“You should have gone into advertising.” Comfortably perched on the living room sofa, my grandmother Peggy strikes with career advice.
I inwardly seethe. Mad Men immediately comes to mind. I’m in college studying human rights, and becoming Don Draper is not on my vision board.
She fiddles with her wedding rings, a habit of hers when she’s musing, and then directs her blue eyes at me. “It’s just that you have this incredible imagination.”
I don’t recall what my quip back would be … this is a familiar conversation I had with my late grandmother Peggy, and while it ruffled my feathers at the time, I now write … that she was right.
I’m now copywriting for a real estate agency in Georgia, and while it’s not technically advertising, it’s a branch of it, and I love it. It’s … dare I say it … easy and fun, and I like the challenge and I like getting to play with words and highlighting their work. My creativity gets to flex, my imagination gets to connect dots and make up witty lines. And while I don’t fancy myself becoming like Don Draper, I will happily manifest some of the incredibly fashionable outfits Betty Draper wore on that show, just minus the misery.
Though my grandmother Peggy didn’t watch Mad Men, she lived through that 1960s era. She was an educated housewife who was deeply frustrated with domestic life. She resonated with Betty Friedman’s The Feminine Mystique and eventually found her outlets in becoming certified and teaching Myers Briggs and the Enneagram, personality typologies.
Through Myers Briggs and the Enneagram, my grandmother helped me understand my introversion (alone time for me is essential, like air and water, for my functioning), how I perceive the world (through intuition, I see what-could-be versus grounded details and exacting reality), and how I make decisions (which as an INFP in Myers Briggs, my values are the golden compass for everything).
Now in my early thirties, perhaps now officially recovered from my try-on-twenties, I have renewed and deeper appreciation for these tools of self-inquiry and self-awareness that my grandmother gifted me.
Already as a little girl I had encountered and absorbed the messaging (from a preschool teacher who missed her calling as a drill sergeant) that my creativity was not of value; but my grandmother persistently held the torch, the unwavering light against the shadows, that my imagination was valuable.
And though she has passed on, I feel the warmth of her spirit, of her passionate belief cheerleading me on to write, to create, to go into advertising, by which she meant not to become like Don Draper, but to honor my active imagination by sharing it with the world through creative expression.
My studies in human rights were really an in-depth dive into human nature, into the dark and into the light, and how as humans, on our evolutionary trajectory, we always (sooner or later) align with freedom, and that bodily sovereignty is one of our most basic rights as human beings.
My background in human rights led me to the creative arts; I personally see the two complementing each other seamlessly, because storytelling, laughter, play and any form of creative expression initiates and inspires individual and collective liberation. To be human is to be creative, and to be creative is to be human. When we nourish our creativity, we come home to our humanness.
And no one was more curious about humans than my grandmother Peggy. And this curiosity dwells within me.
These December days, as the nights grow toward the Winter Solstice, I am curious about the Crone, about our grandmothers, about our relationship to winter.
We are in the season of the Grandmother. Winter is the season of the Crone. This wise woman archetype, like winter, whispers to us … to befriend the dark, to turn inward and brighten the inner gaze, to take comfort in the simple and profound joys that warm the heart. The wise woman understands the way of the heart because she’s traveled the ever-shifting terrain of life experience. She’s alchemized her lessons. She laughs easily and her beauty is the real beauty, of liberated soul shining through the physical vessel of body, like sunlight streaming through stained glass.
Yes, I like the Crone. I am a woman who likes her winters. I seek her out, just like I sought out my grandmother when I was younger — for counsel, for true heart-centered listening, for cinnamon toast and Wordsworth poetry. I relish the peace that winter brings. I reenergize in the quiet. I trust the seeds being tended to in the dark fertile earth beneath. The cold invigorates my clarity. The answers I’ve been hustling to find show up rather unexpectedly … always when I’ve retreated from the quest and have channeled my attention back to the art of living.
