Talking to ravens

September's monthly newsletter

Please read on for lots of Hagitude news, free associated resources for navigating the second half of life, and the usual monthly reading recommendations and poem.

Dear friends,

Life at the moment is almost entirely taken up with the forthcoming publication of Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life, which is published this coming Thursday, September 1 in hardback, e-book and audiobook. It feels as if this one has been a very long time coming. I first put the proposal to my publishers in autumn 2018, with the aim of it being published in 2021. Well, life intervened, and the combination of an unanticipated relocation from Ireland back to Britain, a lymphoma diagnosis and the trials of lockdown, meant that I finished the manuscript a year late. That was the first time I’ve ever not met a contractual obligation for a book, but that’s the way the wind blew for a little while. If you want to write about elderhood as an initiation, a rite of passage, I guess you have to earn it with an initiation or two yourself! Writing for me, as for so many authors, is always a process of discovery; I’m writing to make sense of myself, and of the world around me. So the idea that I might come out of writing any book untouched and unscathed is unlikely; nevertheless, Hagitude feels, more than any other book, as if it was born from blood, sweat and tears – as well as from a months-long journey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

One of the strange things about the publication of a book for its author is that, by the time it’s out, it’ll have usually been about a year since you finished the manuscript and handed it in. In the intervening period there are edits, and covers, and all kinds of related bits of this and that – but chances are that an author will have moved on to other writing by then. I certainly have, with two new writing projects on the go. So it can be hard sometimes, a year on, to place yourself back in the ‘feel’ of the book, and to reengage with the passions that caused you to write it in the first place. Well, that hasn’t really been the case with Hagitude, because the issue of what it means to be elder, and what it means to live a meaningful and rich second half of life, is still very much uppermost in my mind. And will be, I suspect, for a good number of years. So I’m delighted that there’s been so much interest in the book from all quarters – including a lovely full-page review in The Sunday Times last weekend. In the course of the article, the reviewer said of me: ‘She knows her archetypes, knows her Jung, knows her fairytales and knows her neuroscience, and is sick of being patronised by men who don’t.’ I think that expresses my personal concept of hagitude perfectly, and also might end up as my epitaph!

Last week I was asked, in an interview, why – in this book, as in all my others – I was always so focused on stories. What is it about stories, and why do they matter? Well, here’s how I answer that question in the book:

But really, why should the Cailleach matter now? Why should the other fierce and shining old women of European myth and folklore who populate the pages of this book matter? Why should any of these old stories matter? Aren’t they just ancient history? Nice to know, but irrelevant to our infinitely more sophisticated lives today? Well, they matter because the ways in which we think about ageing depend on the stories we tell about it. How we think about ageing women depends on the images we hold of them. And the images we hold of ageing women today aren’t healthy. Truth is, there is no clear image of enviable female elderhood in the contemporary cultural mythology of the West; it’s not an archetype we recognise any more. In our culture, old women are mostly ignored, encouraged to be inconspicuous, or held up as objects of derision and satire.

But our old mythology and folklore tell us something very much more interesting: that it hasn’t always been so. In our more distant past, as of course in many indigenous cultures today, female elders were respected, and had important and meaningful roles to play. They are the ones who hold the myths and the wisdom stories; the ones who know where the medicine plants grow and what their uses are. They serve as guides for younger adults; they’re the caregivers and mentors for the community’s children. They know when the community is going to the dogs, and they’re not afraid to speak out and say so. When they do, they’re listened to. Their focus is on giving back – on bringing out, for the sake of Earth and community, the hard-earned wisdom which they’ve grown within themselves.

... Myths and stories such as these help us not only to understand life as it is, or was – but to dream life as it ought to be. We perceive, explain and make sense of the world through stories. They are the stars we navigate by, and that’s why storytelling is a universal human phenomenon, a vital aspect of communal life across all cultures and throughout the entirety of our known history. Stories teach us everything we know, and their lessons are deep and rich. Stories can reveal to us longings that we never knew we had, fire us up with new ideas and insights, and inspire us to grow and change. The characters in stories are great teachers, too: they are role models for our development, helping us to reimagine ourselves. Helping us to unravel who we are, and to work out who we want to become.

So, I hope you’ll forgive me if this particular monthly newsletter is a little top-heavy on all things Hagitude. By the time October comes around, I’ll be able to share with you a little more about the new book I’ll be beginning this autumn. And in the meantime, the rowan berries are falling off the trees, and it’s time to reap the early but abundant harvest that’s out there in the landscape right now. There’s already rhubarb jam and rosemary jelly in the store cupboard; it’s time to add to the hoard. And here I am last Thursday, windswept, up the hill behind our house enjoying a chat with two ravens who had rather a lot to say for themselves, and who seemed to think that hagitude was a quality that probably belongs to corvids too. It was cool up there. Winter is coming, and this old crow couldn’t be happier about that.

