The Crone’s Tale

1st December 2025

So many thoughts, so much I want to say, and nowhere to put them? Apparently this is what happens when you are in constant pain.

I could try to write a story, total fiction. Or an essay, either a rant or a profoundly intellectual… No, I couldn’t. Who’s kidding who here?

What about a poem? Start off with a silly thyme, that falls down a rabbit hole, or maybe a hobbit hole, because autocorrect won’t let me say silly rhyme — or no. To be fair, that was a slip of my fingers, but glancing up at the slip on the screen, which, by the way, even with my good eye, is barely legible because of the lack of contrast (almost typed ‘contract’ there — Freudian slip, or what!) between the font and the screen. Must fiddle with the settings, see if I can adjust it.

Now.

Do it now.

Thank you.

So now I’m having a dialogue with what I’m actually typing. Why not? It’s sure that the devilish side effect from the pills I’m taking has kicked in with a vengeance. “It will possibly make you depressed.” Hah! I’m always depressed, pretty much. Therefore much of my daily mental energy is spent in modifying my thought processes in an effort to mitigate the effects of being depressed.

Role-playing not being depressed.

Good idea.

Get on with it.

Stupid woman.

No, not like that.

Remember, you’re the one who claims to have invented Cognitive Behavioural Therapy when you were four years old. “Don’t cry!” says your mother. So you learn how not to. You learn how to role-play someone who isn’t sad.

Try role-playing being someone with a passable degree of intellectual capability.

I need to stand up. My butt hurts. And my leg. And my hip. And my heart. I’m so tired of being sore.

My work station, backed by the blanket I was given to celebrate my 80th birthday.

Standing now. At my clever ‘sit to stand’ desk that I was advised to get three years ago when I was sent to the physiotherapist to get exercises for my hip pain, before I was diagnosed with ‘polymyalgia rheumatica’ which does not get better from doing exercises. I did them anyway. And I began taking the medication which is the only thing they have yet found that alleviates the underlying inflammation, i.e. steroids. Which do eventually reduce the inflammations to a negligible degree — 2 years in my case. And then as soon as it seems to be disappearing altogether, the hip pain flares up again immediately — as in, the same day. But this time it’s different, because the pain runs down your leg into your foot, and up and down, and settles behind your knee and what’s more, every single person you speak to has also had it. It’s called Sciatica. And the only thing the medical profession has come up with is not a cure — no, there is no cure, it just goes away… eventually… apparently — but they can prescribe a special kind of neurological pain killer to deal with the pain… eventually. Problem is,

Sorry, hang on a minute. Standing here has brought back the pain behind my knee, so I’ll have to lower the desk again and sit down for a bit.

Where was I? Oh yes, back where I started, banging on about the medication with the side effects of making you depressed. Apparently it was invented to help depressed people, who had to take it in fairly large doses. But they discovered that in low doses it could — and I stress the word COULD — help to alleviate nerve, or neurological pain. Hence where I am just now.

When I was much younger, and I was in the midst of a depression, I would write it all down and then tear it up. Because you don’t go round telling people you’re in pain, physical or mental. Who do you think you are? That’s just asking for pity. And I abhor being pitied. At least, nowadays you don’t do that. Times have indeed changed.

Lately, though, I’m very aware of just how ignorant younger people are of what’s in store for them, as they get older. Because we don’t talk about it. When we are young we seem to have this idea that we shall be young and fit and miserable in our uniquely young way, and then suddenly we’ll be old and useless and about to die. With nothing in between!

I’m here to tell you that is not how it works.

Now that I am unquestionably old, and neither completely useless nor — as far as I am aware — about to die, I’m acutely aware of this ‘ageist’ attitude. The one that doesn’t allow you to be old until you are beyond help, and if you are indeed old there’s no point in helping you, because being around you just reminds you how much you never ever want to be old.

And it’s not only in teenagers, or 20 or 30 or 40 or even 50-somethings. People in their 60s (not all of them, obviously) are astonished, and I suspect horrified, when they discover how old I am. My chronological age, that is.

I just thought of that. Horrified. I’ve been trying to pin it down, that odd twitch that flickers across their faces, that I’m aware of but couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

They have to make a big deal of it. “Oh, no! You don’t look it at all!!”

I ask you: what the (insert non-euphemism here) does 81 look like?

“Wow!” they say, “you’re so good for your age!”

How good should I be? I’ve been in some degree of pain for almost 3 years, but with medical conditions that are experienced by people of all ages. They have no way of knowing that I am role-playing not being in pain, by walking normally. as against hobbling along. So I guess ‘old age’ looks like being unable to move with the ease of a younger person.

Of course I’m ageing. We all are. Of course my body is degenerating. So is my mind, and like the rest of my body, it doesn’t bounce back as easily as it used to.

And another thing…

A friend of mine used to say that (“and another thing”) at the end of a heated discussion, before walking away. Good trick.

I don’t tend to walk away though. Because I have thought of something else I want to put to you. When do you have the right to call yourself a Crone?

In my mind, a Crone IS an old woman, and she not only knows it, she relishes it. The Crone of the folk tales is enormously powerful and quite terrifying. She does what she wants, when she wants, and takes no prisoners.

In my late seventies, I realised that I was slowly turning into the Crone stage of my life. At eighty-one, I’m there, unquestionably.

And I deeply resent those women who are claiming the term for themselves, just because they are pre, or mid, or post menopausal. They have at least another 20 years at their disposal to enjoy their post menopausal, pre Crone stage. Crones are indubitably, proudly old. In the folk tales she is often portrayed as being cruel and ugly — and that’s what happens to us when we are discriminated against, ignored, disappeared, abandoned. However, I am convinced that I can be a no-nonsense, visible and useful member of society even though I am well into my Crone years.

It even gives me a teeny little tickle of pleasure to think what a shock those women are going to get when they eventually find themselves transitioning into an actual Crone.

However, to be honest, I’d rather they would read this now, and take a step back to learn my lesson for today, as someone who has been there and done that. Just as, in the olden days, we weren’t allowed to talk about the menopause, so for most women, myself included, it was a shock and a terrifying worrying thing when it hit us in our ignorance of what to expect. I believe the same problem of ignorance explains why most people are terrified of being old, they are practically in denial about it, until it hits them, which is why they want to pretend that nobody ever is old.

Stand by now, for the word of the One Who Knows.

There are at least seven stages of life for a woman — here we go…

1_ the child

2_ the teenager

3_ the young woman

4 _ the middle-aged woman

5_ the menopausal woman

6_ the post menopausal woman

7_ the crone

(Men! You can just use your own definitions for the 7 stages)

I have been there, back in the day, pushing the thought of old age away as far as I could. But I’ve also been fortunate to always have at least one woman in my life who was 20 years or more old than me. Those women taught me how to live with a kind of grace and fortitude at any age. So I’ve been able to accept my transition, indeed my leap over the bridge into my Crone age with a dollop of joy.

I’d like to reassure everyone that it’s not as bad as you think. Sure, you get things breaking down, like hips and teeth and hair. and joints and plumbing etc. And you get irritating younger people banging on about how good you are for your age.

To be honest (again) I could do without the pain. But there ya go! Nothing can be done about it. And until it actually stops me from ‘doing stuff’, I shall keep on. This week, if you want to know, I’m working on adapting a play for children (which I produced about 30 years ago) into a novel. I’ve been advised by a younger woman that children and their interests have changed over the years, so I should do my research before I go too far. And I have. And my Crone opinion is this, it might not appeal to all children, but it sure appeals to the child in me.