet, to bathe in the comforting smell of woodsmoke, only the cracking of the fire for company, and to let the deep changes of this year settle into their new configurations in my shaken-up consciousness.
I can feel the tears of gratitude welling up in me even at the thought of that spaciousness - life has felt packed, stressed and over-scheduled for so long now; too long… I have ‘achieved’ a lot in the last eleven years by pushing, pushing, pushing - by leading with the ‘unhealthy masculine’ part of my psyche, and although I’m extremely proud of what Gateway Women has become, and my book, and how both have played a powerful part in opening up the conversation around what it means to be a childless woman in our rampantly pronatalist society, it hasn’t been without its cost: physically, relationally, spiritually, creatively.
And so thus, for me, 2022 has been a powerfully transformative time of personal and professional change, one that has involved some really hard decisions, not all of which have been well-received or understood. But as I move closer to the threshold of my sixties, this is something else I am letting go of - putting the need to be liked and understood ahead of trusting my intuition about what is right for me, my life and the time I have left on this earth. There is a whole new body of work and experience that is longing to be revealed through me and it demands space, time and my full attention. Even writing that feels like a kind of renewal because there is so much delicious, excitable energy within what wants to be; I am hungry for it and it is hungry for me.
So right now, for me, renewal is about letting go, and with the letting go always comes more grief. Because that's grief's job, to sweep up the ashes of burnt-out dreams and identities and prepare our soul's threshold for what's next - even when we don't really have a clear idea of what 'next' looks like yet...
Renewal means something both similar and different to some of our #NomoCrone guests. This is the wisdom of our elders that so many come to these Fireside Wisdom Sessions for. Here are just a few of the things they are mulling over in preparation for our coming together at the Solstice...
I think there is a real hunger for renewal because of the exhaustion people feel right now. And you have to shed in order to get to the renewal, which can be hard to do given the demands in our lives. I find myself questioning a lot of those demands and trimming them to free my energy and attention. I find myself less tolerant of so many things that I find wasteful and want to focus on nourishing activities and people.
I’m all for renewal - and for the fire that clears the ground, the quake that shakes the earth, the darkest possible moments that all tend to come before renewal, genuine renewal, is possible... Renewal asks for some giving up first, I think. And I think that’s ok.
I think as non-moms we renew, redesign, respond over and over again in life.
For humans, renewal comes most deeply through relationship with the non-human world. It is in our ancestral and cultural heritage... it is a practice which can open our tired hearts to the support of the Old Beings who are there just waiting for an invitation back into our lives.
Renewal is very current for me, though I might be more likely to call it “newal” as I seem to be in a new place, exploring a new way of being, letting go of what doesn’t seem to serve (well it’s not really letting go, just not interested, which makes it easy to not do), with hands and heart open to what comes next.
Renewal is the eternal process of waking up to more of my truth whatever shape or form it needs to take. I guess I used to associate renewal with stepping through some major threshold or gateway and now I see and feel it almost as a daily practice – the renewal of my day, my breath, my being.
To find out more about the emerging 'Gateway Elderwomen' project, and to watch previous sessions of Fireside Wisdom, click here.