Middle Age is Taking up the Baton

IWD Siren Songs

This picture was taken of me about 10 years ago by my friend Camela Langendorf of Varitay Studios

Hello friend! My name is Amy. I am so happy you have stopped by ✨ If you are new here, a warm welcome to you! This space is where I meander through midlife, connecting to my true self through the seasonal shifts and simpler living, and seeking my inner wise woman. If you are also on this path and looking for someone to walk gently beside you, I see you and am here. Let’s color outside of the lines together.

Happy International Women’s Day!

“i stand
on the sacrifices
of a million women before me
thinking
what can i do
to make this mountain taller
so the women after me
can see farther
- legacy”

―Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

When I reached my 50’s, I realized I’d entered a time of introspection, a rebirth into who I was meant to be. Each of our journeys through this time is a riddle. What are we ready for? What are we willing to work at?

Opening yourself, your heart, to the next stage may be frightening for some, intriguing for others, but it is a power that we all must acknowledge and embrace to find our true selves, nourish our souls, and become the teachers we are meant to be.

Why is this time of life so important?

A little Historical context. Women were once revered as clan elders, healers and midwives. When times became hard and a scapegoat was needed, these women were called witches. In Europe, the witch trials were at their peak between the 15th and 17th centuries (where somewhere between 35,000 and 60,000 were killed). Here in the States, it was a time when women were perceived as stepping outside their bounds by having opinions. An example of this is the Salem Witch Trials, in addition to the 14 women executed, there were 5 men killed, all of whom were defending their wives and thereby determined to be influenced/corrupted by the devil.

Women represented three quarters of those prosecuted of witchcraft in New England, with accusers most often pointing the finger at middle-aged and older women. ¹

The stigma of the Witch trials followed women throughout history, another example of this was the broad use of the diagnosis of Hysteria.

“For centuries, hysteria has served as a dramatic medical metaphor for everything that men found mysterious or unmanageable in the opposite sex,” wrote Mark Micale, PhD, a former assistant professor of history at Yale and professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in a 1989 article published in History of Science.

Some may think that I am burying my head in the past, but…

The plight of women in finding their space in society has been ongoing through modern times. For example, the diagnosis of hysteria (above) was not removed by the American Psychological Association’s DSM-III until 1980. Conveture², where once a woman was married she was seen as an extension of her husband by the law, saw changes in the 60’s, 70’s & 80’s but still has implications today.

So what can we do? How can we look to, nurture ourselves, and be examples to those behind us?

I have always navigated toward the natural ways. Trying to raise our family with values of sustainability, free play outdoors, and living by the seasons. As I get older and gain the wisdom of life experience, I see this as a core value of my life. The triple goddess, the maiden, mother, and crone is an influential archetype, the divine feminine. Though I am still and always will be a mother, I am embracing the stage of the crone, the wise woman.

We are lost as women aging in this time. We only have a shallow glimpse of the stories, the lore that has been passed down from generation to generation; thinned through time; diluted to where we no longer remember. We lack the historical memory of the connected ways. To strive to regain a semblance of that as we reach middle age. We have gained confidence in lessons learned, and are wondering what we may have missed. We give fewer f*cks to the noise around us as other pieces of ourselves slide into place.

“Our creativity as elder women isn’t about birthing others anymore — it’s about birthing our own unique wisdom, our own unique gift to the world. At the beginning of menopause, then, we are the substance on which its rough alchemy is performed. But as we pass through it and out of it, we become the Alchemist. The archetypal qualities of the Alchemist reveal her to be a mistress of transformation: she’s not afraid to burn things back to the bare bones to expose what lies beneath. She’s both a visionary and a catalyst for the irreversible changes she conjures into being; in effect, she re-imagines, and so recreates, the world.” Sharon Blackie ~ Hagitude

So comes our new challenge. Shedding light on this rebirth so that future generations can embrace this time. I want to instill in the next generation of women the importance of living in the present moment with gratitude. Herein lies the key. Grassroots is based on community. We create our communities locally and in places like here on Substack. Living by example and lifting our voices will allow us to tell our stories, relay our knowledge and experiences and build upon them to create and advocate for a better future.

Until next time,

Part of International Women’s Day 2025 along with

Claire Venus ✨

,

Lauren Barber

,

Lyndsay Kaldor

,

Emma Simpson

and many more amazing writers.

For a little more about me….

1. Peabody Essex Museum

2. So what happened to coverture? The short answer is that it has been eroded bit by bit. But it has never been fully abolished. The ghost of coverture has always haunted women’s lives and continues to do so. Coverture is why women weren’t regularly allowed on juries until the 1960s, and marital rape wasn’t a crime until the 1980s. Today’s women encounter coverture during real estate transactions, as I did, in tax matters, and in a myriad of other situations around employment and housing. Encounters with coverture can be serious, but often they are just puzzling annoyances, one more hoop to jump. Still, the remnants of coverture are holding us back in unsuspected ways. womenshistory.org