I have been reading some of my old journals recently and I realise just how hard I found my life between 14 and 40 years old. Although I came across as confident and happy a lot of the time, underneath the buoyant exterior, I was drowning. I had little or no idea of who I really was underneath that conditioned image which I showed the world.
As I approach my 55th birthday this year, I understand that what I really needed as a younger woman was an “elder” – an older, wise woman who was living a full and meaningful life, who knew herself well, who was in touch with her spirituality, and who could guide me with her wisdom. As Sharon Blackie puts it in her book ‘Hagitude’…
“In our more distant past, as of course in many indigenous cultures today, female elders were respected, and had important and meaningful roles to play…They serves as guides for younger adults; they’re the caregivers and mentors for the community’s children…Their focus is on giving back – on bringing out, for the sake of Earth and community, the hard-earned wisdom which they’ve grown in themselves.”
Wonderful as she was, my mum could not fulfil this role for me, and, given that both my grandmothers died before I knew them and all my aunts lived in overseas, I just bumbled through life without any clear direction or understanding of myself. Until I reached my 35th birthday when, after a nervous breakdown, I hired a life coach and an intuitive healer to help me. Both these older women were the catalysts for the incredible transformation that occurred in the following years and which lay the foundations for who I am now.
Over the last 6 months, I have been receiving strong and clear inner guidance that it is now time for me to step fully into my role as an elder and to offer support to younger women who feel that they could do with some guidance from a solid, compassionate, but lovingly honest woman who has been round the blocks a few times! I already fulfil this role for a few of the younger women in my family but it is now time to shift the emphasis of my coaching work to support more.
So, if you are under 40, identify as female, and these words are resonating with you, please click here for more info and feel free to email me so we can explore how I can support you best.
