I Am Taking Crone Back
It’s as though someone tapped me on my shoulder in a dream and handed me back my light.
Eight years before what we astrologers call, my Chiron return, were perhaps the worst of my life. I gained weight — a lot of weight. I went from running 50ks to breathing heavily in the driveway. Every literal and metaphorical hill became steep.
I left my career. I thought I found another one, only to suffer a serious Chironic rejection by that career. (Or so it felt.)
My hair turned orange. What was that about?
In mythology, Chiron was a centaur known as the wounded healer.
He suffered two wounds in his life — the first of rejection, and the second as a bystander.
An arrow shot by Hercules — meant for someone else — struck Chiron. While he was a well-respected teacher and healer, he could not heal this second wound. However, he used the wound to heal someone else.
In astrology, the Chiron return happens around the age of fifty when transiting Chiron aligns with our natal Chiron. It isn’t unusual for buried dissatisfaction to surface with a fierceness at this time in our lives, and for me, this was the case.
Until this point in my life, I did anything to belong far too often. Suddenly, my “no” became deafening.
For women, this is often blamed on perimenopause. But my hormones didn’t shift into perimenopause until I was 50.
So, what were the previous eight years? A midlife crisis? This is a transformative time in a woman’s life, far exceeding natural hormonal shifts. It’s the time of the Chiron return.
For me and many others, the Chiron return feels like a light switch flipped.
My wounding, how I’d carried it, even maintained it, and how it wreaked havoc in my life was suddenly clear. My way out felt so obvious that I couldn’t believe I’d stayed in this hurt so long.
This is not to say every day is epic from here on out. There are new wounds. New hurts. I approach them differently — with more resilience and wisdom — but they still hurt.
Up until this point, I felt confident that I was sexy.
I walked into a room with fervor. Loved to stroll across a full restaurant to a table way in the back. But between 42 and 50, if I had to go out and be seen. I sobbed, bawled, and crawled to the first table at the door.
This started before I gained weight. My core identity shifted during this time.
As I climbed higher into my 40s, it became painfully obvious that no pregnancy was going to make it past 6 weeks in my womb. I’d waited too long to find my right partner. I’d taken too much time to feel ready for a child. Now, no fertility doctor would even make an appointment with me.
After 24 years, I left massage therapy because my back went out whenever I leaned over the table. Even though I used proper body mechanics, was a sports performance trainer, and knew all the ins and outs of how to move properly.
The universe was trying to move me on.
I no longer led a career where people came to me for healing. I wasn’t an athlete anymore. How was I supposed to feel sexy? I thought — well, it’s true — all the awful aging stories I’d been handed down.
I just could not get my footing anywhere. As each attempt to create meaning in my life deteriorated more violently than the last, I began to hear the voices a lot louder — I’m an invisible, irrelevant old crone.
Then, I remembered — I am a Leo rising — unruly and wild!
I did not succumb to the aging story I’d been offered. My Chiron is in my 9th house, conjunct with my sun and moon. I am a philosopher. I shine in the realm of higher thought.
Chiron shows us where we are injured and what gifts will come from the wounding. These are not gifts to use for ourselves, they are ways that we are meant to help others. My wounds and my gifts were always going to involve my thoughts —my higher consciousness.
My Chiron finally returned.
My wounded instinct, confidence, and connection to higher consciousness were restored. It’s as though someone tapped me on the shoulder in a dream and handed me back my light.
I pulled my weights, plyo boxes, and yoga mat back out. My kitchen scale reappeared on the counter. Turns out I was feeding my unhappiness about 3000 calories a day.
Running shoes showed up in the mailbox. I accepted the fact that I had to start somewhere —for 20 minutes, I ran for one minute and walked for one. Just start.
I started writing out my workouts again. I loved being a sports performance trainer — to see the look in a person’s eyes when they crossed finish lines, won matches, and threw their arms up in the realization that they’d become their dreams.
I gave that to myself. I gave myself everything I’d given others.
I gave myself time to step into the shadows so that I could step back out into the light. I quit every group I was in. The only voice I wanted to hear was my own. I had to get real quiet.
Ironically, I’d moved back across the country during this time, literally returning home. This often felt like the worst thing that I could’ve done to myself.
Chiron is about early woundings, and here I was right at the roots of my deepest betrayals.
I moved myself back into the thick of everything I wasn’t. I faced a lifetime of traumas — in person — by choice. It was perfect timing. I was ready — my Chiron had returned.
I recognized how to care for myself. I wasn’t reckless with my “no.” I responded instead of reacting. I was still empathetic and generous to everyone — I just started including myself.
All this evolution and boundary-setting causes people who don’t like the healing version of us to cast labels like “grumpy,” “emotional,” and “hormonal.” That’s manipulation.
It’s a weapon yielded especially often against women. And it’s unkind. This time in our lives is miraculous magic, but that wonderment often arrives on the heels of being beaten down.
I harnessed the energies of Chiron in my astrological natal chart, and took the epithet Crone back.
My skin is a bit more crepey than it was. I do a daily facial massage practice called Gua Sha. It’s a traditional Chinese medicine technique that improves circulation and lymphatic flow. Essentially, it lifts my cheeks back up where they are supposed to be, smooths the skin around my eyes, and makes me glow.
There are these soft silver curls coming through more and more rapidly like an army that will not be held back.
But now, I don’t crumble on the floor at the feet of the mirror when it is time to go out. I sashay past my beloved, turn, and sashay back. Bask in my glory. I am half beast, half woman. I am the Star of the Tarot — the northern light guiding this healing journey.
My heart is thrown open. I know my purpose. I know that I can speak to the other side. I know that I understand the planets, constellations, centaurs, and asteroids. I know that the more I admit I know, the more that’s revealed to me.
I am not to be silenced. Dismissed. Avoided. Unseen. I’m a maverick Chiron healed, a Crone restored.
I could never have been this sexy at 22 or 34. I knew no boundaries and misunderstood beauty. I gave so much away and wasn’t looking when my treasures were stolen. Left my valuables at the bottom of a good time or exchanged them for broken promises.
When our wounds are healing is often when women become ‘intimidating.’
We are no longer satisfied in relationships or jobs or organizations where we aren’t taken seriously or seen as equals. Nothing changes at this point except our treatment of ourselves.
Rather than take it seriously or consider the possibility of astrological alignment, it’s referred to as ‘mood swings’ from perimenopause or menopause. Our self-love is belittled by labeling us ‘undesirable’ so that we will crawl back into the trunk of the tree we pulled our old magical butts out of.
If all else fails to control us, they pull the shame card. How many times have you overheard someone say — she shouldn’t be wearing that, doing that, thinking that, saying that — she’s too old?
She deserves her bad b*tch crone parade. Lift her up. She has earned it.
Have you ever seen a gorgeous, strong woman over 50 in full possession of her worth? I have. I am one.
This is the beginning of becoming our strongest, our most striking. Our Chiron has returned, and we can no longer be contained.
I’m taking Crone back.
Angela Dribben is an astrologer and writer hiding out in the Appalachian mountains with her hogs, dogs, and beloved. To find out more about your own Chiron reach out to her at Two Dog Tarot.
