I am writing My Personal Journey into Elderhood. I have memories and experiences that I have cataloged and filed away over my lifetime. I will look back to call them up into my own personal myth storyline. There are support strategies I have learned over the decades, and I have added some new devices into my toolbox over the past four years.

To spark my own awareness, I needed to spiral back a few years to reflect on how I got to this point, and document what happened as I pondered the power of archetypes, as characters in my life story, to better share what I observed. I am offering an autoethnographic rear view mirror showing the progress that got me to my current circumstances. Then I will present a forward-looking projection so that I can offer transformational learning experiences for others.

Many narrative structures have been presented to me in my self-exploration of various online writing workshops. For this version of my story, I will loosely use “The Heroine’s Journey” as outlined by Maureen Murdock, in her book The Heroines’ Journey, that I only recently discovered, as opposed to the Blackie models of the Eco-Heroine Journey and the Tarot Major Arcana Fool’s Journey used in the Hagitude program.

Murdock published her work in the late 1980’s and many have expanded upon her assertion that the journey begins with separation from the Feminine and finishes with integration of the Masculine and Feminine. I will use headings to outline her cycle as seen in the figure below which displays a graphic I created adding numbered stages to her illustration. 

SEPARATION FROM THE FEMININE

I was my most authentic, confident, and free self when I was seventeen. The singer, Stevie Nicks had already taught me about “Dreams” and to “Go Your Own Way” when she introduced “Edge of Seventeen ” in 1981. I was, literally, 17 years old and graduating from high school. I felt like the music spoke to me to leap off the ledge into the transitory time between childhood and adulthood. I packed up my belongings for college, including the myths and fairy tales that my worth is wrapped up in being a wife and mother. 

But I would abandon my natural authenticity to put on my mask – my persona – for the world and fit into the myths of society and the demands of what I should do to be successful in a neoliberal society. Wife. Mother. 

I started to lose myself in peer pressure and sexual exploration. My personal feminine flame began to flicker brightly and then dull like a dimmer switch when I became a Neoliberal in training. My indoctrination began at the University of Southern California as Reagan and Thatcher were dismantling social support programs 

The term, MRS Degree, was murmured by males in my classes and by women, about other women, in my sorority. USC, nicknamed at the time, The University of Spoiled Children, is deemed a place to send a daughter to find a suitable and qualified mate to live the American Dream. Was college really just a place to find a man to provide economic security to fulfill the fairy tale of marriage that was still taught to women my age? For many girls I encounter, that goal is apparent, but for me, I’m still confident in my new unnamed feminism. I am discovering my independence and exploring my bold femininity. Or maybe I am too naïve to realize that end game. I am moving in and out of different circles, while making the predictable mistakes of a youth to adulthood. Some experiences build confidence while more tear it down. 

IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MASCULINE AND GATHERING ALLIES

I graduated from college and as I look back, “Society Said”: I was allowed to work until I found my husband and needed to stay home with my children. I got a job at a stock brokerage firm, then truck brokerage, and finally commercial real estate industries. I was playing in a man’s world. 

The dog-eat-dog, independent contractor, commission sales world of business did not fit me. I was not comfortable in my female attire at male business suit and tie meetings. I explored the possibility of an education career. Besides the natural calling to teach, the covertly trained neoliberal feminist found a way to pre plan to have it all. Teachers have the same schedule as their school-aged children. I had efficiently prepared to balance work and career for my future happy household. 

After attending many weddings of most of my friends, I felt the isolation and competition to join the quest to find a husband. At the right time, I became engaged to the son of a history professor, who wrote about the Civil Rights Movement, and a mother who grew up on a Montana farm during the Depression. He is an athlete and a business major, so he is familiar to my world, but his foundation is different, and I don’t know it then, but it will establish the common ground our marriage will build upon. We married in 1990, and I began a career in elementary school teaching. I moved away from the world of free market capitalism into the world of public service. My story is changing but I still need to start our self-sustained independent family unit. 

ROAD OF TRIALS: MEETING OGRES AND DRAGONS

I encounter the fiend of infertility and the monster of multiple miscarriages. The inability to carry a pregnancy to term made me feel lesser in a society that pushed women to be wives and mothers. I battled the three-headed demon of silence, stigma, and shame. Through eight miscarriage, two adoptions, and a natural birth experience, I began raising three children. 

