Maiden Mother Crone
What does it mean to be a woman who is not a mother? How do I enter the next phase of life when I haven’t achieved creative fulfilment in the expected ways? Aware of the fear I felt at each new stage in the passage of womanhood, I meet myself at moments of transformation in the body and psyche and allow my selves to speak back to one another: I need my maiden self to know there are other ways to be a woman; my crone self to remind me that a woman’s power to create knows no bounds.
I turn to Mary Magdalene and the wisdom of her long-lost gospel for inspiration: she knows how to be a wholly/holy embodied woman. Irrepressible, despite the silencing of centuries. In every recovered version of her gospel, the first six pages were missing. What was so scandalous that it had to be erased? So begins a humorous and loving quest to discover the magic of my own ‘missing pages’ – a woman’s true creative potential and authority - and the remembering that every one of us carries within us a knowing that surpasses anything we can be taught.
About Henrietta
I am a psychotherapist and breath worker and performer/storyteller and this year co-carried Emerson's flagship 3-month-long Storytelling Beyond Words course.
I left London and my reluctant, martyrish ways of being back in in 2017, and headed excitedly to clown school - a step that would change my life forever. I embarked on a long –d life-long, I hope – exploration of the body, breath, play, and the amazing medicines that we are fortunate enough to connect with these days. I see this as part of an ongoing calling to be more vital and free; I am interested in how we awaken the innate, unconditioned parts of ourselves and remember who we truly are. That’s my intention as a storyteller: to keep reminding myself, reminding each other, that we are divine beings, necessary and worthy parts of a beautiful whole.
