How Ancient Feminine Wisdom Gives Me Strength
I wanted to call my pomegranate story 'A Toast to Your Vagina, and Other Celebrations,' but my editor said no.
And now for something different — my day job. Well, it would be if I were still working full time. Writing journalistic essays on observations in life has always been part of my work, although a side gig. These days my focus in such essays is mostly on getting older. Aging is finally a hot topic. I’m in sync with what’s trending perhaps for the first time!
One of my most recent efforts was published in The Ethel, a slick online publication put out by AARP. It’s named after the organization’s founder, Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, and has hundreds of thousands of readers and a popular Facebook page that attracts older women for its empathy and camaraderie. My editor was the inimitable Iris Krasnow, whom I have worked alongside at UPI and American University but not directly with until this piece. Iris is a powerhouse in journalism and writing about relationships, life transitions and lifestyle. She’s appeared on Oprah, for goodness sakes.
I proposed a piece on a ceremony I made up a few years back to mark my transition from my child-bearing years. I wasn’t thinking about menopause, specifically, but about the stark difference in my thinking and goals in mid-life compared to my life before I had a family.
My argument was that marking birthdays and anniversaries is fine, of course, but aren’t the mental shifts in which we see a new life for ourselves, stoke a passion or pay tribute to a loss from which we have emerged the real cause for celebration?
As I get even older, I realize, the socially approved celebrations I’m used to are naturally dwindling, and I don’t feel like making such a big deal about them anyway. But the internal shifts seem huge. Aren’t those to be toasted as well?
In addition to the Pomegranate Ceremony, which uses the story of Persephone and the history of the crone to mark the end of the traditional reproductive years, other life passages to celebrate could include:
--Telling a truth in a poem or other venue and thereby joining spirits with earlier generations of women, especially poets and writers, who changed the narrative.
--Helping a loved one find a final resting place, even if you have to do it alone.
--Leaving a job with dignity on your own terms rather than compromising your values.
--Realizing you have values and codifying your list.
--Building physical strength as you get older.
--Deciding how you want to be remembered and making changes to enable it to happen.
--Taking up a feminist challenge such as volunteering on behalf of young girls or impoverished women.
--Befriending the young and passing on your wisdom.
--Or anything that sets down a marker for the life you’ve led.
Speaking of toasts, I wanted to call my piece for Iris, “A Toast to Your Vagina, and Other Celebrations of the Feminine,” but she wisely counseled otherwise. Readers of The Ethel don’t fall for clickbait. (See the actual title below.)
Still, such a toast to a currently maligned symbol of womanhood wouldn’t be unwelcome considering our social and political circumstances at the moment.
Name the time and place, and I’ll be happy to raise a glass with you.
For more on the Pomegranate Ceremony, my piece in The Ethel is here: The Unique Way I Celebrate the Changing Seasons of My Life.
(Want the full transcript of the ceremony so you can do your own? Let me know and I’ll send it to you.)
—Danna