“Okay, are you ready?” I asked, turning off the lights for this ceremony with my friend of 40 years. She was visiting from Austin, more than 1,500 miles away. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
I dimmed the lights in favor of candles and poured us each a vintage champagne glass full of dark red pomegranate juice while the two of us stood in my little mountain house retreat in Cumberland, MD, a two-hour drive from my suburban Washington, D.C., home.
There was something momentous on the horizon, I felt – a celebration of our longevity after decades of surviving in a male-dominated world – to acknowledge a new stage of life and all that it took to get there.
Birthdays and anniversaries are fine – 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?
The Pomegranate Ceremony
The Pomegranate Ceremony was the occasion I made up to mark our transition from the physical and emotional demands of our child-bearing years.
“According to Greek mythology, Hades, lord of the dead, kidnapped the young maiden Persephone and took her with him to the Underworld,” I read from notes as the candlelight cast symbolic shadows of light and dark, and my friend’s eyes glistened.
“Persephone’s mother, the Earth goddess Demeter, mourned the loss of her daughter so deeply that she allowed the crops to wither and die, turning the countryside into a wasteland,” I said.
To save the Earth, the story went, Zeus agreed to release Persephone but because she had eaten four pomegranate seeds, she had to return to the underworld four months of the year, resulting in the barrenness of winter.
Acknowledging Our Sacred Femininity
I learned about Persephone as I sought wisdom in understanding the changes I was experiencing physically and emotionally in growing older. I wanted to be realistic, but leaning optimistic. I read Sue Monk Kidd’s Traveling with Pomegranates, co-written with her adult daughter as she approached her 50s and honed her thinking on our sacred feminine nature. That’s the idea that an internal fire of compassion and love can offset the more toxic forces in the world.
Kidd used the pomegranate as a symbol to represent the Virgin Mary and the crone. I saw its deep red color as representative of the blood of womanhood.
“Thus, the pomegranate is a symbol of the push and pull of life,” I said to my friend, “death and renewal, the mourning of the loss of youth, the struggle and loss of fertility, but also the sweetness and strength in a life freed from the relentless cycles of the moon.”
Just about every friend my age had expressed something similar – a cross between mourning in reverence for our past selves and wanting to kick somebody’s ass. I no longer felt compelled to do what society expected of me.
Romancing the Crone
The crone archetype sometimes brings resistance, conjuring images of an old, bent woman with a hooked nose, but please understand, those are hags or witches, and that’s another story. Scholars who study the crone archetype liken it to an invitation for older women to look inward, bring forth creativity and trust in their inner wisdom.
Crones, in fact, are ancient and holy, holding the power of age, time and transformation, according to writer and artist Ellen Lorenzi-Prince and the scholars who cite her.
They may have evolved through literature into something less than desirable, but their origins are related to the word “crown,” according to researcher Barbara G. Walker, and they “represent the power of the ancient tribal matriarch.”
I relate to the primordial nature of the archetype with its allusion to inner knowledge and intuition. I began to think of the crone as my subconscious, the essence of myself that I had carried since childhood – back for a visit and emboldened by what she had learned.
In honor of her, I keep pomegranate juice in my fridge on the regular these days, and I silently toast the crone queen each time I take in its antioxidants and strength-sustaining minerals.
Celebrating Passages
The Pomegranate Ceremony is far from prescriptive. I offer it as a jumping off point for similar life stages or other passages deemed worthy by whomever might want to mark the occasion.
Some additional possibilities for celebration (candles, pomegranate juice and champagne glasses optional):
- 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.
Totems, Trinkets and Other Symbols
For me, celebrations often involve jewelry. As part of the Pomegranate Ceremony, I pulled out two silver chains with two charms hanging from each. One charm was a cluster of tiny dark red beads similar to pomegranate arils and the other a cross section of a small pewter pomegranate, which like the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, reminded me of the vagina to which my friend and I, let’s face it, were paying tribute.
I made a toast as I handed my friend her necklace:
“I give to you, my friend in trust, this symbol of womanhood in winter – a season of joy and ritual but also of struggle and hardship. Wear it to remember your acceptance of yourself as the formerly young woman concerned with pleasing others and now another – a wise crone who understands the earth and herself. She is a woman who sees with truthful eyes, not colored by others’ influence, but one who lives with patience and understanding for those who have not reached this crossroads.”
My Texas friend and I may be past the ceremony honoring Persephone and our sacred femaleness. But the meaning lives on and remembering my words has helped me face other transitions – from work to retirement, from daughter to caregiver, from mother to mother-in-law and from middle-aged warrior to elder.
Fundamental Texts of Feminism
Replaying my own ceremonial words brought me back to some of the fundamental texts of feminism that have inspired me since graduate school, and I unearthed this quote from Audre Lorde: “The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.”
Crone, indeed.
My big, socially approved celebrations are naturally dwindling at this age (and I don’t feel like making such a big deal about them anyway), but for those of you who have not reached this juncture, the internal transitions and shifts – some of them outwardly quiet but still often earth-trembling inside – seem more frequent than before. Aren’t those to be toasted as well?
The tell for identifying one, should you be looking, is that familiar spark that as you forge ahead in life you are answering to yourself alone. It’s the jolt that reminds us periodically that we no longer feel compelled to do what society expects.
That makes me grateful to be a woman of my time, honoring those who did so much before me, working to save our sacred femininity before it becomes too late and celebrating all the parts and milestones of a long service to womanhood.
Also read, Do You Have the Power of the Winter Woman?
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Have you found new, more internal ways of celebrating as you continue on life’s journey? How do you honor your past? Do you acknowledge your hard-earned realizations and growing self-understanding and acceptance? Do you embrace and celebrate the different paths that got you to where you are?