THE CRONE STORIES
Today's story is Charley's.
She spent more than thirty years holding on tight. Tight in her body, tight in her heart, certain that her life was something happening to her rather than something she had any say in. She was good at what she did and quietly in a great deal of pain. She was sure she was a victim of her own circumstances.
And then one small act of letting go cracked her whole world open.
That is all I am going to tell you. The rest is hers, and she tells part of it in her own voice.
If you have ever felt yourself getting smaller with the years, bracing, wanting less because wanting more has cost you too much, this one is for you. It is about surrender, and how it is not the same as giving up. It is about becoming brave in the second half of your life.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or at karenamy.com.
A gentle note before you go in. This story touches a hard childhood, chronic pain, and a health scare that arrived without warning. Charley moves through all of it toward something lighter. But if any of that sits close to home for you today, listen gently, and in your own time.
And now I want to ask you something.
The Crone Stories only exists because women are willing to sit down with me and tell me the truth about their lives.
If you have been listening and feeling something stir, a sense that you have a story too, I want you to know that I would love to hear it.
Here is what sharing your story is actually like.
You do not have to be a writer. You do not have to be polished or media ready. You sit with me privately for about an hour and you simply talk. I take what you give me and I shape it into a story, and I read it back to you before anyone else ever hears it. You get to hear your own life told in a way you may never have heard it before. Nothing goes out without your blessing.
Many women tell me that the reading back is the part that stays with them. To hear your own becoming, told with care, by someone who was truly listening, does something that is hard to describe until it happens to you.
And here is the part I most want you to hear. You can be completely anonymous.
Your name never has to appear. Not in the episode, not in the show notes, not anywhere. Some of the women in this season are named and some are not, entirely by their own choosing. In fact the very next story, the one after Charley, is anonymous. Her story is every bit as powerful, and no one will ever know it is hers unless she tells them.
So if something in you has been quietly saying maybe me, this is your invitation.
It would be an honour to hold it.
ONE SMALL THING
If the show has meant something to you, a review on Apple Podcasts takes a minute and it is the single thing that puts this in front of women who have not found it yet. Stars are enough. Words are a gift.
Next time, a new story arrives Friday, August 14.
In love, light and laughter — Karen