Crone Chronicles 20-20: Intimately Inspiring Glimpses into the Lives of Wise Women 52+

By Debra L Gish

Crone Chronicles 20-20©: Intimately Inspiring Glimpses into the Lives of Wise Women 52+

Crone Chronicles 20-20© is a priceless collection of short stories, poems and songs, (all single-sitting reads) written by female elders venerated for their experience, judgment, and wisdom.

This book project created an opportunity for both published authors and first-time storytellers to craft stories about their lives that tell the world who they really are. No holds barred! Ms. Gish promotes storytelling to empower and heal; by transforming life-long learning into sage wisdom, we devote our elder years to self-awareness and self-expression for the higher good.

More than just 'coming of age' stories, Crone Chronicle 20-20 writers hold their heads high, laugh, cry, and explore what it means to grow old: unapologetically demystifying and debunking the meaning of CRONE. Societally, crones get a bad rap, labeled as 'ugly old hags' or 'witches' and are not perceived as useful or productive. This disparaging treatment of female elders is a loss for everyone who would benefit from knowing us. From loving us. From holding us. Crones often become abandoned and invisible after raising families, retiring or being alone in the world due to divorce, death, sexual preference, poverty, or illness.

Crone Chronicles 20-20 reshapes negative images of crones by reclaiming the crone archetype 'wise woman.' Writing heals while producing 'generativity' i.e., "what I've gleaned from my experience, I now want to share so future generations will also benefit."

While Crone Chronicles 20-20 cannot resolve all discrimination of female elders, it does provide a platform for individual and collective healing. Crones describe life-defining moments with an eye toward fortifying their conviction and position. These crone writers tap into the hearts and minds of readers, creating compassion for their struggles and conquests to teach us all about life.

Gish created this anthology of women's stories to unveil and identify the magnificent lives of crones: amazing adventures that inspire and empower us to rise, surpassing our own hopes and expectations for what we can accomplish later in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098323417

Book preview

Gish

First Glimpse: Identifying Our Path Early in Life – Finding Ourselves Through Continuous Self-Discovery

"Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it."

- Maya Angelou

Greek Un-Orthodox, by Thomai Hatsios

I left the church when I was twelve. It wasn’t for lack of spiritual interest. It wasn't because of their rituals. In fact, years later, the Greek Orthodox Christian Sunday rituals heavily influenced my installation and performance art. The art I was called to create included scent, sound, visuals, something to touch, something to eat—a part of the art taken into the body.

The day I left the church, it was over a simpler, more personal matter.

After I asked enough questions that they couldn't answer in Sunday School class, the teachers had banished me to the services upstairs with the adults. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I was sitting with my mom, enjoying the service. The warm, glowing, reverent energy of Greek Orthodox services still moves me to tears. For hours, Greeks quietly sit or stand at the appropriate times, affording the scent and the sounds of the priest, choir and cantor the opportunity to realize their full glory. Frankincense and myrrh wave in a censer accented by the sound of tiny bells. The scent of candles burning, men's cologne, women's perfume, the hint of dry-cleaner chemicals from dressy clothes, freshly polished shoes, and masticha (Greek Chiclets) coming from an older aunt’s handbag, which always seems to have that new car smell, combine to create a unique church service aroma.

We sat hearing prayers, holding perfect posture longer than any other time in the week, in dress clothes that were always too warm or too cold, on slippery, cool pews. Prayers were sung in a nasally voice in a language few of us understood (Modern and Ancient Greek and Latin). As children we watched for the elderly women to show us when it was time to do our cross the right way. As if affirming the priest’s song, we placed thumb, pointer and middle finger together, pressed the last two fingers into palm, then made our cross, moving our right hand from third eye to sternum, to right shoulder, to left shoulder, then closed with a serious open hand on our chest. The cantor’s operatic voice enveloped us. With his song, I felt I had been soaked in wine and dipped into a tub of warm mud. The choir voices descended from above and behind us, as if heaven was clearing a path, welcoming our tired souls.

