6d • General discussion
Maiden - Mother - Matriarch
What if the next stage of your life requires a different identity?
There is an old way of describing the stages of a woman’s life:
Maiden. Mother. Crone.
I understand the history behind the word “crone,” and in some traditions it represents wisdom.
But let’s be honest.
For a modern woman, “Congratulations, you’ve reached your Crone years” doesn’t exactly make you want to throw confetti.
It sounds like the story is winding down.
And I think for many women, the opposite is happening.
You may be entering the part of your life when you have more experience, more perspective, more discernment, and far less interest in proving yourself.
You’re not disappearing.
You’re becoming the Matriarch.
And that is a very different identity.
Maiden. Mother. Matriarch.
I don’t see these simply as stages determined by age or whether a woman has children.
I see them as different positions from which we create.
The Maiden is becoming. She explores, learns, tries things, seeks approval, takes risks, discovers who she is.
The Mother creates, builds, protects, nurtures, carries responsibility, solves problems, and often holds far more together than anyone realizes.
Then something begins to change.
The strategies that served the Mother start becoming exhausting.
She doesn’t necessarily need to work harder, care more, or carry more.
She needs a different relationship with her own authority.
That is where I see the Matriarch.
The Matriarch still cares deeply.
But she doesn’t have to carry everything.
She guides.
She decides.
She allows other adults to carry their own responsibilities.
She knows when to intervene and when to stay out of the way.
She has earned wisdom through experience, but perhaps more importantly, she begins trusting herself enough to use it.
That shift sounds wonderful.
Living it can be another matter.
“I need better boundaries.”
A woman I worked with recently was experiencing this transition in her family.
She had spent years occupying the familiar role of the family mom. She helped. She worried. She stepped in. She carried things.
Now some of those relationships were changing, and she recognized that she needed to respond differently.
Her first thought was:
“I need to set boundaries.”
Perfectly reasonable.
Except the language didn’t feel right to her.
It sounded defensive. Almost as though she needed to build a wall between herself and people she loved.
As we talked, something else emerged.
Perhaps this wasn’t primarily about boundaries.
Perhaps her role was changing.
She wasn't being asked to become less loving.
She was being asked to stop mothering people who no longer needed her to occupy that role in the same way.
The word that fit was "matriarch."
And suddenly the question changed.
Instead of:
“How do I set boundaries?”
It became something closer to:
“How does the Matriarch respond?”
That is an identity question.
And identity changes what becomes available.
Then something else became visible.
The same woman was experiencing overwhelm in her business.
At first, family and business looked like two different problems.
They weren’t.
She was mothering her business, too.
Carrying too much.
Taking responsibility for too much.
Responding to every need.
Keeping too much in her own hands.
The circumstances were different.
The identity underneath them was remarkably similar.
That’s why I often say that the way we create one thing is the way we create everything.
Not because every problem has the same cause.
Because we bring ourselves with us.
Our identity influences what we notice, what we believe is ours to carry, what we tolerate, what we expect, and what we automatically do next.
Change the circumstances without changing that position, and we often recreate a familiar experience somewhere else.
Story. Pivot. Lesson. Growth.
There is a simple process I’ve been working with that helps us look at our experiences differently.
STORY
What happened?
Not the polished version. Not the version you think you should tell.
What story have you been telling yourself about what happened?
PIVOT
Where does your understanding of that story begin to change?
Perhaps the problem wasn’t that you failed to establish boundaries.
Perhaps an old identity was still doing the job it had learned to do.
LESSON
What does the experience teach you about yourself?
What worked?
What no longer fits?
What are you ready to stop carrying forward?
GROWTH
What becomes possible because you understand the experience differently?
This is the part we often miss.
We keep telling the old story as evidence of who we are instead of using the story as information about who we are becoming.
Your next level may not need a better version of your old identity.
This is where identity work becomes so interesting to me.
Sometimes we keep trying to improve the identity that got us here.
Be a more organized Mother.
A more disciplined Mother.
A Mother with better boundaries.
A Mother who finally learns to say no.
But what if the answer isn’t becoming better at the old role?
What if another identity is ready to take her place?
The Matriarch doesn't need to stop loving.
She changes the way she loves.
She doesn't stop contributing.
She changes the way she contributes.
She doesn't abandon responsibility.
She becomes more discerning about what is actually hers.
And she doesn't need to become invisible as she gets older.
She has something now that the younger version of herself did not have.
Evidence.
Years of it.
Successes. Mistakes. Losses. Reinventions. Relationships. Work. Decisions she would make differently. Decisions she would make exactly the same way again.
That isn't the end of the story.
And perhaps one of the most interesting questions we can ask at this stage of life is not:
“What should I do next?”
It is:
“Who am I now?”
Because once that answer begins to change, the way you create what comes next begins changing with it.
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Maiden - Mother - Matriarch
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