A Message from Susan Ann

I send my love and blessings to all of you.   I sense we are all ready for brighter and warmer days, open windows and open doors, a panoply of spring blooms and color, the song of birds, the hum of bees, the return of the hummingbird and the butterfly, unlocked hearts and hands ready to open to the delights of Spring.

I am missing many of you.  I keep wanting to pick up my phone and call you all.   I seem to be wondering what you are all up to.  And, most of all, I am feeling grateful for all that has been brought into my life with Crones Counsel and the women who attend.

I was asked to speak at the local Alzheimer’s Association last week.  In planning, I remembered Rita Bresnahan, one of our beloved Crone women, and her book Walking One Another Home.  I retrieved her book from my library and reread a good part of it.  The book portrays her journey with her mother as a “pilgrimage of possibility” through the labyrinth of Alzheimer’s.  She talked about “walking each other home.”  One statement Rita made in the book penetrated to the core of my being.  She wrote: “I believe that’s why we are here on earth: to walk one another home.” So, during my presentation, I read several passages out of her book.  As it turned out, her words broke our hearts open and set the pace for the entire discussion.

And, this is the power of Crone.  This is the power that comes through the women who come to Crones Counsel.  We come together, we talk, we share our examined experience, we tell our most profound stories, we dance and we howl – both our pain and our joy. We share our deepest knowing with incredible, gifted, honest, warm human beings whose wisdom comes from a very deep place in their heart womb.

So many of you bring so much to our sacred circles.   So many of you make the world – not just Crones Counsel –  a better place in the many myriad ways of women’s knowing and work.   I honor all of you.    I thank you for being in my life.  I thank you for supporting Crones Counsel.

Registration

Our registration numbers are good.  Keep it coming!   By the early response and high registration it appears we are on our way to another splendid Gathering.
Keep on mind and note that on 03/01/2016 the registration rates go up. Register Now.

Mother Board Positions

We are accepting applications for new Board members.  Many of you have communicated with us, stating that you would like to be a part of our “Mother Board.”  So, now is the time.  We would like to have new board members selected by the Fall gathering in Denver.  This way you can be introduced to the entire Counsel and then participate with the Board at the Gathering.    Below is a link to our A “Intent to Serve” Form.

Please, don’t be shy!  We know each of you has valuable leadership skills.  Let us know how you want to contribute!  Board Membership is really fulfilling and we have a great team!

Our Board, at present, consists of six women.  The Crones Counsel Board has had, at times, up to 13 members.   As we look to the future, your vision, your unique skills, your areas of expertise will be indispensable to keep us relevant, forward looking, and compelling.  Download an application now.

Yay!   We cannot wait to see who shows up!

Intent to Host

Oh Goody!  We know how exciting it can be to host a Crones Counsel Gathering.  Those of who have done it find it nothing short of joyful.  There are some aches and pains – there always are – but in the completion of a Gathering one always seem to rest in complete joy and awe.

Proposals are being accepted for 2017, 2018, 2109, and 2020. Last year Melinda Field and Lani Phillips enthusiastically volunteered and were able to create a magical venue in Mt. Shasta.  This year we will be in Denver under the guidance of a very large planning group who also will create magic!

So, yes, you are encouraged to create and organize and offer your unique gifts and vision to the women of Counsel.   You will not know – unless you conceive and plan and complete a Gathering – how glorious it is to create a Crones Counsel Gathering, receive expert guidance and help from those who have planned previous Gatherings, and to bask in the excitement and exhilaration, as well as the glory and gratitude, of the afterglow of a job well done.

Again, we know the expertise is out there.  Bring it on!  Download a proposal form now.

Inter-generational Outreach

In the third and fourth stages of our lives, Matriarch and Crone, we seem to become acutely aware of the importance of generational interdependence.  Those who have come before us – our parents, our grandparents, and our great grandparents – begin to form an entire backdrop for us to reflect upon our own aging experience.  Then, our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren become increasingly more important to us in terms of generativity and altruism.

We know as human beings that each of us lives in other’s memories of us.  At the end of our lives, we would like to be remembered not only by those who are our own age but by others throughout the life cycle who have reached our hearts and whose hearts we have reached.  And not only do we want to be remembered, we want to have had a purpose in their lives.

As a Counsel community, throughout the years we have honored those women who have come before us, who set the paths upon we now walk as an organization.  We honor the eldest women at our Gathering each year.  We stand next to our age group peers with respect and dignity.  The time is now to continue to honor those who are younger, those yet to come, those who will carry our unique perspectives forward.

Authentic multigenerational communities tend to every stage of the life cycle because we know that, ultimately, this is the only way we flourish.  If the maidens and the mothers are absent, we all stumble forward, lurching through the life cycle. When all ages are represented, our lives flow with greater meaning.

We are welcoming our younger sisters to the Gatherings.  We are encouraging you to bring your daughters, your granddaughters, your sisters, your mothers.   We will enhance our common humanity by seeing the entire glorious picture of Maiden, Mother, Matriarch, and Crone at our Counsel meetings.   This, ultimately, is what community means: the web of human connection.  Each of us needs the other.  For Crones Counsel to flourish and to thrive we are committed to creating authentic community inclusive of all ages and all women.