In my recent post about growing older and learning to negotiate the impending change of life (which you can read here), I lamented that I needed a woman two steps ahead of me to help me to understand living out this season with gratitude, grace, and joy. In that post I wrote, “I need someone to brew me an herbal tonic of ashwagandha, lavender, and linden and lovingly hold my hand and tell me it’s not all bad. I need someone to cry with me–not about growing older–but about how grateful we are to be women who were allowed to participate in this beautiful act of bringing life into this world. I need someone to speak of hope. I need someone who knows how to live out Virgin, Bride, and Mother metaphysically and liturgically. I need a woman who loves being a woman…”
I am grateful to report that I have found her. But, she isn’t one, she is many.
I know that when people say, “It takes a village” they are usually referring to raising children. But, I think it takes a village to grow old beautifully, sweetly, lovingly. And I have found such women. Maybe one woman does not embody everything, but in many women there is this light that is guiding me. I’ve been paying close attention these days to the women in my life who are a little older, a little wiser, a little more tender. I want to absorb their intuition.
Joan models forgiveness and resiliency. MaryAnn shows me acceptance and boundaries. Catherine shows me humility and joy. Emily, a tender knowing and intimacy without awkwardness. Kristy imparts strength, harmony, and when to stop giving out fucks. Portia comforts me that menopausal boobs come back better than ever.
One recommends herbs and homeopathics, another exercises, another spiritual reading. All these women are so different and yet their inner light, which is a refraction of the light of the Blessed Mother, shines so purely. They see and they know–because they pray. All the women I admire most seem to live with the Rosary in their hands and litanies on their lips.
None of these women know they are in my little soul village. And there are many more I could name. I just started collecting them, gathering up the pieces of them that they leave for me. From them I learn surrender to the Divine Will, how to laugh at my weaknesses, and how to weave the threads of my older femininity into something more glorious than when it was young and naive.
Icons of Love
Servant of God Catherine Doherty wrote that theologians misunderstand and misrepresent chastity because they insist on cutting her up to see what makes her tick. And I think that is true of femininity too. The world wants to sort it out between which is more feminine the trad wife or the career woman, dresses vs. pants, the mother of many or the mother of a few or the barren. And yet….the beauty of womanhood perhaps shines brightest when we forget ourselves in the love of others. When we are truly living out what is true, good, and beautiful and not just curating content for the internet. We forget that holiness is often mud under our fingernails and sweat on our brows. Sometimes the most sanctifying conversations happen without effort over a late night glass of wine, as hearts pour out to hearts.
One of the most powerful experiences in this season of growing older is that I worry less and sacrifice more.
In this divine forgetting oneself for the love of God and others, a woman truly becomes an icon of things so transcendent we have to use analogies to capture the truth the best we can.
Catherine Doherty writes, “A prostitute was strolling down the street, mascara’d eyes were kind and painted mouth tender, soft–the swaying body, young. A small child came up to her and said, ‘You smell so nice. I like you.’ The girl blushed and bent to kiss the little face, so pure, so innocent. The kiss was chastity itself. It shone like blinding light.
“A happy, singing, pony-tailed woman-child was walking by. She sang a jazzy song. A man stopped, turned and followed her, his heart full of lust. But then she turned. He looked into her eyes and quickly walked on, for chastity had smiled at him in the fullness of its purity.
“A mother of a brood came next, heavy of body and step, burdened with a lot of bags and one infant, chubby, heavy. Men smiled and women too, for chastity was passing by, fruitful and full.”
The Village
The women in my village are the ones who love more deeply than ever. They are the ones who model the Incarnation. They are the ones who are unafraid of hard questions, deep conversations, and forgiveness that goes so deep it etches love into the fibers of the world. They might cry the most, but they also laugh the hardest. They are the women who love being women–who love their bodies and their souls. The women who are true daughters of the Blessed Mother.
I hope I am part of other women’s villages too. The world is so fractured that we don’t get to gather by the river to do our laundry together, but perhaps in some way through words or Marco Polos and Instagram posts, or passing of the peace at Divine Liturgy we can look at one another in the heart and be strength and joy for each other.
reconciling things 