Crone Chronicles #37(original)
Solitude

Solitude

As we move into our eldering years, we may find ourselves in solitude: either by chance or by choice. If we lose a partner, friends, or loved ones to death, our solitude may appear as a devastating sense of loss and loneliness. But sometimes we find the need to actually seek out solitude; after a lifetime of giving, yielding, accepting and bending, we may long for the chance to explore, delve and even luxuriate in aloneness. In this issue of Ann Kreilkamp's "Crone Chronicles" we have a chance to listen to the voices of women in both of these parallel -- but often opposite -- positions.

The issue begins with Jouida Gail's courageous essay "A Leap into the Void" in which she describes her decision to literally drop all her possessions and go "onto the road" — living along, in her car, for several months until, moving slowly out of a deep depression — she found her new home. Like Jouida, JoWynn Johns discovered that the initial devastation of enforced isolation turns into an unexpected journey into creativity in her article about her experience with chronic fatigue "My 'Disease' is Healing Me."

In "Odyssey" Alana Silva muses about questioning the socially-mandated need to have a romantic partner, while in "A Parallel Life" Georgia Jones interviews artist and "beat poet" Elizabeth Case about creativity and listening to her own voice within (or in spite of) a more "traditional" partnered life. In Tricia Godwin-Dickens' "Spiraling" the author explores how re-discovering solitude (which she had during her richly interior childhood but lost with the advent of a husband and children) broke open her defenses and enabled her to heal and become whole.

This celebration of the gifts of solitude continues with Claudia Worth's "The Hush," Carol Ann Marshall's "Ancestors" and Jane Tilton's "Into the Silence" but with "The Soul's Journey" by Catherine Madden, we begin to delve in the shadow side of solitude: the perilous descent of the soul into surrender and even madness. Yet at the end of this journey is the promise of a rebirth into new life, for which the agony of dissolution is the necessary payment. The theme of the journey is also addressed in Lee Mamunes’ piece "Winter Wisdom" in which she explores the Crone as Underworld Holy Hag Hecate, mistress of transformational magic. Lastly, in this issue Carol Rosin completes her interview with futurist and visionary Barbara Marx Hubbard (began in issue 36) in which they discuss how she deals with setbacks, negativity, and the challenges of creating peace in a society seemingly addicted to war.

This is a very deep, challenging, and lustrous issue of Crone Chronicles: truly a gem to treasure and read over, again and again. 84 pages, edited and published by Ann Kreilkamp at the Winter Winter Solstice 1998-99 of 1998.