S2 Episode 17: Harnessing Strength and Resilience through the Crone Archetype

Do you ever wonder why some people seem to bounce back from life's hardships with grace and strength, while others get bogged down? That's the power of resilience, and we're breaking it down for you in this enlightening discussion. Resilience, contrary to common belief, isn't about numbing yourself to feelings or submitting to life's ups and downs. It's about deeply feeling, genuinely caring, and taking control of what you can. It's about not allowing emotions to hijack your actions and words and being able to bounce back without getting embroiled in difficult emotions.

As we unfold the wisdom of resilience, we also embrace the Crone archetype, an empowering retreat when discomfort strikes. Stepping into the crone archetype isn't about retreating into weakness, but about stepping into a resilient, empowered energy. We explore how embracing this archetype and harnessing resilience can lead to transformation. Our most challenging experiences can be our greatest teachers, fostering compassion, wisdom, and empathy within us. Join us as we guide you through exercises to connect with your Wise Woman Energy and channel the crone archetype to journey beyond our wounds and into our power. Embrace discomfort, harness resilience, and connect with your inner Wise Woman.

Want to celebrate your Crone?
Try a Croning Ceremony here.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:01

Welcome back, shifters. This week, we're gonna talk about something that we're probably feeling hot and cold about, which is resiliency, and we're gonna talk about the crone archetype, because I also get a little questionable about the word resilient, right? I hate when people are like, oh, you're so resilient, as if that's not work, as if it's not trying to figure out how not to lose my shit, right? Resiliency, though, the true definition of it is the ability of a person to adjust or recover readily from illness, adversity, major life changes, and I think we all want that part, right. Of course, we don't want it to be so hard, but that's life, and that's why we're gonna talk about the crone today, because the crone is just used to seeing the bumps in the road as part of the journey, not these major life disruptions. So let's talk about what resilience is not.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Resilience is not that we don't feel things. Sometimes people think, oh, resilient people, they must not feel as deeply, and often that's actually the opposite that the more that we feel, the more we have to work on how, how those emotions come out, how we react to them, how we notice them earlier, so that they don't have to go to like a full 10 before you know, we just blow up at the wrong person. So it doesn't mean that we don't feel things. We do feel things with resiliency. It also doesn't mean that we don't care. Sometimes when people are like, oh, if you become too resilient, you just accept everything. And I don't think that that's what resiliency is. It's not about, you know, just stoically kind of going through life and again not feeling or not caring that these things are happening. I think resiliency is like being able to feel that and move through it. And resiliency also related to that does not mean that we don't act or shift the way that we show up so that we can have the best circumstances. It doesn't mean that we just surrender to whatever is going to happen to us. It means that we still can act and we still can make shifts in our lives.

Speaker 1: 3:20

So what does resiliency actually mean? To me, it means that we feel things without letting them direct our words and behavior right. So the reason where we're afraid of a lot of what people call negative I call uncomfortable feelings, is because no one ever showed us a good way of going through them. If we ever saw aggressive anger and it was scary to us right, then that makes us not want to be angry because we're afraid that we will also show up in an aggressive manner, and that's not the best way to deal with that. Right, that's allowing our feelings to direct how we're going to show up, how we're going to react in life, and that is not helpful. So resiliency helps us feel the feelings but also manage them in a good way so that we're not getting stuck there.

Speaker 1: 4:18

It does mean that we care and we have the wisdom to know nothing new is really happening in the world. All of the things that are happening today, outside of some technology perhaps, all of these same type of problems that people have always had, they will always have, right, like war. We're gonna have war because that's the human cycle, right, maybe one day we'll figure that out, but in the meantime we know that you know people are going to die, people are gonna hurt us, even when they don't intend to, and we care about those things. But we can also see them as, with an acceptance of that is how humans are sometimes. We can do our best to change that in the future, but that doesn't mean that, of all of history, that this stuff isn't going to repeat. So we have to know that these things are going to happen, we. It would be easier for us to accept that these things are going to happen.

