Reflections on Almost-turning-sixty

In the first part of turning 59, I felt very lost. I felt like I needed to seriously “level up” in some way. I felt like I needed a breakthrough, I needed something to change.

Clues about this had been trickling in. My body and psyche were giving me information that there was stuff that needed to be dealt with. I drew a picture of my whole body in a somatic movement class. The hip area was bright red. A girdle of some sort. The words that came to mind were Rage, Passion, Energy, Aliveness. There was something big there, and I had been dancing around it most of my life. I couldn’t ignore this drawing. I found a somatic therapist and with her help was able to dive into the somatic world, which I have found after years of talk therapy, offers such a different kind of riches. I listened more closely to my dreams. I had a dream about women laboring underground making beautiful things, not for money. With the support of my somatic therapist. I was able to safely return to visit a sexual assault that happened to me at age nineteen I was able to explore what happens when you push down feelings and experiences for years, and decades.

          There was  wandering in the desert of the unknown. There was flailing around. Asking other older women for guidance. There is the   politics on top of that to wade through. There is  the reality which all the women who have been sexually assaulted have to endure of navigating  the legacy of sexual assault while a sexual predator is elected to the highest office in the country.  There is right now navigating the political administration which seeks to eradicate women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, immigrant rights, free speech, and many of the other rights I took for granted living in the United States,

        Sixty says to me : “ What are you going to really bite off?” What are you going to do with this last third of life? What is most important? Sixty puts my life into focus. I wish it was talked about more, this portal of life.  Portal is the word the keeps coming to me. I wish it was spoken about out that what is not important falls away, that it is an alchemical period, where a blowtorch is brought out, and you are burnished into a more clear version of you. In our western culture, it feels like there is a slow fade as women approach sixty. You do not look like what is valued in the culture. You are not young, thin, defined by your physical attributes. You are physically more vulnerable, creaky, crepey, flawed.  You disappear from the culture’s view. For me it has been a big thing to navigate, so I am guessing I am not the only one, and that other women wish there was more signposts to help.  Elderhood for women needs reimagining. I have been thinking if we associated animals with different ages. I was recently in Oaxaca Mexico where the jaguar is an important symbol, seen as the birthplace of the world. I am looking at my sixties as my jaguar years, I am fierce and powerful and so much is birthed from within me.

            I will tell you all the things you know. That maybe you have forgotten. Again. Follow what whispers to you. Stop ignoring yourself. Put yourself first at this point in life. You are important. Your life dreams are important. If you don’t do them now, there is no later. Make a small step. Every day take a step towards you, and what you desire. Desire is juicy and rich and red, and will lead you home, to yourself. Take up more space. The world needs what you have, your singular voice. All of our singular voices can add up to a new vision, a new reality. We women with our giant hearts and our vast wisdom are so much bigger and more powerful than those lame fuckers. That is why they have been calling us crazy and burning us at the stake. But as Pam Houston, one of my favorite writers wrote in a recent essay “if you stay I will stay”. Stay here with me.  Stay and make powerful Art, stay and write the Truth with me, stay and Dance with me. Stay and let us birth a whole new world together.

Photo by Jennifer Esperanza

           If you are sixty or older…I’d love to hear a piece of advice from you on going through this Portal…Anything, small or big.

  Hugging you all.

photo by Jennifer Esperanza

One way I have been working on re-visioning getting older as a woman is

by making these "Crown/Crone" pieces. Revisioning getting older as a woman as something beautiful, and very feminine. We should all receive crowns as

we enter elderhood, for all the work we've done, and all the growth, and all that

we've all made it through.

Crown pieces will be available in my studio during the Santa Fe Studio Tour this June 2025. I also would love to make one for you on commission.