How To Be An Old Woman

Teachings From My Grandmother, Julia

When death comes to take me across the final threshold of this life, will I whisper hello? Will I cower in fear? Will my last feelings be ones of regret for all the things I didn’t do? If I could script the last moments of my life, they would look like this: I would take one last breath and exhale “thank you” as my final human act. But death doesn’t work like that. It isn’t in our control or on our timetable.

What does it mean to be an old woman, living the last part of life? For me, old age is sacred, a time when the voice softens and the gait slows, but the trails still beckon. The body calls for more rest, more reflection. Being an old woman is a surrender—a giving of one’s self to the eternal nature of the human spirit.

At the edges of old age, one can easily be seduced by the illusion of youth, the commercialized version of beauty that insists on its value. The promises of Botox, fillers, and face-lifts offer a fleeting escape from the undeniable truth of growing old. But all these efforts to erase time feel like an apology for having lived, as if clinging to youth might somehow ward off the inevitable.

My grandmother Julia never apologized for growing old. She had long white hair that she twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck, but at night, when I crawled into bed beside her, it lay wild across the pillow. She was wise and magic—a true Crone who knew the secrets of green and growing things. The same bony hands that counted rosary beads also picked peas, green beans, and tomatoes. Each of those acts were as prayerful as the other. Her garden was an altar, a temple beneath the sky, where she taught me that tending to life was, in itself, an act of worship.

Unlike me, Julia did not come of age in a world of self-help books and treatises on trauma, or workshops on embodying the self. She did not question whether she was living an authentic life; she simply lived. She believed her purpose was to serve others. She gave away bags of food from her garden, tithed to her church, and bestowed upon her grandchildren the quiet, unwavering value of being thankful.

Julia died in her sleep at ninety-something, and even though she’s been gone for over fifty years, I think of her often. In these chaotic times, when the world feels like it’s unraveling at the seams, I remind myself that she, too, knew upheaval. She was a little girl when her family fled Poland with a dream of an easier life. She crossed an ocean and half a country before settling in Elbert, Colorado. She lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. She bore three daughters and a stillborn son. Suffering was a familiar companion, yet she never complained. Instead, she tended—to her family, her garden, to strangers in need.

To me, she embodied the best and most authentic qualities of being an old woman.

She was a good listener.

She was grateful—not as an occasional practice, but as a state of being.

In my imaginings and memory, I see her living life as if it were poetry. She found beauty in the land stretched tight against the sky, the land that gave her nourishment both physically and spiritually. She spoke the language of plants, animals, and the elements, knowing how to live with the earth rather than just on it.

Though she never went beyond the fourth grade, she read. She nurtured her curiosity, her sense of discovery, her creativity.

She knew what it was to fail spectacularly, to lose those she loved, to be burned by the furnace of life and scattered like ash. And despite so much suffering—and maybe because of it—she answered a calling to serve, practicing kindness and goodwill without expectation.

I am an old woman now, too. And while this culture may see those words as ladened with baggage, I embrace them. I own them. I wear them as a mantle, a declaration that finds inspiration in the old women who came before me and continue to light my way.

Lies, cons and betrayal, crashing economies, the unraveling of world order—such things feel crushing until I remember my grandmother, who, no matter the circumstances, tended to life with thankfulness, simplicity and humility.

One day life will recede, and death will return me to the stardust from which I came. Until then, may I live as a grateful old woman who tends to family and flowering pots; to peacefulness found on forest trails; may I advocate for women everywhere to be seen and treated as free and sovereign souls; and may the purposefulness of my tending lift others, helping them to see their worth, just as Julia lifted me.

I am an old woman, knitting together the pieces of life’s great shatterings, finding within the knotted threads the blessings that come with the grit of those who walked before me. In the still flickering light of Julia’s wisdom, I am humbled, hopeful that in my final chapter, I too will tend to life with thankfulness for each new day.

Dear and precious reader, love who you are and where you are in this life. Remember and find inspiration in the ones who came before you. Know that love and kindness are radical acts that will preserve welcoming and civility in our country. Walk by water. Wander in the garden and on forest trails. Breathe in the sunrise. Give thanks. Help someone in need. May we continue to find meaning in how we tend to life.

Please share something about a grandmother or other old woman figure whose wisdom inspires you. Or tell me how you hold the term old woman. Let’s have a conversation.

Thank you,

Jody Day

and

Dr Sharon Blackie

for being such a powerful resource for the new imaginings and potential of our best Crone selves.

#philosophy + spirituality #health +wellness