During more than an hour of holy water spraying, incense waving, and choir singing, the father, his altar boys and brothers worked behind the magnificent, ornate altar to prepare the communion. Under the supervision of the Twelve Apostles depicted in the larger than life-size Byzantine icons, our priest presented the climax of the show. At the front of the aisle between the pews, on a step separating audience from performance, he stood holding an ornate, golden chalice filled with holy, blessed wine and bits of bread, a red cloth (for dripping chins) and a tiny silver spoon to serve it with.

I was excited about receiving communion. For me the experience was not so much about it being anyone’s blood and body, but of the energy I felt from the ritual. It was a well-choreographed end to a great show, with audience participation. With good posture, we rose quietly to line up in the aisle. We were met by our gray-haired, delicately old-world and regal priest. The man who dipped our entire infant bodies into the marble baptismal tub, the same man who married my parents, took our chins into the palm of his hand, which was covered in red cloth. He whisper-sang a blessing to us individually, using our Greek baptismal names, "To onoma to patrou, Thomai," performing a mini cross/blessing at our third eye, serving us a taste of the bread and wine with the silver spoon. The Eucharist was like melting wood—a bit of warmth for our fasting bellies. Parishioners proceeded toward the altar boy to accept chunks of holy bread he served from a basket.

With that holy bread barely quieting our fasting bellies, we made a sudden shift and exited stage right. The older kids in the crowd moved from the sanctuary toward the noise approaching from the basement like naked Pagans, streaking. We ran downstairs where donuts, coffee and coliva (a sweet grain dish specifically for memorials) were being served. Greek children who were too young for the services upstairs ran screaming from Sunday School classrooms, their patent leather shoes sounding on the marble floors. They ran wild until a mother or aunt got a grip on their ears or a bit of thigh to pinch, bringing them back to the reality that, yes, you could make some noise, but it had to be within reason. That quieting only lasted until another adult distracted the aunt or mom with talk of fashion or gossip. Children ran wild with powdered sugar on their noses.

The day I left the church, I was just being myself, sitting in the pew next to my charming, beautiful mother as the service was nearing its climax. The church posture the rest of us all had one day per week was mother’s regular, everyday posture. I felt a bit nauseous, having fasted the night before and being on my first menstrual period. I had started on Thanksgiving Day, so my mom could tell all my aunts and girl cousins excitedly that the tomboy was now a woman. That Saturday, when I was getting dressed to go with my dad to work/play at the auto collision shop, I was told our weekend ritual would end. We could still go to Greektown and the pastry shop, but my father couldn’t bring me to the collision shop because now I was a woman. It had been an emotional weekend for me. Somehow, I was to feel differently about who I was because of a natural cycle taking place in my body.

As I rose for communion, my mother tugged my skirt, forcing me to sit down. Stunned, I felt her (Chiclet-melting, not-being-chewed) breath on my neck as she whispered her accented English into my ear, You don’t get communion today, honeymoo. I jumped a little and turned slightly in the slippery pew to look at her from my seat, frowning. Why not? I’m one of the few who actually fasts. I fasted last night, Mom. Her chin pressed into my shoulder and she held my hand tightly, close to her thigh, as if I’d done something wrong. She said through clenched teeth, Lower your voice; you can’t have communion because you are bleeding. I had no idea what in the world she was talking about and responded with a distinctively bratty, twelve-year-old’s Midwestern ssSO??? She leaned back into her perfect posture and let me know in clear terms, The church considers us dirty and unworthy of communion when we are bleeding … the blood is dirty.

Again, in my bratty Midwestern accent, but louder, MY GOD, WHO DO THEY THINK PUT THIS BLOOD HERE? THIS WHOLE THING IS PART OF GOD’S SYSTEM, I DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS!!! IT’S NATURE THAT GOD CREATED! IT’S CLEAN BLOOD! I AM CLEAN AND YOU KNOW IT AND THEY SHOULD TOO! I stood up, cut into the communion line and, with my mother staring me down from her seat in the pew, I took my last-ever communion. As I walked across to the altar boy and his basket of bread, I turned and suddenly realized that except for marriage and baptism, this is the closest women are allowed to the altar in Greek Orthodox Churches. It didn’t matter if you felt called to lead a congregation, they would never allow it. Something anciently wounded rose up in my mouth and I spit as I made my exit.