As always, I wish you the fruits and the flourishings of whatever season you find yourself living through.

Sharon

Hagitude news

Audiobook and e-books now available worldwide

An update on editions: the audiobook of Hagitude, narrated by me, is available for pre-order now via Audible and all the usual suspects, and will be released (in all territories, worldwide) on Thursday September 1.

The Kindle/ other e-book versions of Hagitude will also be available worldwide on September 1 and can similarly be pre-ordered now.

The book – hardback version – is coming on 1 September 2022 from September Publishing (available in all territories outside of North America and Australasia); the North American trade paperback from New World Library will be published on October 11. The Australian edition will be published by Brio books also on October 11 (pre-order on Booktopia for the best service).

A reminder that you can still order copies of the collector’s edition of Hagitude – but directly from my UK publisher’s website only. It comes as a luxury slipcased hardback, with a unique design and with a new, original story from me, based on a character of mine that some of you might remember – Old Crane Woman. Each copy will be signed and numbered by me (these are the only signed copies of Hagitude that will be available), and there will also be a numbered, limited-edition A5 art print by artist Natalie Eslick, featuring her beautiful portrait of Old Crane Woman. This limited edition is available to pre-order now here: https://septemberpublishing.org/product/hagitude-limited-edition/

Podcast: The Hagitude Sessions – now available

From Monday August 15, each week (and for a few more weeks to come), I’ve been releasing a new episode of my ‘This Mythic Life’ podcast, themed around Hagitude. The Hagitude Sessions feature conversations with remarkable women about the challenges and opportunities they found during menopause and in the second half of life.

The first episode was with Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure for Sleep, who will also be part of my Hagitude program team. The second was with Alexandra Pope, co-founder of Red School and co-author of the forthcoming book Wise Power, from Hay House. This coming Monday, you can listen to my conversation with psychologist, therapist, shamanic teacher, Earth activist and author Christa Mackinnon, who was a teacher of mine a good twenty years ago now.

You can listen here on the Hagitude podcast webpage, or do subscribe to ‘This Mythic Life’ and listen in wherever you get your podcasts.

Read extracts, listen to audio ...

On my main website, you’ll find an extract of the first few pages of the book, to (hopefully) whet your appetite. You can read the full first chapter for yourself, or listen to me reading the first half of it. Over the weekend, I’ll also be uploading a short video of me talking about the book and how it came to be. https://sharonblackie.net/hagitude-reimagining-the-second-half-of-life/

Hagitude membership program

A reminder that the program begins on October 1, and is priced at just £260 for the full year. It will still be possible to join after the program has begun, but it would be a pity to miss the live events at the beginning. Lots more information at this link: https://hagitude.org/the-program/

Stories now available on the Hagitude website

As part of my effort to create free resources relating to women’s journey through elderhood, I’ve begun to add to the website the full text of the stories that you’ll find referred to in Hagitude. One of the many threads of the Hagitude membership program will be to collect other stories featuring elderwomen – from Europe as well as from other parts of the world – and we’ll be posting them there on the website too. I’ll be listing new stories here as they become available. (Including several featuring one of my favourite characters, the Henwife, seen below as she appears in the book, drawn by the brilliant Natalie Eslick.) https://hagitude.org/the-stories/

Forthcoming Hagitude launch events

SEPTEMBER 21

An interactive, exploratory online event, hosted by Conscious Café.

https://consciouscafe.org/event/reimagining-the-second-half-of-life-with-dr-sharon-blackie/

SEPTEMBER 24

‘Hagitude: Uncovering Your Inner Hag’: an online event at the Rowe Center, Massachusetts. For more details, please visit the event website.

OCTOBER 16

Join me for a live online conversation and Q&A about Hagitude at Banyen Books, Vancouver. Register for free here.

Reading recommendations

I finally got around to reading Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape, by Manchán Magan. For those of you who love Ireland, the Irish language, or just landscape, this comes much recommended; there are little sections on witches and the Cailleach, too.

The Irish language has thirty-two words for field. Among them are:

Geamhar – a field of corn-grass

Tuar – a field for cattle at night

Réidhleán – a field for games or dancing

Cathairín – a field with a fairy-dwelling in it

The richness of a language closely tied to the natural landscape offered our ancestors a more magical way of seeing the world. Before we cast old words aside, let us consider the sublime beauty and profound oddness of the ancient tongue that has been spoken on this island for almost 3,000 years. In Thirty-Two Words for Field, Manchán Magan meditates on these words – and the nuances of a way of life that is disappearing with them.

Manchán also has a new book out in October: Listen to the Land Speak. I’ll be looking forward to that one, too.

This month’s poem

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic – decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in though the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

– by Louise Erdrich from Original Fire. © Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.