I came to accept that everyone had their pregnancy (and adoption) challenges regardless of their circumstances. There were so many lessons I would gather up along the infertility journey. Like pebbles and shells on a walk down the beach, they were treasures to be pocketed and brought out later, for better examination, throughout the years to come. I became a gem cutter. 

The struggle in a reproductive body continued when I got thrown into the dungeon with the Beast of Perimenopause and Evil Endocrine Troublemakers. Using my higher education research skills, I would be my own advocate for Reproductive Health. 

FINDING THE ILLUSORY BOON OF SUCCESS

I celebrated my 50th Birthday. I am Post-Menopausal. I lived the archetypal cycle of The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone.. I am liberated from my reproductive body, but I am still in the Mother role and besides my lack of cycles, I do not identify with The Crone.

(Soon after this writing this post and my discomfort with The Crone, I discover a 4th archetype The Queen read “The Halfway Point”)

I sold my magazine and stepped away from my role as an owner and publisher when my partner moved across the country. I studied to become a Health Coach and enjoyed volunteer work while my kids are still in their secondary school years. With the support of bioidentical hormones, quality food, and exercise, I felt vibrant and energetic for the first time in a couple of decades. 

AWAKENING THE FEELINGS OF SPIRITUAL ARIDITY: DEATH

I awakened politically after the election of 2016. With the Republicans dominating all three houses I predict that Abortion and Reproductive Freedom are on the chopping block and I found myself in arguments with those who tell me I am an alarmist. I felt doom and for the first time, I get inspired to participate in Women’s Marches. I am waking up. I can feel the death of democracy and destruction in my world, and I realized that I had been tucked away as a Stay At Home Mom. I wanted to get more involved. I wanted to rediscover what I would take a stand for in my society.

I entered a transitional phase of life at age 55. It began with the passing of PT, my father in late 2018 after a very rapid decline and health. In less than 6 weeks, he went from a relatively healthy man with a frustration to a diminishing golf game to hospitalization. He was diagnosed with cancer at Halloween and died a week later – exactly the way he would have wanted with a celebration happening outside his hospice bed at home the afternoon before his story’s ending. 

I was born again on November 8, 2018. A piece of me died that day when I stood at my dad’s bedside and spoke words out loud in a quiet voice to let him know we would be okay and he could leave his body on earth. I didn’t feel the urge to shed tears. He was peacefully departing. I was no longer his little girl. It would take many months for me to realize my new life – free from paternal expectations and restrictions. Free from patriarchal influences of what I could and should do. I felt closer to him in the days before and after his death. A new confidence rose in me for being recognized as a main part of the supportive team that helped him find the walk home that he wanted to travel. I was born again to myself. I am free to turn the page in a new chapter and walk toward my own ending. 

A book development coach asked me to expand on this moment. 

My empowerment came when PT died. It is interesting that I don’t call him Dad anymore. When I ask myself when that stopped, it might just be the day that he died. I don’t even think I use it with my sister, Nancy, or my brothers either. Everyone knows him as PT. I said in an earlier interview that: “I was the glue holding it all together, and I was glowing in it because I was in my element for the first time in our family unit”. Yes, it was validating. (March 2022). 

INITIATION AND DESCENT TO THE GODDESS 

In the summer of 2019, as plans for a year-long celebration of the 19th amendment – Women’s Right to Vote ramped up, I saw the article, “Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality in the U.S.” A graphic burned in my brain. I had struggled to live in my own reproductive body for decades and found menopause a relief. 

But how is it that the United States was losing more mothers and babies when other countries were seeing a decrease? I was appalled that in the twenty years since my seesaw between infertility and recurrent miscarriages things were getting worse and the shame and stigma was still continuing. Why wasn’t anyone talking about this? The article noted, “In the U.S., unlike some other developed countries, maternal deaths are treated as a private tragedy rather than as a public health catastrophe”. No one wanted me to talk about my losses, so I found my way in newly launched internet chat rooms in the1990s to pull myself through it. I assumed that social media would tell this story. There was still …silence. 

Spark. Flame. Catalyst. I needed to return to school. I left a PhD program in 1998 and by 2002, I had three children. UNLV did not have a graduate program in Women’s and Gender Studies so I signed up for online courses at CSN the community college. 

