Are you an elder?

Time to reveal your true colours

I’ve used images of the autumn leaves of the grape vine here at Viveka Gardens in the publicity for the Embracing Elderhood workshops and retreats.

After the flowering and fruiting, chlorophyll retreats and the leaves reveal their true colours. The colours are vibrant, rich, intriguing and beautiful. The leaves continue to provide haven for insects and birds, and in due course compost the soil with nutrients for the next season.

Productivity as such is over, but the leaves continue to serve.

A ‘character’

Chloe came for a work exchange retreat . She gave a great review describing the place, how much she’d enjoyed it and the benefits she’d got. It’s clear she loved it.

But in the middle of it comes the line, ‘Fiona is a character!’

A ‘character’, and an exclamation point?! Okay…

She goes on, ‘I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to hear about her life experiences and learn from her knowledge on so many topics’. For me to hear that second, validating, part took a while. Of 300+ positive words in the review I fretted about four. That showed me something about my ego!

Life experience and learning

And I got to thinking: sharing elements of my long (er) life experience and learning somehow made a difference in our exchanges. At least, Chloe said she was grateful.

I realised I had actually been taken for the elder that I aspire to be. I’m growing into it.

‘Eccentricity is the first sign of giftedness’

These cheery words further encouraged me in being a ‘character’. They are from Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her wonderfully subtitled How to be an Elder: Volume 5, Myths & Stories of the Wise Woman archetype.

I strongly recommend listening to this eccentric elder of elders because her delivery is delightful, warm, funny, true and very very wise. Try out a preview here.

Clarissa states some things that are kind of obvious, but can take a life time to discover: we are each made one of a kind and we are born gifted. It is an error to seek normalcy - please get over that delusion as soon as possible, she adds with a chuckle. To show your eccentricity, to be a character, is also to show your particular gifts.

Elderhood: time to reveal more and more the true you

I believe that we are each wonderfully made (Psalm 139 v14) and our work is to become more the one we are intended to be. One’s character and gifts are your divine right and, indeed, normalcy or conforming (overly) against our nature won’t work.

Growing into your elderhood, now freed of the need to conform, is THE time to finally reveal your true colours born of your life experience and learning.

We do have more experience to draw on

I have thirty more years than Chloe. She’s an assured woman, confident enough to reflect honestly on what’s going on in her life. However, I recognise that I do have that extra life experience. Also, that my knowledge stretches back a couple of extra generations too, as I, to some extent carry the experience of my parents and grandparents. Chloe has a lot, but maybe I offered some different perspectives. I learned a lot from her too.

Sharing from an authentic place

Owning your life, your failings and flaws and being honest in learning from your life: all this means we can authentically overflow with elderhood goodness.

We model that a life lived well includes mistakes, mis-adventures and subversion even when we played the game. And, indeed, should we have had a uniquely tidy life - well, I think we will have learned that that was a mistake too.

Our mission, should we decide to accept it

What’s more it’s our role to live this, show this and transmit the essential importance of this to the young. We can also transmit this, Clarissa suggests, to the depleted, the uneducated-yet, the inexperienced; to folk who are lost in life at the moment; to people who have experienced loss, too.

Being and giving are our work:

+ Coming more into we are meant to be involves courageous inner work.

+ Sharing our life learning involves courageous work outside.

Giving our time and effort and service can be choice in elderhood.

Postscript caveat: La que sabe - she who knows

The wise woman archetype - la que sabe, she who knows - is a lovely thing. Clarissa encourages us to feel connection with elders that have gone before. There are the wise women of other traditions and cultures where female elders were revered, and the more underground ones where there maybe wasn’t so much reverence, and where wise women were seen as eccentric, characters and dangerous.

However, la che sabe can definitely be used ironically. Oh God! She’s going on again about how it was in her day, endlessly telling us about the time when, insisting this is what we should do. She who knows is on again!

No, this won’t do! We need to discern when our wisdom is wanted, needed and relevant. We can offer perspectives, the youngers can - and will - choose whether to take any notice. The best is when your counsel is sought: in truth, only others can decide if you are an elder for them today.

What about you?

Are you an elder? An emergent elder? Never really thought about it? Who have been your elders? What’s your aspiration with elderhood? How do being and giving work together? I’d love to know your experience and learning. This exploration has been going on for me and for women visiting here for workshops and retreats.

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Sign up for more ideas and questions from me at Viveka Gardens

There are a couple of places left on the Embracing Elderhood Retreat at September Equinox 2025, and more workshops and retreats on the Elderhood topic coming.

You might also like this post Embracing Elderhood, and this one, Goodbye Good Girl

See ya later, sisers!