It’s odd. When I chose it, I thought of the “olderwoman” moniker as a little edgy, sort of the wise and proud Crone of mid-1990s feminism blended with Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. A lot of my friends had croning parties* in the 1990s, before I was old enough to qualify. So I’m always a little taken aback when someone (so far it has always been a young man) thinks I’m somehow saying something humble or self-demeaning or depressed in my choice of name. I’m not.
I had fun when I was young and I’m having a good time now. The hardest part was in the middle, when I was raising children, but even that was interesting. It’s interesting hanging out in the blogosphere and finding out how different the preoccupations are in different life phases.
*A croning party, at least in my circle, was pretty much a 50th birthday party with feminist pseudo-pagan rituals. All the web sites I can find easily about it are trying to sell you something. Relatedly, this made me think about Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s Women Who Run With the Wolves, which I read in about 1993. To be honest, I found the Jungian analysis tough sledding but found the stories and myths thought-provoking and interesting. I think I’ll re-read it while I’m on sabbatical. I imagine the stories that speak to me will be different now that I’m in a different life phase.
Sociological Confessions 