Crone questionings

[Jeanne]

How much does the influence of patriarchal oppression still linger over or through us? We hear its echoes in our relationships with our mothers and grandmothers… women who were not as fortunate to live in a time when women were speaking, acting and choosing more freely from a vaster field of options. As the first generation of women to be confronted with bringing balance to a tilted scale, (there were women before, but not an entire generation), who struggled with careers, children and the newly won responsibilities of increasing political power; we boomers set a precedent for our children and children’s children. And still, we continue to see the denial and fear of being a fully actualized crone.

Why was the patriarchy so terrified of powerful women? The mythological crone has been made terrifying in many cultures - death is a big theme, as is sickness, weakness and decay. While probably not all are written from a reactionary perspective to patriarchal influence… much is. The woman no longer constrained by her biological processes, is freer and made more powerful by that liberation from her former responsibilities. The women who survived maiden and motherhood, have ran the gamut of human experience. She is a fearless advocate of truth and justice… she has overcome.

[AkashicWreckage]

Jeanne said: "Why have men been so terrified of powerful women? The mythological crone has been made terrifying in many cultures - death is a big theme, as is sickness, weakness and decay. While probably not all are written from a reactionary perspective to patriarchal influence… much is. The woman no longer constrained by her biological processes, is freer and made more powerful by that liberation from her former responsibilities. The women who survived maiden and motherhood, have ran the gamut of human experience. She has tasted life as no man can. She is a fearless advocate of truth and justice… she has overcome."

Lots of food for thought, Jeanne...In answer to your question: Why have men been so terrified of powerful women? I wonder if somehow women haven't contributed to that? And, at the same time, participated in (even minimally) perpetuating a myth that isn't the real reality? While many of us have perhaps denied the gifts and the power that we have, as women, so too have many men denied the gifts and power that they have...they've helped us do that and we've reciprocated in kind. I know that I am speaking in very broad generalities and do not intend that this be interpreted as a very broad brush stroke.

Women used to be the deciders of whether or not the men would go to war, and the passers on of wisdom, we were the ones there with each other when we gave birth, and we nurtured each other's children, and we were the passers on of medicine---and in today's world, and seen in the video, For the Next 7 Generations, that is the heart of what this is about... imo

Baby Boomers---both men and women, while having so much at our fingertips, many are still fearful of truly being who they wanted to be when they grew up.

Crones that we are, we must show that it is good to be who we are---so that the men that we raise(d) from boys can also step fearlessly into the power that they have...to be who they are...and who they want to be...

[Jeanne]

I realize that I should have phrased the second paragraph differently... because my point was not about men as individuals, but rather about the patriarchal system... a system that held everyone, men and women, hostage to its injustice. The men I referred to were more like figurative authorities... like during the inquisition, or the medical establishment who conducted unanesthetized gynecological experimentation on African American slave and Native American women. Or the police force in the new movie, "The Changeling."

The seven generational influence for us, would go back to the mid-1800's... it is apparent that many are still overcoming the accumulated influences acquired since then. Some of the difficulties experienced with mothers of previous generations reflected that.