Speaker 1: 5:19

Resiliency also means that we do what we can, we control what we can control and we keep moving forward. Right, because we don't really don't have a choice. We have to move forward, whether or not we control ourselves or not. So the only thing that we can actually control is how we see things, how the stories we tell ourselves, all the I statements right, I can control me. That's it. And it also means that we bounce back without getting stuck in these deep emotions. What can happen without resiliency is we allow our brain to go haywire and that inner critic to come in and constantly tell us stories about how it shouldn't be the way that it is. And because we're so stuck on it shouldn't be the way that it is, we can't accept it. Until we can accept what's going on, we can't move forward and find an empowered place to work from. So it's resiliency to me is about not getting stuck in the emotions, not getting stuck in a deep depression and you know medical depression, I understand, but we can get to a sad place or a grieving place or an angry place or a fearful place, and tell ourselves so many stories about it that we get stuck in those feelings and those feelings start directing us and, you know, telling us how we're going to show up, what we're going to say, rather than us really acknowledging wow, I have some feelings here, what do I want to do about them? From an empowered place. So the crone is an empowered place.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Often when we are going through hard things, we hit that wounded child era right and our wounded child will come up. Whether or not you had a perfect childhood or not, we all have wounds and that wounded child loves to come up when we're uncomfortable. In the addiction groups they use a term called halt, meaning hungry, angry, lonely, tired. I add an S for sick because I think that also makes us very uncomfortable. You can also add in there anything that creates physical discomfort in our body PMS, perimenopause, whatever is happening. It's serious emotions.

Speaker 1: 7:45

We easily go back to that wounded child and the problem with the wounded child is that she has no power to fix the problem. She needs healing and she can't do her own healing. She needs other archetypes to come in and often in this area we talk about the mother. But today, since we're talking about resilience, I really want to talk about the crone, because the crone's got this ancient wisdom. She understands the tides, she understands the cycles of life, she understands paradox, that life and death are really not one is better than the other, that we need death in order to have more life and vice versa.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Right, and so she can see good and bad, as it just depends whose perspective you're looking at it. Right that light and dark are both needed, or else you wouldn't have light or dark. Right, and so she understands that all of these things are just part of the cycle of life, and that is pure wisdom, let me just make sure. So she also understands that people are going to hurt each other, that we have this ego, we have deep emotions, we have all these human parts of ourselves, and so, even though we want to show up, perfect, and we want to show up in this ideal, higher self kind of light, that it's just not possible to do that, whatever we think is perfectly. So she understands that, even though we don't mean to, we're going to hurt each other, even when that's not our intention, because we all have different perspectives and different wounds, and what I say to you might trigger you, but not the next person, and that is about our individual understanding, our stories that we're telling ourselves right, and she can do that.

Speaker 1: 9:47

She is able to see that suffering is really about our expectations not being met right. So she has a lot of hope, but she doesn't create a lot of detailed expectations of the world. She just kind of takes things as they come and she asks the question that I want you to start asking yourself when you start looking back at your life what? What if the bumps in the road are really the journey? What if? That's our human challenge Is accepting the things that we don't like, accepting that the world is as it is, not saying that we can't change things. But before we can change anything, we have to be able to accept what's happening right now. Not settle, not settle, but we have to accept. Acceptance just means this is what's happening right now. I can change that in the future, maybe, but I have to be able to accept it. And one of my favorite quotes is by a Daniela Porte, and she says that radical transformation starts with the radical acceptance of what is, because in order to change anything, we have to accept that it is what it is or else there's no jumping off. Point right and that's really the crone is that she can accept what's going on right now without getting into that denial area, and she can then move with her wisdom forward however she wants to.

Speaker 1: 11:26

The problem is that our suffering stories, right, like I was just telling you, when we come upon these bumps that we find painful or it feels like we're suffering, that is really about discomfort, and we've talked about this before on this podcast. But I just want to remind you that there's a huge difference between safety and discomfort, and most of the things that we need to accept are uncomfortable. They're not what we planned, they're not what we foresaw, they weren't our expectations, and that's what's stopping us from really accepting it. Right, but when we can ask ourselves to go back to that question is this unsafe or uncomfortable? Chances are we're not going to realize it's uncomfortable, and just because it's uncomfortable doesn't mean that we can't move through it, that we can't sit with it right and be uncomfortable, and when we're in that spot, we get into that wounded child again. Right, that's what can often happen when we're in that uncomfortable spot, especially if we haven't asked the question between safety and discomfort because our child's going to see anything uncomfortable as unsafe. And so that wounded child comes up and she starts telling us all kinds of disempowering stories. Oh, I can't ever change this. I'm not good enough, I'm failing. Whatever those stories are for you, I'm not enough, I'm too much. It's usually what they come down to in some area. And so we make up those stories and we can get stuck in those stories.

