Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, author and longtime explorer of women’s spirituality, has lately turned her sights on older women.
WN recently took the opportunity to speak with Bolen, 67, when she visited Chicago for a speaking engagement and bookstore appearances upon publication of her latest book “Crones Don’t Whine: Concentrated Wisdom for Juicy Women” (Conari Press, $14.95).
Q. Did your perceptions of age change as you moved into your 60s?
A. Absolutely. I used to think 67 was really old and now … It’s amazing to me that I’m this old. The time went by so fast. I really don’t feel much different from 30 years ago in terms of interest and energy and basic personal qualities. I just have more experience.
Q. Crone generally has been a negative term, a shriveled-up, old hag. Are you trying to redeem it?
A. Absolutely. We need a word for the third phase of our lives. Crone is a word that used to be, and can again be, an honorable word. It has a lot going for it, but I do think it helps to put “juicy” in front of crone, because in anybody’s word association test, the words are not complementary.
Q. Juicy sounds kind of racy. What do you mean?
A. (laughing) Vitality, energy, passion for things. Also because as we get older we actually have more influence, so we’ve got some juice like electricity, to call up on the phone and facilitate getting something done.
Especially since the women’s movement when there are trustworthy women all over … whoever you want to meet if you have something important to do.
Q. Why shouldn’t crones whine?
A. Because they can never grow into having a really juicy, good, authentic third phase of life. They’ll be stuck at that place between mature women and the crone phase. Whining at the gates is what they’re doing. If you think about the three phases of our lives as being transition zones to move through, the woman who sits and whines about what didn’t happen to her, who somehow felt entitled to have a life different from the one she actually had. Here she is 50 or 60; she is still with it in a mental sense. She probably has more than 95 percent of the world’s women. She is still alive. But she is stuck in a should-have-been-could-have-been business. Whining sucks energy from everyone around her and what happens then is people move away. They feel manipulated into being with her.
Q. Don’t you think part of it is that women internalize negative images and opinions of older women?
A. Absolutely. Two things are going on. One is that there are mostly negative images of older women. There are a few glimpses of new role models and this has to do with women [who were in] the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Women who have been able to have relationships and achievements or career … Gloria Steinem, Katharine Hepburn, Susan Sarandon. Lots of women are over 50 or 60 and are looking good and being in the world.
What I’m saying about the third phase is it’s time for women to appreciate qualities in themselves that are not about surface. Surface is a matter of genetics and how much you want to invest in how you look. It’s up to the individual. But qualities that grow over time are the inner ones like compassion, wisdom, perspective and the ability to face what’s true and speak the truth to people with compassion. They’re not necessarily qualities you have when you are younger.
Q. That can be a double-edged sword. A lot of people expect older women to be sweet grandmother types, and maybe in ways they are, but then if you’re older and assertive it’s scary for some people.
A. Good! For a woman of that perspective and age to finally get fierce about things and say, “enough is enough,” whether it’s a personal relationship or how the world is going, is a very good idea.
One of my main hopes for this little book is that it will activate the women’s movement women to come back into changing the world again. We did in the late `60s and `70s.
Q. How do you recommend dealing with infirmities and losses, that stuff that starts in your 50s and 60s?
A. You have a lot of friends who aren’t here anymore, for sure. Mom and dad are gone or going. You become aware that bad things happen to the younger generation, too. So awareness of suffering becomes quite real, which is part of the perspective that you gain as you grow older.
Crone wisdom has to do with the importance of psychological and spiritual elements, and I find it universal that people sense having a soul and a sense that life has a purpose.
We don’t have a choice about most of the bad things that happen to us, but we always have a choice about how we respond to it. Having more gratitude for the good things that happen is part of the wisdom picture.
I love to quote Mary Oliver. At the end of one of her poems, she says, “Doesn’t everything die and too soon? What do you intend to do with your one wild and precious life?” That is applicable at any phase of life, but it is certainly applicable in the last phase.
