There are so many wonderful facets to CREATRIX RISING: Unlocking the Power of Midlife Women by Stephanie Raffelock as it takes a closer look at women’s reality in relation to age, accomplishment, sisterhood connection, language, healing and even current events. Helping to deflate the much-perpetuated Newsweek myth that women over 35 years of age are more likely to be shot by a terrorist than marry (which was based on a faulty study and eventually recalled), by her 50s the author managed to debunk such fearful foolishness and she posits that perhaps the midlife stage of being a “Creatrix” who is coming into her full power is a stage that’s been left out of the traditional three-point paradigm of Maiden-Mother-Crone. After all, regardless of how feminists endeavored to reclaim the word, originally the term “…crone entered the lexicon six hundred year ago, around 1390…” and was meant to define a disagreeable old woman often portrayed as–not just elderly–but also ugly and desexualized. How many mothers in their 20s, 30s, or 40s plan on becoming disagreeable and decrepit just as soon as the kids move towards having lives of their own? (Or for that matter, via the above limited female archetypes, are women who don’t become mothers supposedly skipping directly from Maiden to Crone?)
Raffelock contends that the stage of becoming the kind of seasoned powerhouse that she’s named a “Creatrix” is what she and so many mature women are experiencing; a time when the birth of much goodness beyond having children is possible. This stage is not necessarily always easy or smooth, however. Most touching are the personal tales Raffelock shares from her life–for instance how wonderfully, generously sharing and caring a group of girlfriends she was able to spontaneously be part of at one time as all of them strived to secure careers, and how heartbreaking it was to try and recreate that type of collective camaraderie many years later in an organized way, only to have those efforts explode. Occurrences with workplace sexual harassment with non-disclosure settlements are explored, alongside eras of surviving drug-use and the process of becoming one’s own hero(ine). This is a supportive self-actualizing resource of the highest order and readers of any age are likely to palpably feel their spirits rise.
Prompts for reflection, journaling, and action-taking are amply provided in Stephanie Raffelock’s CREATRIX RISING: Unlocking the Power of Midlife Women, an eclectic, personable, encouraging, deep-pondering, and potentially life-changing ode to ladies coming into their own.
~C.S. Holmes for IndieReader