It was a powerful introduction with a new foundation in Goddess and Early Civilization History, Race, Class, and Gender, and a dabbling in Marriage and Family. I found myself wanting more, but not anymore undergraduate coursework. 2020 was quickly approaching and I instinctively felt that clarity, 20/20 vision, was coming for not just myself but society. I experienced a calling to write, and I signed up for an online Memoir Writing Course. I celebrated the Winter Solstice with a friend who reintroduced me to Tarot and Guided Meditation. I was remembering my earlier teens and my mother had always noticed that I had very strong intuitive skills. Some would say it was coincidence or I was good at reading the room and predicting, I felt it was more. I needed to reconnect with my intuition and inner wisdom. I purchased a tarot deck and a guidebook. 

URGENT YEARNING TO RECONNECT WITH THE FEMININE 

I was my most authentic, confident, and free self when I was seventeen. Writing my story of transition into motherhood in “Three Angelfish” and self-publishing it for my children cracked open my own story. After revealing it to others, I began to feel the shame and stigma melt away and I felt the healing medicine of telling and sharing my story. I learned that when I shared my story, it provided the opportunity for others to tell their struggles. I saw relationships deepen and watched others step out of their shadows and find solace. The world was months into living through the pandemic and I applied to Northern Arizona University Graduate College where I would spiral back toward the person, I was born to be in 1963. This is how I got started. I am calling back all the pieces of me that I left all over the place in the past four decades. 

HEALING THE MOTHER/DAUGHTER SPLIT 

As I finished a Masters Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies, I took an Anthropology of Gender course. I had written a poem and produced a multimedia slide show. To end the course my professor challenged me to write a book proposal on my project title: An Autoethnography of a Reproductive Body. I hired a Book Development Coach and in early 2022, I outlined multiple books and titles and table of contents. 

For most of my life, I did not feel WHOLE. I felt less than whole. Through years of sexual exploration and infertility, I was like the thermos from childhood days that got dropped on the way home from school. The outside looked whole, but the inside was a jumble of pieces rattling around that I hoped could be fixed.

I am writing this book to share my journey to Wholeness in a Reproductive Body.

I want to guide others to push back against the societal messaging that we are not whole beings.

I was told I was not a complete person unless I was a mother and had my own individual nuclear family. I was told to do it all on my own in the spirit of rugged individualism. I was taught that my worth (positive and negative) was wrapped up in my reproduction.

At 59 years old, I reflect, and I can only come up with a few times in my life that I might have been WHOLE: Birth. Abortion. Pregnancy. Menopause. I finally feel whole today but for 50+ years, I felt like I was a bunch of pieces-fragments-bits of a reproductive body.

WHOLE – baby child. I am a representation of reproduction.

PIECES – Sexual Exploration. I learn my parts and pieces. No thoughts of reproduction.

WHOLE – Abortion. Avoiding reproduction.

PIECES – Infertility. I am trying to reproduce.

WHOLE – Pregnant. I am reproducing.

PIECES – Perimenopause. Deconstructed reproduction. Becoming a different reproductive body.

WHOLE – Menopause. Wisdom. I am whole. I am a Creatrix. Discovering a reproductive soul.

I am writing this book to share an example of how I came to discover my bodily parts and how I learned to love my WHOLE body. With this wisdom comes awareness and strength and the inability for outside forces to pull me apart. I control my mind, body, and spirit. I am a reproductive body and I decide my destiny.

I write this book to claim my Reproductive Soul. 

HEALING THE WOUNDED MASCULINE 

I am still a work in progress. There is more to come but I feel like the Feminine is in the lead and I will find ways to integrate the Masculine in a self-nurturing, loving, and caring partnership. I was recently reintroduced to Stevie Nick’s “Edge of Seventeen” song lyrics the other day when I bought tickets to attend the 74-year old’s concert in Las Vegas in March 2023. I absorb a different meaning from the words today and I marvel at how lyrics touch us, in different ways at different times of our lives. At seventeen, I heard it as a rally cry to move forward and fly away from my natal family. Today, the song nudges me toward the second half of my life with grace and excitement. 

And the days go by, like a strand in the wind
In the web that is my own, I begin again
(…)
Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song, sounds like she’s singing
(…)
The clouds never expect it when it rains
But the sea changes colours
But the sea does not change
So with the slow, graceful flow of age 

STEVIE NICKS “Edge of seventeen (2019) remaster”