I didn’t go to the donut party downstairs; I was suddenly too old to be thrilled by a celebration over some sugar. Instead, I walked out through the enormous, wooden double doors that opened to the cool, crisp Michigan autumn air. Like an ousted queen, I stood at the top of the many wide steps, in their windy vortex, contemplating my next move. Detroit is a great place to be when feeling glum; the grey, polluted sky has little sunshine to sway you. I was dizzy from fasting and cold, having left my dress coat inside. Shaking off the cold, I walked with chin held high, down the wide steps, alone, in Detroit. I was in an area where the Greeks no longer lived. They only went to McNichols and Woodward for church or … then I had a flash! My dad’s collision shop! It was within walking distance. It didn’t occur to me that I should be afraid or that my mother would say I was crazy for walking alone in that area. I knew my dad would be at his collision shop; he always worked while we were at church.

I strutted down the road, looking forward to the smell of Bondo dust, paint and the noise of machinery that makes the men have to holler to be heard. My father was shocked and nervous at my sudden presence, as if I was a mistress showing up at a family function. Without yelling, he removed his blue work jacket, placed it around my shoulders, then pushed me into his office. He picked up his black, circa 1958 office phone and dialed our home number, ready to yell at my mom, before realizing she would still be at the church. He slammed the phone down and retrieved the number for the church from the Greek Orthodox holiday calendar that hung on his office wall next to a Hot Babes ‘n’ Hot Rods calendar.

Momentarily adjusting his tone for whoever answered at the church, he waited for the receptionist to get my mom on the phone. Then he yelled that everything I ever did to cause them fear was her fault because I was, in his mind, just like her. She was frantic and scared, and her yelling on the other end outdid his. My mother was convinced I’d been kidnapped and tortured in the twenty minutes I was gone. She blamed my father for sharing the collision shop with me. They blamed each other for my willfulness. He slammed the phone down, and she headed to the shop. I felt my menstrual pad fill as I waited in the disorganized, manly mess of my dad's collision shop office.

The scene I made that day insured I would never be forced to go to church again. I still attended and danced at the Greek dances and festivals. I continued to represent our culture in full folk costume in parades, but that day was my last as a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. My family followed suit, to a degree. I argued against the sexist aspects of the institution, the gossipy, keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ aspect of church culture and the way we were whispered about, post-divorce. My mother began exploring psychic phenomena and spirituality. She went from attending weekly services to attending only Christmas and Easter services.

Though my mother remains a member of the Greek Orthodox church, she is accepting of my connection to and my communication with ancestors and spirit. It’s possible her ability to understand my perspective is because so many relatives on her side of the family felt called to be bishops, priests and nuns. She can relate to the spiritual calling.

As an adult, I came to realize that I had been too spiritual for the trappings of religion. My spiritual practice was informed by a genetically-inherited condition called Samter's Triad asthma. This affects 7% of asthmatics and is deadly. I have been rushed to the ER countless times, unable to breathe; my life was threatened repeatedly. For many hours in the hospital I focused on staying alive by remaining calm. This moved me to focus on the breath in a meditative way. I found myself tuning in to my various organs, calming them and sending love to each one in my body. After decades of managing this illness, I’m now symptom-free thanks to modern medicine. I’m grateful for this experience that taught me the body houses spirit—and spirit is both in and beyond this realm.

Guided by continual exploration, my spiritual practice developed organically and intuitively. I practiced yoga diligently from the time I was seven years old and began teaching at age eighteen. This became a way for me to give back. I taught meditation and included reiki in my energetic practice. As a performance artist, I formed an ensemble and created multi-media public ritual. I studied midwifery, traveled the world immersing myself in various cultures and followed my calling to the film industry in Los Angeles and New Orleans, where I currently direct, write and produce.

The Greek Orthodox church assigns a masculine gender to spirit, The Father, but I know the source of all creation is within and that omnipresence is not gendered. This understanding set me apart from religion and on a course of spiritual exploration. Misogyny can exclude women from religion, but they will never exclude us from spirituality.

