Did you enjoy that last bit? I did.
I love reading the sequence which starts with me flying off as a crone and goes through to the crowning of humanity.
I hope nobody thinks that I’m saying I’ve got there yet. Of course I haven’t. That’s why I’ve had to use other people’s words and not my own.
I haven’t experienced that lightness that Marian Van Eyk McCain so beautifully describes. Far from being free of bloat, I am still at the stage where I wake up some mornings three inches thicker round the waist than I was the night before.
And as for a lighter backpack – I can just about manage what I’m carrying; trying to earn a living and look after a child and be a good friend and make a home and contribute to the community and do my own creative work….Yes, I manage it on a good day. On a bad day, I want to shed my load.
I like those passages, not because I have experienced what is being described, but because they give me hope.
When I wrote this page originally, I ended it by calling for elders to tell their stories because those are the stories that the world needs to hear. And then I thought: “Jo. Our elders ARE speaking. They always have done. It’s just you weren’t listening very well before.”
Next step: All this and the school run too