This winter I welcome gladly. This winter breathes out stagnant stories and stuck fears and leaves me at the bottom … but at the bottom I can rebuild. I know my foundation. The Crone ensures that I am nourished, well-fed, supported. My grandmother Peggy is here. My wise and well ancestor. A letter she wrote me for my 19th birthday is on my bulletin board and throughout the day, I glimpse it. Little glimpses, little reminders, little nudges. Faith that I am where I am supposed to be right here and right now; faith for the journey ahead through softening into the journey, the breathing tapestry of the now.
A few years ago, I went into my own “inner winter.” I heard the Crone’s call during a Texas summer. My burn-out was achingly physical. My passions squeezed dry.
My twenties needed to be put to bed. My time in cities had ended. My experiences needed to digest. My patterns with men needed to be untangled and seen clearly. My friendships needed to become balanced and reciprocal, and that meant a lot of endings. My passions shifted … and how I channeled my passions drastically changed.
Most of all I needed to reassess how I was showing up in my life. My people-pleasing needed to be uprooted, so I could save my own life. Everything changed. And I hurt and confused people with my departure, by my sudden retreat, and the reasons are a bit beyond words, but my time in the cave has helped me unearth my truths, be more assertive in my expressions. It’s a call of the soul, a howl of the wild heart, one that the Crone understands.
I changed, or really, just came home. I’m more like my twelve-year-old self than the woman I was in my twenties.
All those things my grandmother taught me years ago about my personality, my introversion, my values, they all came rearing up. All the things I learned in college, when I was studying human rights instead of advertising, all came rearing up. I’ve been at this crossroads of human rights and holistic health … and struggling with my own self-censorship, my own buried fears around persecution, the danger of thinking differently than the crowd … from this life, from ancestry, from lives lived in different times and in different eras, all this needed to heal. To be self-expressive, to be real, to be honest and transparent and to be all right with being messy. This has been healing. This has been mending. It’s been a dark time, a time of self-imposed seclusion, and it’s been an illuminating time, a time of celebration. It’s been a long winter, but a winter of rest and rejuvenation for the empowering emergence of the soul.
This blog has carried me throughout this time. I’ve written from the inside of the cave, and I am so very thankful for all the readers, for all those who generously share their inbox with me, who create and hold the space for my own unfolding story and musings. We are all walking each other home, as Ram Dass reminds, and so a heartfelt thank you as sparkling and deep as the ocean, for witnessing this particular season of my journey.
And in this journey of the past year, there’s a life-altering moment, one that glimmers in November sun. One that links the past to the present, that speaks of what-is-to-come. I attended a Children’s Health Defense Conference in Savannah, Georgia, this past November, and the impact of my time there has taken awhile to integrate, to implement. I’ve been in the exhalation of the inhalation from that experience. The contraction after the expansion. The natural flow of things.
Here’s the moment – I stand on the bank, in the fresh morning light, awaiting the ferry that will carry participants to and from the hotels to the convention center, where the conference is held. On the boat ride over, I instantly befriend two elderly women. I sit in between them. They were like my grandmother – curious, attentive, lively and open-hearted. As we cross the water, I listen to their stories, and they embrace me in their listening. I didn’t see them again at the conference. There were well over a thousand people in attendance, but I remember them. I remember being sandwiched between them on that ferry ride over, leaving behind who I was and about to step forward to new iteration. And how they were there with me.
This is the power of women. This is the power of the grandmother.
We need our grandmothers, the wise women, to carry us over from one chapter to the next, to listen to our stories, and the remedy so often is in simply being heard. I will think of them. How they made sure of my passage, ensured that I got to where I needed to go.
This is the Crone. This is winter —adding another log to the burning fire, wordlessly handing us a cup of broth or cocoa and with a knowing smile. Their presence speaks, and in their peaceful company, we rest in the cradling sanctuary of our precious life.
And as I soften into the lullaby of this moment and drink in the breath, I hear my grandmother, “You should have gone into advertising.” I smile. I get what she means. She was right, as our grandmothers and wise women tend to be.
Here’s to a winter where we can hear their wisdom, and integrate it with breath-giving ease.