Thomai Hatsios is a writer, director and producer. Her directing credits include true-crime series, music videos, comedy sketches and live stream. Her producing credits include feature films, true-crime series, commercials and music videos including Drake’s Tuesday, which has had over 168 million views. Thomai has worked with A-list talent including Hilary Swank, Maya Angelou, James Cromwell and John Lithgow as well as new talent, always with the same level of creative vision, professionalism and calmness under pressure. Through her production company, MetaHara, she mentors and creates opportunities for women and male minorities in the industry.

Thomai and mother, Katina Hatsios, circa 1970s

Fast for the Forest, by A Sekhmet Sister

The Fast for the Forest was part of a political movement to protest the clear-cutting of old-growth Redwood trees at Headwaters Forest in Humbolt County, California, in 1995. It occurred more than two years before Julia Butterfly Hill took up residence in a tree named Luna. People were called to join in solidarity by fasting on behalf of the Redwoods. I initially wrote this account by hand in my Book of Shadows. In looking back twenty-four years later, I realize this was a turning point in my spiritual development. It crystalized in me a conviction to allow myself access to the spiritual realms. Living my life from this place, taking the time to quietly attune to messages from Spirit, makes me the wise crone that I am today.

At age thirty-two, upon hearing about the fast to protest the clear-cutting of our precious old growth Redwood trees, something inside me stirred. I recalled with fond memory an entire day I’d spent inside a regal Redwood tree, singing, drumming and praying with my friend in Santa Cruz in the late ‘80s. This spiritual connection to the Redwoods, coupled with my understanding that the personal is political, touched me deeply. I knew intuitively I must do this vital political action.

Spirit revealed to me that I needed to incorporate a vision quest into my fast. I would’ve loved to have done my fast in a forest of Redwood trees, but this was not logistically pragmatic from Los Angeles, where I lived. Though the desert terrain of Joshua Tree National Forest is stark compared to the lush Redwood forests in Northern California, I arranged to go the next day to the most remote part of Joshua Tree for my vision quest. I decided to do a juice fast to facilitate my psychic and spiritual connection to the forest up North. With each sip, I made prayers that the apples and berries in my juices communicate to those growing in the forest, and that the fruit inform the Redwood trees that someone was praying for their continued survival.

I fasted for four days and was committed to fasting until I found someone to carry the torch. The second person I called accepted and she began her fast as I ended mine. These are the logistics on a physical level, but the most salient aspects of the fast can only be explained on a spiritual level.

For several weeks prior to my fast, the Goddess Sekhmet had been coming to me regularly through dreams and trance states. Sekhmet is an ancient Egyptian Goddess with the body of a woman and the head of a lion. She is the grand protectress of the Earth and all that is sacred to Her. She is fierce and mighty, even violent in the name of protecting and healing the Earth. One of Sekhmet’s many names is Wanderer of the Deserts. Going into this fast in the desert of Joshua Tree, I had a sense that Sekhmet was involved, but I had no idea how intense that connection would be.

My friend Lorin decided to join me to do her own vision quest with less than twelve hours’ notice. In the car driving from L.A. to the desert, my conversation with Lorin revolved around details of the medicine wheel: an overview about how to set up her altar and how to organize her time during her quest.

In the Lakota tradition, which is the training I received from Mary Thunder, a vital aspect of preparation for a vision quest is the making of prayer-ties: small bundles of tobacco wrapped in cotton cloth and tied together successively on a long string. Each prayer-tie is made in solemn prayer and meditation, holding the prayers one is questing about. This string of prayer-ties then forms the circle of protection around one’s blanket directly on the Land. During the vision quest, one does not leave this circle.

So as not to offend my Native American sisters and brothers, hereafter I will refer to my experience as a vision-fast rather than a vision quest.

Given that I had only one day’s prep-time, rather than make prayer-ties, Spirit guided me to bring loose rolling tobacco to sprinkle around my blanket in an unbroken line for my circle of protection. However, once on the Land, something odd occurred. I felt compelled to have as my vision-fast site a grouping of colossal rocks that was rather like a small mountain range. My initial thoughts about this were that it was absurd, grandiose, unconventional, and perhaps even wrong. However, having been fasting a full day already, I was in a shifted state of consciousness, almost trance-like and keenly attuned to the sacred.