Speaker 1: 13:04

What we want to do is step more into our crone archetype, because our crone archetype is going to be able to have more power than that wounded child. Right? Think of yourself as a child. We didn't make our own choices. We did the things that our parents told us to do, right, and our parents solved a lot of our problems or worked at, walked us through those problems. We didn't have a lot of power on our own, but the crone archetype is the way that we can step into more power.

Speaker 1: 13:40

She has the power to see all kinds of perspectives, right, and some women call this inner crone the wise woman or the elder, something like that. They are slightly separate archetypes but they're very, very close. So you call it a wise woman if crone really bothers you, because I know it does bother some people, but she understands that the lows and the highs of life are so intertwined that there's no way that we could take out all the stuff that made us uncomfortable without changing who we are and how we show up now. So one of the beautiful gifts of resilience is that when we do have to go through these moments where we have to be strong or we're going through some kind of struggle or challenge, when we get to the other side, we're usually wiser, we're usually more empowered, we usually know more about ourselves.

Speaker 1: 14:38

Now I'm not saying, go cause your own sufferings so that you can do all of this, but I'm just saying some of the worst things that happened to me created compassion and wisdom and empathy and listening to other people, right. So, and I wouldn't have the same amount of those skills or the same skills and the way that they show up, if those things that I don't like didn't happen to me. And that's not a silver lining, but that's everyone's journey. Sometimes the worst things that happen to us, when we get through them, when we can work through them, they turn out to be real gifts, and so I just want us to consider that, because that's the stance of the of the crown. When we look back at our journey, we want to be able to see that the bumps were actually parts where we were kind of crowned. Some people see it as a crowning, basically of our beautiful silver hair. It's a crown and so all those bumps helped create the crown, the beautiful, wise woman that we are.

Speaker 1: 15:55

So I can also say, for an example, that my first marriage I could also say, oh, I wish that that wouldn't have happened. And yeah, like I mean, we can always wish and regret or want to change I wouldn't have the awesome son that I have today if it wasn't for that first marriage, and that, to me, is worth it, right. So we have to be able to see that sometimes the things that we don't like lead us to other things. Some of the things in my life that I didn't like turned into much better things for me than I could have ever dreamed myself. But I had to get to the point of accepting it and moving through it to see how this one turn that didn't work out the way I wanted actually was for my benefit, and I love Rumi's quote. Rumi has a quote that says live life as though it's rigged in your favor, because whether we live like it's rigged in our favor or think that the world's against us, we're probably right.

Speaker 1: 16:59

So I wanted to just talk about again resilience isn't about not caring or not feeling. It's not just about silver linings, because I know sometimes when we're like oh good can come out of bad, it seems like we're silver lining it right. But this isn't jumping straight to positivity. It's jumping to reality, to what is actually true. We're still going to feel the feelings. In fact, I suggest you go and feel the feelings, because we need to feel the feelings in order to become more resilient, because the more comfortable we get with that discomfort, the more resilience we're going to have, the faster we're going to be able to recover from some of those uncomfortable feelings or those challenges or those struggles as well, if we can feel the feelings.

Speaker 1: 17:52

The only reason that feeling scares us so much is because maybe nobody ever taught us how to manage them in a really safe, good way, how to work through them without letting those feelings poop on everybody around us, and so this is about feeling our feelings, understanding that it's all part of the journey and that we don't make up stories about them anymore. It's just I'm feeling angry, I know that I have that wound about, I don't know, being smart or whatever. Our wound is right and somebody said something where my wounded little child go. Are they making fun of me? Are they trying to say that I'm not smart, and when the next person probably wouldn't bother them if they didn't have that same wound? And so when we recognize that, we can move through it. So I'm gonna give you my little process of how we can move more into an empowered energy, a resilient, empowered energy when we're going through challenges, so that you have the tools to kind of move yourself through.

Speaker 1: 19:00

So the first thing that we wanna do is recognize what energy that we're in. Remember the halt right. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired, sick. Whenever we're in physical discomfort, our wounded child can pop up real easily and halts is really easy to take care of Go eat, go find a friend. You know these are easier ways to manage, right? Take a break, take care of whatever it is that's going on for you physically as well as you can, and then come back to the feeling right, am I feeling powerless?

Speaker 1: 19:34

Then I'm probably in my adolescent or my child energy and they don't have a lot of power. So when you think about being a kid again. You just didn't have that much power. Everybody kind of told you what to do. You didn't know how to solve problems. That those are all skills that we got through our adolescence and even through our young and adulthood and probably until today, right. But we want to be able to be able to notice when we're in this wounded child and there's usually physical sensations to it, right, when I'm in wounded child I can see myself crouching down a little bit more. I kind of want to go in my bed and suck my thumb Not really, not literally, but we want to get up in the fetal position, we want to go hide from the world. That's how we know that we're in our wounded child.

