Hagitude Quotes

“But I always related to the Old Woman. The one who haunted the edgelands, the mysterious shadow in the heart of the darkwood. The exile, the rebel, the one who shrugged off the fetters of conventional society; the one who imagined and cultivated her own vision of how the world should be, thank you very much. At the earliest of ages, I already knew that was the old woman I wanted to grow into. The spirited, unpredictable, not-to-be-messed-with elder. An elder who’s always ready to tell you the often-unwelcome truths about the condition of your life — leavened, of course, with compassion, and a glint of fierce humor in her eyes.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“I have no intention of being invisible. But I’m quite prepared to be inconvenient.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“The Tao Te Ching asks: “Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water becomes clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“But why do we find women’s rage so unacceptable, so threatening? It is for sure an attitude which is deeply embedded in the culture. Several studies conducted over the past few decades have reported that men who express anger are perceived to be strong, decisive, and powerful, while women who express the same emotion are perceived to be difficult, overemotional, irrational, shrill, and unfeminine.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“I’ve searched for myself, and the stories I might inhabit, in books.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“Yes, elderhood begins with the often-shattering physical conflagration that is menopause, and it ends in certain death. But we each have choices about how to approach these final decades of our life. We can see them as a drawn-out process of inevitable and terminal decline, or we can see them as a time of fruition and completion.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“I don’t know what it was about menopause, specifically, that caused me all of a sudden to become a gatherer of “found objects.” But now, wherever I went in this bleakly untamed and often inhospitable landscape in the wild western extremes of Ireland, I seemed to hear things calling out to me. I was rooting for something — I didn’t know what. For fragments of myself, perhaps; my life, my loves. For fragments which reflected something of myself back at me — whatever I might be becoming now, at this turbulent, shapeshifting time of my life. And all the fragments I seemed to need came from this new place, from the ancient, uncompromising earth around me: that land which I walked compulsively, day after day after day. I would come home from the woods reverently carrying strangely shaped sticks, from the lough with pebbles and water-bird feathers, from the beach with seashells and mermaid’s purses — as if I were reassembling myself from elements of the land itself. After the deep dissolutions of menopause, I was refashioning myself from those calcinated ashes; I was growing new bones. It’s something we all have to do at this time in our lives; somehow, with whatever tools are available to us, we have to begin to curate the vision of the elder we will become. It’s an act of bricolage. And so now I had become like the bright-eyed, cackling magpies which regularly ransacked our garden: a collector — though not of trinkets, but of clues. I was gathering them together in the safety of my new nest. The clues were there in the pieces; those clues are threaded through this book. Scattered in shadowy corners and brightly lit windows, these objects I’ve selected are so much more than random gatherings of whatever it was that I happened to come across in my wanderings. They’re so much more than mere clutter. They are active choices, carefully selected objects that mirror my sense of myself as a shapeshifting, storied creature. Because the clues to our re-memberings are in the stories, and the stories are always born from the land.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“unshackled by the ferocious cleavings of menopause, I was able to smash through a lifetime habit of insisting on piecing together what was terminally broken. I allowed the process of Nigredo to occur. I faced my dead parts, and let them burn away. The truth is, by the time we reach menopause, we’ve all lived with too much loss; we’ve all been broken open. We’ve accumulated too much pain. Menopause is the time to transform it. To stop trying to stitch ourselves back together again into the same old pattern. To put away that darning needle, blunted by our persistent and insistent repair work. To step into the crucible, and let it do its work. We can’t mend everything. We can’t. And, sometimes, we simply shouldn’t.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“Well, you can either see menopause as a possible ending or you can see it as a possible beginning. Arguably, it should be a bit of both. The ending of one phase of life, but also the beginning of a whole new journey — a challenging but ultimately fertile journey across the threshold of elderhood.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“because studies also show that we women often hold anger in our bodies. Unacknowledged or actively repressed, anger takes its toll on us. Numerous psychological studies have unequivocally shown that women who mask, externalize, or project their anger are at greater risk for anxiety, nervousness, tension, panic attacks, and depression. A growing number of clinical studies have linked suppressed anger to serious medical conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders, and the development of certain cancers.