Spirit was guiding me to do something that was outside of my training, larger than what my mind could grasp of logic and reason. I hesitated only momentarily, then recognized Spirit’s deep call, and digested this quite naturally. I opened, allowing myself to be led by this firm intuitive knowingness. Rather than let my mundane mind squelch the Divine plan from unfolding, I gleaned my own wise answer and walked assuredly, sprinkling tiny pinches of tobacco all around this vast grouping of rocks that would be my vision-fast site.

Once on my blanket, I began setting up my altar, but I became disturbed. I was conflicted about which altar to set up, that of the Native American medicine wheel or the Wiccan wheel. Though I had initially planned to work with a Native American altar, over the previous year and a half my heart had guided me deeper and deeper into the ways of the Goddess. However, if my vision-fast buddy were to be working in one paradigm and I another, it might be confusing to share about our experiences afterward because there is rich spiritual significance as to what occurs on a vision-fast in each direction. The Native American medicine wheel has Fire in the East, Water in the South, Earth in the West and Air in the North, whereas the Wiccan wheel has Air in the East, Fire in the South, Water in the West and Earth in the North.

Though it had not occurred to me to work with the Wiccan wheel for a vision-fast until I was faced with setting up my altar, I needed to honor the wheel that was calling to be worked at this sacred time. In trying to ascertain which altar to erect, I decided to consult the medicine of Eagle for guidance through singing and drumming. I felt that in consulting Eagle, I would gain clarity about which altar would be the focus of my work.

I slung my drum bag over my shoulder and climbed to the highest point within my now-gigantic circle. Though I was physically weak from fasting, my spirit was strong, sure and full of prowess. My senses were hyper-aware, open, seeing and connected to the Divine.

As I crested the top of the mountain, sweat dripping from my body, I encountered a mountain lion about five feet in front of me. She’d been climbing up one side and I another. We had not seen each other until we mutually reached the top. When she caught sight of me, she stopped dead in her tracks. We were both stunned! She quickly hid behind some Chaparral, then poked her head out, moving it sideways. We locked into direct eye contact for about a minute, one of the most powerful in my life. I was shocked, not knowing what to do. I just stood still, holding my ground. I happened to be standing several feet higher than the lion, my 20-inch drum in a big black leather bag slung on my shoulder.

She darted to the next large bush, which completely covered her. I anxiously watched, glued to the bush for a long time as she hid, hoping I would not lose sight of her. Waiting, my mundane mind thought perhaps this was a vision rather than a lion in the flesh. Just then, like a bolt of lightning she swiftly ran to the next bush. As she ran, her body crouched low to the ground. I was astounded that she could propel herself so quickly while simultaneously being so close to the sand. Her sleek, strong body was stunning. She was amazing to behold. Because of my high vantage point, I could clearly see her path down the mountain. Mesmerized, I watched her for about ten minutes as she darted from bush to bush, across the desert floor, until I could no longer make out her form.

Relieved that she left me unscathed, at this moment it dawned on me: the lion was afraid of me! This realization boggled my mind. Cats pounce on their victims. She could have easily leapt on me and mauled me to death. I was only five feet away from her, but because I was above her and my drum-bag made me appear bigger, her instinct must have told her I was a predator.

As the sun began to set, it was powerfully clear that Sekhmet had sent this lion. I gleaned this as a sign for me to erect a Wiccan altar with Her as the presiding deity. Having concluded this, I did not need to consult Eagle through drumming after all.

Though I was still somewhat in shock, I felt deeply honored and blessed that Sekhmet appeared to me in this concrete womanifestation. I felt love for the lion—love that instantaneously quelled my fear.

I was astounded by her beauty and enchanted by the way she moved. A part of me had wanted to run down and follow her. Of course, I didn’t act on that, but it wasn’t until long after I could no longer see her that fear set in. I was dumfounded, but not afraid—until I began to contemplate the possibility that if there was one lion, there might be more. My friend and I were two womyn, alone, each on her individual blanket, out of sight from each other, in the middle of the desert.

