I am writing to you from summertime in Aotearoa, New Zealand. In this land of the long white cloud there is a strong tradition, little known elsewhere, of elder women, kuia, who are indefatigable and staunch leaders. Their biographies are memoir models, revealing how to live unflinchingly wearing the mantle of feminine power. These are no-frill women, immune to fashion. They are free of any impulse to impress with manufactured ageless skin and disgustingly expensive couture attire. They work with their hands as well as their brilliant, grounded minds.
Now, when all of humanity faces extinction from self-created climate crisis, there is a vital contemporary presence alongside a history of women here who know what to do. Māori were threatened with genocide beginning with the arrival of Pakeha (Europeans) in 1840. Recognizing the potential of this verdant, gorgeous land, their intention to eradicate the indigenous people was almost successful. Soon far outnumbering Māori, attacking them with artillery that Māori had never before encountered, and infecting Māori with diseases for which they had no immunity, it appeared that genocide would win. But it didn’t.
Resilience and ingenuity have risen to the surface for the women of valor whose stories are little known and which I want to share with the rest of the world. They are the memoir models, the biographies that must be told. Just as your stories are hidden, secreted away for wont of the documentation, the stories of these women are yearning to be revealed. We need them. We need to know about the women, like you, whose passion for regeneration and truth is so intense that they will strive prodigiously, often behind the scenes, to save humanity.
The women I am speaking of do not ever promote war as an option. They are peace makers. They use their words and their presence, their direct actions, to embody the power of intelligence, creativity, and peace. They are life-bringers. They vouch for the preciousness of each individual’s capacity to contribute to the evolution of consciousness and civilization. Soak up their gift to you to find your own voice and hone and refine it. Attend to this every day, as any true crone and artist must. Become irrepressible, like them. Unstoppable. Outspoken. Daring. This is a glorious, fulfilling and deeply satisfying way to be and live.
Te Puea Herangi was born in what is known as Kings Country, Aotearoa, in 1883. Her name means “the rise to the surface.” In this post I associate that meaning with how her model allows the voices of the women she inspires to rise to the surface from their underground hiding places. She died in 1951. During her 68 year of life, Te Puea forged unions of cooperation for Māori land reclamation and created a renaissance of Māori culture and respect for the Māori worldview. Te Puea was a seer, a songwriter and a poet, but she was also a strategist, a social and economic justice innovator, an educator, an advocate for Māori health and wellbeing, and, throughout everything, an emanation of confidence.
And her hands were always in the soil, in the earth of her beloved country. In 1939, in a plea for Māori land reclamation, Te Puea said, “The land is our mother and father. It is the loving parent who nourishes us and sustains us. When we die, it folds us in its arms.”
Te Puea encouraged, and even in some cases, instigated a return to farming for Māori as a way to economic security, and she secured the land and the money to make this possible. She was a farmer herself, declaring “Food gathered by others merely tickles the throat. That grown by one’s own effort provides true satisfaction.”
Te Puea fits right in with our current regenerative agriculture and social justice movements. Her voice is contemporary, and yet she is virtually unknown even to feminists. Clearly a prophet and a visionary, we need her presence now. I invoke it.
You will hear more from me about Te Puea and others who are in a lineage that crones deserve to know about, identify with, and claim as ancestors in the rise of feminine wisdom for a world that craves and desperately needs it. Above all else, it is the confidence and practicality to just do it, to be what we are born to be, that we must imbibe. Like Te Puea, allow the unswerving dedication to inborn destiny, felt, breathed, and articulated with every inner sensation, to erase your doubts and insecurities. Te Puea did not dwell on her insecurities. She alchemized them immediately by going forth.
“Your writing has been of great support to me. Convincing me to keep going, keep writing.” ~ Lydia Williams
To schedule a Crone Speak Session to upgrade your writing, contact Stephanie Mines directly at tara-approach@prodigy.net or leave a message here.
When you become a paid subscriber or increase your subscription rate, you receive a bonus document that supports your creativity.
I'm currently reading Goddesses in Older Women by Jean Shinoda Bolen, and your writing topic fits right in. Embracing my own crone-ness at age 58. ✨ Powerful and grounded!
Your writing continues to inspire me. Mine is coming soon...