Image of the Week: Birth of the Crone
© Durga Yael Bernhard
This gouache painting on birchbark was done in 2004, when my third and youngest child was a toddler. Images of birth and motherhood had poured forth from my imagination throughout my childbearing years – but now I knew this phase of my life was coming to a close. Suddenly I had a vision of a different kind of birth: that of a woman not on the threshold of motherhood, but on the cusp of becoming a crone.
But this was not just any crone. This crone was a healer, a "sage-femme" as they say in French – a woman of the forest who has received an unbroken chain of knowledge handed down from grandmother to mother to daughter for countless generations. She gathers herbs from the forest, steeps nourishing brews, and makes her own medicines. She strives to heal gently, often indirectly, by nourishing and supporting the body's innate ability to heal itself. Such a healer ripens and matures with age, gathering patience and wisdom along with roots, leaves, flowers, seeds, and fungi.
From this perspective, all of life is a process to be honored, and the beginning of each phase is a new birth. As I looked ahead, I felt the wheel of my own life turning from girlhood to maidenhood to motherhood to cronehood. I wanted my elder years to be grounded in my connection to nature, which I chose to symbolize with the three most powerful and prevalent animals of the forest where I live: the black bear, the whitetail deer, and the raptors. As an active hiker, hunter, and forager, I saw these animals often in the wild, and felt intimately connected to them.
Now seventeen years later I feel like I was still quite young when I created this piece. These days I'm more inclined to hold that steaming cup of tea in the woman's hands than to draw back an arrow or climb a mountain – though I still do a lot of foraging. I look back at the image with a sigh, as one might read a journal entry from years ago – one which was meant to shape a future that is suddenly present. Time passes so quickly.
It's all good. The image is purposely positive. Surrounded by healing plants and animal allies, this budding young crone is at peace.
Wishing you a good and peaceful week.