Speaker 1: 20:32

The second thing after we notice, what energy am I in? What am I feeling? Is this unsafe or uncomfortable? We want to ask ourselves that because most of the time we're not in physical danger. Sometimes we are, sometimes there's safety issues. We should take care of those, right, but most of the time it's just discomfort, fear, anger, shame, maybe is coming up, and so it's not physically unsafe, it's just emotionally uncomfortable. Once we address the safety, we can take a moment to breathe and check in with ourselves. Wow, I am feeling anger, I am feeling shame, I am feeling sadness or grief, right, and then we can accept that feeling. Right now, this is how I'm feeling and that's OK. We can feel it, we can cry it out. If we need to, we can beat our couch with a tennis racket my favorite way of getting anger out because usually on the other side of anger for me is sadness or fear that I am, even though you, you know something that someone else said to me was angering.

Speaker 1: 21:47

It's. Usually I'm sad because they don't see me the way that I want them to see me. They don't see me. They don't see our relationship the same. They don't see the triggers or wounds that I have and how that hit it right. They don't see the button that they just pushed. And so if we can get through the feeling, then we can understand it more and we can just get used to that discomfort in our body, not saying I always want to be angry or sad, but saying right now, this is how I'm feeling and letting that be okay. Then I want us to look at our expectations and grief that it didn't go the way that we wanted to, right, because usually when there's a challenge, it's like something came up that I wasn't expecting, that I hadn't planned on, that wasn't supposed to be there, and we get this fight within ourselves that says that I'm feeling whatever. I'm feeling because, right, I'm suffering, because the world's not showing up the way that I want it to, and so what is it that I need to accept that is happening, even if I don't want it to be happening. Right, getting to that acceptance part and then breathe into your own wisdom. I often put my hands on my gut when I'm trying to talk to my crone. I don't know if it's my midlife belly that's growing or what, but I often put my hands on my tummy when I'm trying to feel into my crone. It's just what works for me.

Speaker 1: 23:26

You might have a different ritual. You might see her sitting or standing in a different position. Use whatever position you think your wise woman would sit into and imagine that your inner wise woman and she can look however she looks. She may look like an older version of you, she may not. She may look like someone you know, she may just be a figment or a cartoon, or I don't know. It's all up to you what your inner wise woman feels like and looks like, right? So just imagine that she's probably calm, peaceful, resilient, and just breathe into that energy of being a wise woman and ask her what wisdom do you have for me today, as I sit here with these uncomfortable feelings? What wisdom do you have for me today, right? So you can do a whole visualization with her, or you can just imagine it on your own, because all of these archetypal energies are within you. Whether you use them or feel them or not, or notice them. All of the archetypal energies are within you, and so I know that you have a wise woman. We're born with that archetype, so you don't have to be of a certain age. You have a wise woman inside you. We just need to get to a calmer, more peaceful state in order to connect with her, and then she can help you accept what's going on, so that you can move through it, so that you can build that resilience right, meaning I still feel things.

Speaker 1: 25:17

I probably feel things more deeply because I'm resilient, but I work through them instead of avoiding them. I get to know them. I know what it feels like to have anger in my body or sadness in my body. I know what it feels like to have fear or shame. Those all show up with different physical sensations and so because I've gotten used to the physical sensations, knowing that they're not going to hurt me, they're just going to be uncomfortable, I can move through challenges more swiftly. I can move through feelings more easily without letting them control me, just letting them give me the information that they have and that's all feelings are. They're giving you information about what's going on in your body and when we learn to tune into that instead of ignoring or avoiding that, we can definitely become more resilient, because we can pick ourselves up out of that wounded child energy and move more into that wise woman energy.

Speaker 1: 26:22

I hope that you try these exercises. Remember just to notice what's going on in your body. Am I in a wounded space? Am I overwhelmed with emotion? Let me sit here and feel it, do the things, maybe journal, and then connect to that wise woman energy within you. I know that you have it and I know that you can do this. If you have any questions, of course, reach out, let's have a conversation about it. I love to talk about the crone and resiliency and even the wounded child. So reach out or message me in some way, and I'd love to have a conversation. That's all I have for you this week, shifters, so I will see you again next week. Bye.