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“In Classical mythology, righteous wrath was the province of old women. Three very specific old women, in fact: the Furies (or the Erinyes, in Greek). Fragments of myth featuring the Furies are found in the earliest records of ancient Greek culture. These sisters were much more ancient than any of the Olympian deities, indicating the persistence of an older, female-dominated tradition which endured here and there even when later, more patriarchal, mythologies set in. The role of the Furies was to preside over complaints brought to them by humans about behavior that was thought to be intolerable: from lesser misdemeanors such as the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests — to crimes that were very much worse. It was their role to punish such crimes by relentlessly hounding their perpetrators. The Greek poet Hesiod names the three sisters as Alecto — “unceasing in anger,” the punisher of moral crimes; Megaera — “jealous one,” the punisher of infidelity, oath-breaking, and theft; and Tisiphone — “avenger of murder.” They were, he said, the daughters of Gaea (the goddess who personified the Earth), who conceived them from the blood of her spouse, Uranus, after he had been castrated by his son, Cronos. They lived in the Underworld, and like other chthonic deities, like seeds that lie buried beneath the Earth, they were also identified with its fertility. The wrath of the Furies manifested itself in a number of ways: a tormenting madness would be inflicted on the perpetrator of a patricide or matricide; murderers usually suffered a dire disease, and nations which harbored such criminals could be stricken with famine and plague. The Furies could only be placated with ritual purification, and the completion of a task specifically assigned by them for atonement. It’s important to understand that although the Furies were feared, they were also respected and perceived to be necessary: they represented justice, and were seen to be defenders of moral and legal order. The Furies were portrayed as the foul-smelling, decidedly haggish possessors of bat-like wings, with black snakes adorning their hair, arms, and waists, and blood dripping from their eyes. And they carried brass-studded scourges in their hands. In my menopausal years, I certainly had days when I could have gone with that look. I’m happy to admit that the existence of seriously not-to-be-messed-with elder women like the Furies in our oldest European mythology gives me great pleasure. And it’s difficult not to see them as the perfect menopausal role models, because sudden upwellings of (mostly righteous) anger are a feature of many women’s experience of menopause”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“I’d been storing up rage like ancient magma, and I was all set to erupt.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“but at the age of fifty, rage seemed to have taken up residence at the back of my throat, hovering on the threshold of speech, always ready to make a break for it. It didn’t take much to trigger.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“What would it mean, instead of being an elderly woman, to be an elder woman? Because to be an elder implies something rather different — it implies authority: “a leader” or “senior figure” in a tribe or other group, says Lexico. According to Merriam-Webster, a person “having authority by virtue of age and experience.” The Cambridge Dictionary tells us it’s “an older person, especially one with a respected position in society.” So how do women transition from becoming elderly to becoming elder?”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“Because what we should be doing during menopause is gently and consciously letting go of one period of our lives, and slowly and mindfully easing the progression into another.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“Australian feminist writer Germaine Greer suggests that society’s aversion to menopausal women is, more than anything, “the result of our intolerance for the expression of female anger.”5”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“The spirited, unpredictable, not-to-be-messed-with elder.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“There are two key aspects to this work of expressing our calling; the first relates to our own individual soul journey through this life, to our necessary growth as a soul. What is it that we came here to learn? The second relates to our service to the world: What particular, unique gift do we bring to this world, at this time? How do we serve its evolution, and participate in its journey of becoming? It’s important, when we reflect on calling, that we hold these two things in balance: first, service to ourselves, and our own soul journey — which is intimately entangled with the second: service to the soul of the world, and the unfolding journey of the cosmos. To do the work we came here to do, we have to say no to the cultural narrative which would render elder women invisible or write us off as irrelevant. But first, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and find a narrative to offer in its place — to uncover our own unique Inner Hag, and extend her fearlessly into the world instead.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“This role of the elder woman as visionary isn’t always an active, “out there” role; sometimes it’s associated with a quieter, more inward-looking aspect of elderhood — perhaps a later life stage, in which she has withdrawn to the solitude and darkness of her symbolic cave, in preparation for her impending death. I think of such elders — the ones we generally don’t know, or have forgotten, precisely because they no longer choose to be seen by the wider culture (though they are often very visible to their family and their community) — as sages. These old women have left their strivings behind, and in the clarity of all that not-doing, they’ve made room for the space in which to cultivate deep vision, insight, and wisdom.