Hello friend,
You probably have a story you don’t think is a story.
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THIS WEEK
For a lot of years, women told me things, sitting across from me in my practice, while I worked on their feet, through businesses I owned, over cups of tea, in those conversations women have when somebody finally feels safe enough to tell the truth.
They told me about marriages and mothers and children.
Bodies that changed.
Things that broke.
Things they survived.
Things they regretted.
Things they were proud of.
And sometimes, things they had done that I thought were incredibly brave, but to them were just… their life.
I have always felt it a blessing to be able to listen to these stories and be trusted by these women.
Somewhere along the way, I think we stopped telling each other the whole story.
We share the birthday dinner.
The vacation picture.
The smiling family.
The new haircut.
The Instagram-worthy pieces.
But not always what happened before the photograph.
Or what it took to get there.
That was one of the reasons I created The Crone Stories.
I wanted somewhere for women’s real lives to live again.
And I’ve realised something else since making this first season.
I don’t want these stories to become a collection of tragedies women overcame.
Some will be. Life hands women extraordinarily hard things. But courage doesn’t always arrive because something terrible happened.
Sometimes courage is buying the plane ticket and travelling alone at 58.
Sometimes it’s starting the business at 62.
Going back to school.
Leaving the job everybody thought you should keep.
Falling in love.
Learning something completely ridiculous simply because it makes you happy.
Sometimes life pushes us forward.
And sometimes we step forward ourselves.
Both are stories of becoming.
And I think that’s the part women often miss. When we’re living our own lives from the inside, we don’t necessarily see what we’ve done.
We say:
Well, I just got through it.
I just did what I had to do.
It wasn’t really that big a deal.
Anybody would have done the same.
It’s not really a story.
And then somebody else hears it and thinks:
Look at you. Look at what you did.
Maybe part of becoming a Crone is finally being able to turn around and see the woman who walked the road behind you, not to judge how she did it, but to notice that she figured things out along the way.
The woman who kept going. The woman who began again. The woman who became.
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A QUESTION TO CARRY
Until then, I want to leave you with a question.
What have you done in your life that you have always dismissed as “no big deal,” but another woman might look at and call brave?
Hit reply and tell me. I’m beginning to think there are a lot more Crone Stories walking around out there than we realise.
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This Friday, I’m bringing you another one of those stories. Her name is Lisa, and there are three words at the centre of her story that sound incredibly simple: I matter too. I’ll tell you her story on Friday.
And if there’s a woman in your life whose story you think deserves to be heard, or a chapter of your own life you’ve begun to see differently, I’m gathering stories for the next season.
In love, light and laughter,
Karen