Dreams for a Crone
By Elle Dooley
It was a marriage of prompts and tarot. Jana Jopson and Kayce Hughlett together. Jana was inspired to share prompts from Julia Cameron’s book, “It's Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond”. Her inspiration was to weave the tarot into journaling afterwards. Kayce brought the questions for the cards. This was the first of our sessions for Garden of Old Bones - Seeds of Summer. To learn more, I warmly invite you to watch the replay of the call here.
The prompts from Cameron’s book are a call and response. The call is the beginning of a sentence which is completed very quickly with five responses. I often feel, having done this and similar practices, that my responses are predictable. It gets more and more difficult to surprise myself. But there was the barest glimmer of something unexplored. The first prompt, “If it weren’t too late, I’d…” brought forth “be a major league baseball player.” The dream itself is neither here nor there. I had, and have, an active imagination.
No, I didn’t explore the possibility of playing major league baseball at 71. I began, instead, to recall the many dreams I had when I was young. Some became aspirations; some were related to career goals. I achieved many things on my journey through life. My deepest dreams have yet to be realized. And it hit me – there is a belief deep within that my most precious dreams were for myself as a young woman. My dreams for the Fairy Princess, the Femme Fatale, the Prima Ballerina.
What if my dreams were destined to be fulfilled by myself as an old crone? What if I was dreaming for myself a deeper, richer life as an Elder?
Young dreams for an old crone. This fills me with a renewed sense of hope. It says to me that I was caring for my Elder self all my life. As if I’d known all along I would be here, at this point, with these dreams.
Did you dream for your Elder self when you were young? Imagine that. And share with us if you’re called to do so.
Much love and tender dreams.