What struck fear in my heart even more was the spiritual ramifications of being seized by a Goddess as awesome and fierce as Sekhmet. I knew immediately that She in fact had seized me. I had been called into Her service. I sat upon the mountain praying to Her as the sky went from dusk to darkness.

When I was down the hill and back on my blanket, Her communication to me came in the form of automatic writing from that trance-like state. I’ve always been able to write as fast as someone talks. It was as if I were taking dictation directly from the Goddess. Writing by lunar light and that of my altar candles, I wrote furiously into the night as a download of guidance and information came from Sekhmet into my Book of Shadows. My shifted consciousness transformed fear into spiritual knowledge and understanding. These were some of the messages that ebbed and flowed through.

The first thing She requested was that I begin to attend births. This was an entirely new concept to me. She told me to bring in and concretize the sacred on behalf of the new souls being born. She instructed me to set up an altar to Her at these births. She revealed to me that lions were present at births in ancient Egypt. They served as protectors and guardians. They protected both the mother and the baby from anything or anyone who might do them harm by interfering with safe labor and delivery. She said they were also present to protect the new baby from entities that might want to snatch the baby up/back into the spiritual dimension.

Sekhmet instructed me that Her presence at contemporary births would empower children to be able to protect themselves and would help them to be empowered in their lives. They will have within them a deep, abiding, albeit perhaps unconscious commitment to protect the Earth. Sekhmet conveyed that She wants Her presence to emerge in people’s psyches. She wants to be known and worshiped again, for She’s been lost to conscious awareness. She wants us to re-claim Her and, as we do, She will work through us to heal the planet.

She told me I need to start leading these vision-fasts for groups of womyn in remote places in nature. She provided specific, detailed instructions for this new path of leadership. Sekhmet initiated me there in the desert while I prayed for the trees in the Redwood forest.

In my initial contemplations on serving Sekhmet, the fear within me swelled again registering how ferocious and violent lions can be. They attack their prey and rip out the throats of their victims. They eat meat. I was appalled at the thought of offering Sekhmet meat. As a vegetarian, I couldn’t stand the thought of being in the presence of meat, let alone incorporating this into my spiritual practice. She told me she didn’t want meat in the literal sense, but she wanted me to offer Her corrupt people who are raping and destroying the Earth, such as Charles Hurwitz, the CEO of Maxxam Pacific Lumber. She said She wants these environmental criminals to be stopped.

Sekhmet helped me see what was calling me from the forest through the desert. She revealed to me that Charles Hurwitz, who ordered the clearcutting of the Redwoods, is dripping with the grotesque mores of the patriarchy. His motivations are misogynous, not only hating and fearing the power of womyn, but at some level, the Goddess and the Earth Herself. He was the primary one responsible for this rape of the Earth Mother in the slaughter of Her Redwood trees.

The personal is political. My vision-fast was part of enacting something that was healing for the planet. This is where Spirit and my Earth-walk came together. My protest of clearcutting the Redwood trees was about protecting the Earth. As part of my political action, I wrote a press release describing some of what is written here to help raise consciousness. While Hurwitz was not criminally indicted nor felled like so many trees, his greedy clearcutting was limited in 1999 when Headwaters Forest was designated as part of a habitat conservation plan under Federal protection for fifty years. Blessed Be!

A Sekhmet Sister: Having been dedicated to her spirituality for four decades, her work is grounded in Native American medicine ways, shamanism, and in visionary inspiration from the Goddess. Through her priestessing, she inspires womyn to tap into and celebrate the sacred within. She feels blessed to have studied with Mary Thunder, a Sundancer and a Peace Elder, who was her first spiritual teacher. Thunder inspired this Sekhmet Sister to be of service to the Earth Mother and all Her people.

Just as she poked her head out, sideways.

Love It or Leave It, by Rosan Larizza

PART I, THE DECISION

I wrote and mailed scores of letters, determined to find a job abroad and leave the USA. Nixon was in the White House, and the Viet Nam war would drag on for another two years. I’d made up my mind to take the advice of those who said, Amerika, love it or leave it, and leave.

My letters were most often ignored, but sometimes a polite answer arrived inviting me to apply again when I had more experience. Once, I had an interview with a man coming through California on his way for a visit home from a foreign school he directed. We