The Crowning
Taking mom on a trip to celebrate Elderhood
After the deep, full stages of soul-filled life, ecopsychologist Bill Plotkin asserts, the person who has discovered the call of soul as a Wanderer, who has set out to live in service of soul as an Apprentice and who has offered the best of her talents to the world as a Master of her skill and soulful craft, reaches the point in life where she is drawn towards Elderhood.
At this moment, life becomes less about Doing and producing, and more about Being, sustaining and inspiring.
When the young adult who is called by soul moves into a metaphorical cocoon to die to her old life and crosses into the spiritual half of life, she goes through a process Plotkin calls Soul Initiation. She feels a story, a powerful image, a pull by something stronger and deeper than her mere ego, and she feels compelled to serve it. Soul Initiation is the beginning of the magical part of life.
A similarly major transition occurs when the soulful adult has reached elderhood, and this Plotkin calls the Crowning, a beautiful merger of the words ‘crone’ and ‘crown’, blending both the meaning of old age and nobility of spirit.
My mom turned seventy last December. Both my sister and I wanted to do something special and symbolic with her, so we decided to take her on a trip.
We are going to Sussex, to a place called Chicester. There lies Kingley Vale, a small wood my sister has visited before. It is home to a grove of ancient yew trees, hundreds of years old.
Our mother has struggled with self-esteem issues all her life, and growing older has not made that easier as far as physical fitness and outward appearance is concerned. While all who know and love her consider her to be a beautiful old woman, she has another opinion of herself.
So what other place better to take her than this grove where she can see the beauty of old age in its most pure yet gnarly form, rooted deeply, unelegant perhaps but immensely powerful.
We are beginning our evening together with an all-girls night at my sister’s: just the three of us. It’s New Moon as well, how fitting (this was not a conscious plan, but it turns out to be an incredibly powerful time to have a weekend among women). Tomorrow morning, Friday October 20th, we will leave for the train to take us across the Channel.
I am writing this late-afternoon on Thursday, but I’m not posting it until tomorrow. Mom has no idea where we are going, you see. But she does follow social media, and everything I write… By the time this goes online, we’ll be on our way and out of Wifi reach.
No idea if I’ll be able to write or post anything while we’re there, but I am going to share the beauty of this Crowning trip as soon as I can. For the deeper purpose of Elderhood is to illuminate the world, much like fall does, in a glorious and selfless way. And we can all benefit from its glow.