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“The elder woman who has come to understand the nature of her own journey through life isn’t easily disheartened or daunted by the challenges of the world around her. She’s been around for long enough, and survived enough troubles and traumas, that she’s unlikely to be shocked or overwhelmed by the crises and conflicts that exist in the world around her. She’s seen how easy it is for things to fall apart, but she has also experienced renewal, and she knows how to engage in that necessary work of reimagining better ways of being and living in a troubled world. That’s why it’s so important that, as elder women, we find our own unique way of expressing our own unique gift, our own unique brand of hagitude — because one of the more important of our roles is to encourage the kind of imagination which serves all life on this planet. The elder woman — not only because of her age, but her experience and deep vision — can see ahead; she can predict what might happen and what might go wrong. But, more importantly, her visionary skills can help her to work out how to help put things right again, and how to restore the balance, because in almost all old wisdom traditions around the world, elders act as a living bridge between the visible world and the “unseen” realms — the Otherworld, in whatever ways they might conceive of it.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“Manda Scott is best known as a writer, and I first came across her through her wonderful series of books about Boudica. Manda also describes herself as a veterinary surgeon, a podcaster, a sustainable economist, regenerative farmer, conscious revolutionary — and shamanic teacher.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“Grannying is the least understood yet most powerful weapon we have. Sometimes, looking back, we can see grannying was the only thing that could have met the need. … From the most ancient times, the strong, wise, older women were the ones who advised, mediated and fought for what was right.” If that isn’t hagitude, I don’t know what is — and the Grannies’ willingness to engage with a challenged and challenging culture in these ways certainly reflects a much-needed optimism about the value of elder women today.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“What we gain with age is the wisdom to know when and how the truth should be told: when the culture is properly ripe for disruption, and when that disruption will do the most good. You don’t have to look far to find stories of elder women in contemporary life who hold the culture to account. Some of my favorite activists are the “Raging Grannies,”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“People would often prefer the women who challenge the cultural mythology and insist on engaging with “forbidden” issues to just keep quiet and stop rocking the boat. Sometimes that can be difficult, and often the reactions of others can be hurtful. But nevertheless, in a world which is still, and in ever-more-inventive ways, dangerous for us, and especially in a world which is still dominated by patriarchal values and structures, we need our elder-woman truth-tellers today more than ever. We need women who will challenge the worst excesses of the patriarchy, and who won’t pull their punches while they’re doing it.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“what it is to be a woman. This is the knowledge that we still need to pass on today; there’s a thirst for it. I experienced that myself recently, when in my online community The Mythic Imagination Network, a virtual sharing circle was instigated by members approaching menopause who wanted to ask the advice of those elder women who’d already gone through it.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“The best of novels, to me, are alchemical; you come away from them utterly changed. I love such challenges; I love such changes. My”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“The truth is, I’ve always believed that the inherent value of writing lies in its capacity to stimulate transformation, because the books I’ve read throughout my life have contributed more than anything to fashioning the person I am now.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“As I grow older, I realize that my own writing is very much more than just a pleasurable form of self-expression — at its heart, it’s a way of trying to change the story, of weaving the possibility of a better world into being through the power of words. The books that I write — whether fiction or nonfiction — are born out of a yearning to help people reimagine themselves and the world around them in more beautiful and functional ways. In particular, they’re born out of a deep desire to help women reclaim our unique and necessary power, to step out into a challenged and challenging world and make a difference to it.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“Is being a true hag about being able to wear the power of your weirdness comfortably? — because now you have reached an age at which you can truly ride this beautiful and unpredictable dragon.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

“The truth is, by the time we reach menopause, we’ve all lived with too much loss; we’ve all been broken open. We’ve accumulated too much pain. Menopause is the time to transform it. To stop trying to stitch ourselves back together again into the same old pattern. To put away that darning needle, blunted by our persistent and insistent repair work. To step into the crucible, and let it do its work. We can’t mend everything. We can’t. And, sometimes, we simply shouldn’t.”
― Sharon Blackie, Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life