An image of a wise woman
Paint a wise woman. How would you imagine her? What picture do you paint in your mind?
The famous film director Agnieszka Holland once said:
“Mature women become transparent to the system and the environment at some point.”
This statement vividly stuck in my memory because there are indeed less silver-haired women in films, but they are also less visible on the streets of life in many ways. They do not only struggle to get hired in the film industry. These silvers are almost invisible on the streets when they are no longer blushing with red lips and young bodies.
Whilst I feel still fairly young at the age of 37, my grey hairs are sticking out proudly like fir trees in the forest. These are also the ones which are crude and rough or even disobedient. They grow wild. They are the ones sticking out in an unruly way, behaving like sprouts of insubordination.
Even if I dare to dye them, the silver threads will be the first to grow and remind me of their existence. And maybe that’s for the best.
So what are the grey hairs? I try to think of them like sprouts and seeds of something that has been always in us, hidden, but also something that has been crushed, kneaded and disciplined.
But no longer. No longer should you should hide it or discipline it to fit. The age comes when the grey hair just wants to grow and nothing will stop it. What is it? What’s in that grey hair? It’s wisdom.
The feminine power of your wisdom
Your greys tell the story that you are no longer shy, naïve, insecure, nor kneaded into a form that needs to fit in. Remember. No longer. Now your wisdom is your power that comes to light and shines so brightly that it intimidates the fools.
Imagine that the sun and the moon love to look at them and reflect your wisdom’s light onto the rest of the world. Time in this newly imagined world is your best friend and only gives your wisdom greater power.
That’s the image I wanted to paint in my recent book, The Sacred Mountains. Whilst writing, I wanted to make space for more women in art, more women in books and more women in the heroine role, more women with their powers and wisdom.
I wanted to also bring the picture of wisdom that resides with our female intuition. To some, though, female wisdom and intuition are almost terrifying in the way they resound, like sudden thunder on a sunny day.
Burning female wisdom at the stakes
Centuries ago, this wisdom sounded so terrible to some that it had to be burned at the stake. For those who came up with the idea of putting witches on trial and sending them to the stake, earthly female wisdom was ringing in their ears so loudly that suddenly it had to be muffled, burned to soft ashes.
On the other hand, consider how great this wisdom must have been that they came up with the idea that only fire could destroy it, or so they thought at the time. But to my surprise, after centuries and centuries of taming knowledge and our feminine instincts, it seems that they somehow failed. Think about why, millions of years ago, after enormous fires on the earth, forests began to grow again, meadows bloomed, and those fires even helped fertilize the soil?
This is because it is the nature of the earth to grow, to be nutritious for plants, animals, and human life. And so, the earthly wisdom of women has never been fully destroyed.
Just like the ashes, it stayed deep in the ground, and just like the earth, reborn itself from great fires, the wisdom of a wise woman did as well. It was buried deep, but the time has come to give it a new life. And so, we are reborn. And no longer should you hide your wrinkles or your grey hair, or yourself or your craft or who you are.
The power of nature in you
My main character in the book The Sacred Mountains, Lola, goes on a journey to follow her instincts. She goes against what her village elders advise. She goes against the set pathways she was taught. She goes against the warning of a “dangerous journey.”
As she goes, she meets on her way friendly souls, men and women of wisdom. But the magic and powers belong to women in this book. To the old grey-haired women.
It was an old woman, the Healeress, who gave the young girl a hand at the first fall. When she collapsed and could no longer stand by the gates of the first village she visited, the wise woman came.
“Dusk was coming, and from the forest nearby an old woman was returning with a bucket of greenery, flowers and herbs. She wore a long purple dress and had long grey hair.”
The old woman opened the gates and invited Lola into the village. Inside, there were bonfires and bunches of dried flowers hanging on fences. Music was playing in houses, and as Lola walked with the old woman through the village, people looked out of the windows to welcome the traveler. And then a few days later, she meets the old woman again to be taught a lesson about her herb fields.
The old wise women appear in the story to help the young girl initiate into her wisdom. When she leaves the village, she follows her instincts, but she is still naïve and only when she meets her true teachers does she grow into who she was meant to be and finds her home in between the forbidden mountain villages.
Creating space for feminine wisdom through your creativity
So, if you are a grey-haired woman, don’t hide. Bring your wisdom to light. If you are an artist, give female wisdom a space again. In art, in books, in music, in dance shows, in films, at the table, whatever you do. Tap into the wisdom they have. See the intuitive eyes in which the sun and the moon mirror its magic.
Paint a wise woman. How would you imagine her now?
About the author
Kinga writes short stories, blogs and books. She is the author of Dreamford – Live and Work with Purpose and The Sacred Mountains. She also runs the SoulfulStories podcast.
Author links
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Dreamford – Work and Live with Purpose
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