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Sparkle (2)
What to call that “stage” or experience-across-various-stages of a woman’s life when she finds her métier [1. vocation, trade. 2. an area of activity in which one excels] and practices her strengths in a larger community?
Second in this series on the stages of a woman’s life and soul-experience is a look at what I’m calling “Wom-Mind”—again, a focus on woman-in-herself as she presents in the world, her potential, interactions, accomplishments, and how it all feels to her.
As a young adult I worked for more than a decade at my trade, editing and writing, before becoming a mother. This experience—putting off children until one was ready, became possible in my twenties—and offered an invaluable time in which to grow, fail, struggle, and learn to focus on how to use my gifts in more efficient and soul-satisfying combinations of choices.
Having children for the first time in one’s thirties is no longer unusual at all—or even in the forties or fifties, if circumstances dictate. And after children (biological or adopted) are raised, and often all through that period of mothering as well, woman as “mind” in the world is still an appropriate theme, whether in the home or outside it.
In ONE: Girl, my earlier post I said: “When I sit down to fill a blank page for a blog post or book chapter, I feel as though I recover something of the freshness of ‘girl,’ of learning again, each time, to ‘play before God,’ seeking expression as though I were learning words for the first time: how they might be joined simply, like daisies in a chain, and humbly spell something to the world.”
“Girl” is the Spring of our life, when newness is all, and we spring forward and stumble as often as a colt finding its legs. In “Wom-Mind” we are more stable, gaining confidence in what we can accomplish, while admitting inwardly all that we yet need to learn. Wom-Mind is a Summer experience of Life on the Curve (along with Mothering/Nurturing, which I will treat next).
Some of its high points for me have been seeing my byline on published articles, my reproduced picture on a stack of study guides proving I was their editor, later my name on actual book covers. The signposts or flags of the arrival of Wom-Mind differ with every vocation.
In the stage of Wom-Mind we become more present to ourselves, as well as available to the interchanges of the world, ready and able to interact, to provide what is needed in a field outside ourselves—while learning also how to maintain our inner integrity. How do we find that strength within? I see it primarily as waking up to the reality of our own value as persons and living in the light of that truth—no matter what others have said or assumed about us.
The mystic Meister Eckhart wrote: “God and the soul are very fruitful as they eternally do one work together.” And Thomas Aquinas said: “God works at the heart of all activity.” If our life indeed comes from some eternal realm, as philosophers and poets attest, then there is remembering to be done: see ONE http://www.blogher.com/life-curve—one-girl
In Wom-Mind stage, much can be recovered in actual practice, as our daisy chains give way to the complexity of actual walking-space gardens.
Caitlin Matthews in Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom (London: Aquarian/Thorsons, 1992), coins the phrase “motherwit” which surely is akin to Wom-Mind, as she writes: “This seed of memory ... is genetically encoded within us and, whatever our conditioning, it frequently emerges, giving us access to survival skills and unbidden instincts which help us in necessity. This kernel of motherwit allows us access to skillful wisdom—not the high-flown and academically acceptable kind of Wisdom, but the homely and immediate kind.”
And yet the “academic” kind of work-in-the-world is also, in fact, a natural path for Wom-Mind if she chooses—science, technology, innovation, philosophy, the arts as well.
What are your experiences of Wom-Mind? How did your Summer stage progress (or is it progressing) for you? (not limited to certain ages, either)
What have you learned? How do you bring other women (and men) along with you on this soul-path?
“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” —Virginia Wolff.
“Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
