Issue #2. A room of one's own - SheSheds and Shacks for solitude
Share the joy of solitude for a few lucky crones who have seized mid-life to make a room of their own. Includes Patti Smith, Bridget Christie, and of course, Virginia Woolf.
Welcome wonderful crones, crones-in-training and crone-allies to Issue 2 of ‘Tits to the Wind!’, Crone Club’s new e-magazine. Huge thanks to all those who have subscribed so far and to our 21 paid subscribers. 🥳 You all rock.
In this month’s issue, we celebrate the joy of solitude in ‘SheSheds’, a concept that me and my pal Ellie were convinced we’d invented 10 years ago ( “OMG, ‘She’ is even the first part of the word, SHED!”)
But as Elizabeth Gilbert in ‘Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear’ says, we don’t own ideas. Ideas come to us and, if we don’t carry them through, the idea goes off and bothers someone else who makes it happen.
And happen it has! Two editions-worth, in fact. So, if you’ve sent in something for inclusion that isn’t featured in this one, please rest assured it will be lovingly shared in the ‘artists and makers’ edition coming soon.
But for now, set aside 30 minutes to step away from your laptop, lock your kids in the cellar, and enjoy the promise of freedom and solitude that can come with older age…
1. The shack by the sea
A few years ago, Mum bought me this beautiful book called ‘Gift from the Sea’ by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. First published over 60 years ago, when the writer herself was in mid-life, it’s a ‘meditation on youth, age, love and marriage, peace, solitude and contentment’. She wrote it during two weeks of solitude by the sea, having escaped from the daily grind of family responsibilities.
Each chapter is inspired by a shell she brings back from the beach - a gift from the sea. Of the ‘moon shell’, she writes:
“You will remind me that I must try to be alone for part of each year, even a week or a few days; and for part of each day, even for an hour or a few minutes in order to keep my core, my centre, my island-quality. You will remind me that unless I keep the island-quality intact somewhere within me, I will have little to give my husband, my children, my friends or the world at large.”
I was reminded of similar sentiments in Crone Music Legend Patti Smith’s Substack the other month, which she penned from her ‘bungalow by the beach’.
“I never get tired of walking with my trousers rolled along the shore. I never get tired of the sea. I never get tired of the poems of Rumi or sitting with coffee and an open notebook at my cafe table. Being at Rockaway Beach makes me happy. Listening to Kenji Kawai while sweeping my floor makes me happy. Glancing up at the small statue of the poet-dervish Rumi, that my mother gave me thirty years ago, makes me happy. So much strife, grief, and anxiety in the world. Thank the heavens for small pleasures and the ocean’s rolling music. I am so excited just to say hello to my little house and get sand all over everything and feel sudden waves of happiness in concert with the waves of the sea.”
2. The cabin in the woods
In Crone Club’s Private Facebook Members Group this month, regular Crone Club contributor, Monica Bowen, shared the following post: “The older I get, the more I understand it’s okay to live a life that others don’t understand.”
It was a sentiment we all heartily agreed on, and one beautifully embodied by the Polish biologist, ecologist, author, and uncompromising conservation activist, Simona Kossak (1943-2007). According to this wonderful post from the Facebook Group ‘Spirit of Old’, Simona spent more than 30 years in a wooden hut in the Bialowiza Forest, without electricity or access to running water.
“They called her a witch because she chatted with animals and owned a terrorist-crow, who stole gold and attacked bicycle riders. A lynx slept in her bed, and a tamed boar lived under the same roof with her. Simona believed that one ought to live simply, and close to nature. Among animals she found that which she never found with humans. She was also an activist who fought for the protection of Europe’s oldest forest.”
Enter Bridget Christie’s wonderful recent TV series, ‘The Change’, where her character, Linda, hits menopause and seeks solace in a caravan in the woods, ultimately saving the demolition of the Forest of Dean through sisterhood collaboration with the wonderfully eccentric locals.
I don’t know about you, but the older I’m getting, the deeper my connection seems to be with nature, something Christie's wonderful ‘Eel Sisters’ are keen to point out…
“Listen here vegetarian town mouse. See that tree o’er there? It’s been here hundreds of years. Just like our forefathers.”
“And foremothers!”
“I AM that tree. And see this earth? We were born on it…by those bins over there.”
This visceral connection of older women to the land is beautifully embodied in Nan Shepherd’s (1893-1981) love letter to nature, ‘The Living Mountain.’ (Shout out to my cuz at Pottery West for buying me this!)
“On the mountain, for an hour I am beyond desire. It is not ecstasy…I am not out of myself, but in myself. I am. That is the final grace accorded from the mountain.”
A simpler life close to nature is a dream of many crones and midlifers, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes beautifully about the SheShed as a place of ‘shedding’ <scuse the pun😳>.
“One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much. Physical shedding to being with. Clothes first…then vanity… I begin to shed my Martha-like anxiety about many things. Washing slip covers, faded and old - I hardly see them. I am shedding pride. As little furniture as possible; I shall not need much. I shall ask into my shell only those friends with whom I can be completely honest. I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That’s why so much of social life is exhausting, one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.”
To all our neurodiverse sisters and brothers reading this, this ‘shedding of the mask’ will strike a particularly loud chord. I wonder how many women throughout history, ridiculed for their need for solitude, were fellow Aspies/ A.D.Ders like us…
Crones like Barbara Walker, 69, who in this episode of Ben Fogle’s New Lives in the Wild, shed her comfortable life in Switzerland, to ultimately live alone in a caravan in the Australian Outback (not actually dissimilar to Linda’s caravan in its rustic nature!)
Like Simona Kossak, Barbara has committed her life to animals and wildlife, forgoing traditional comforts to be their caretaker. “I was put on this earth to save this little piece of land and nature.”
“I never really felt comfortable in my home country. Since childhood, I just had to go against the stream. I just always felt a little bit like a slave - you know, people saying: ‘You can't do this, you can't do that, this is forbidden, that is forbidden’. The older I got, the more it annoyed me.”
“And no,” she tells The Fogle, “I don't need a lover. But I could do with a labourer.”
3. The part-time cottage on the mountain
You don’t have to go whole hog, like Simona and Barbara. Sheffield artist and Crone Club member Lyn Hodnett has made a semi-permanent move to a ‘house on the hill’ in Corwen, North Wales, with her partner Clint (a woodsman!), spending half her time at her home in Sheffield.
“The views from my SheShed are absolutely incredible. And it IS ‘Tits to the Wind!’ up there, because it's Wales! It's wet and windy quite a lot of the time. The shed overlooks a glacial valley that fills with mist. In the morning, oh, particularly in September, when you look out of the windows, it looks like you're looking out onto an ocean. There's nobody else up there. It is incredibly isolated. Sometimes though, what we could do with, is more crones up there!”
Lyn is opening up her house on the mountain for crones to creatively collaborate next year. Follow her cottage’s Facebook page for details!
“Often, in my paintings, I use a shed or a building that a girl is coming away from - so it's not actually going into the shed, it’s coming out of it - going out on an adventure. For me, the shed is the inside of your head where things get put together, and it's sort of like, the womb, where things happen. It's like that dark space where you do your growth and then you bring it out into either the day or the night, according to what's most appropriate. Yeh, I like that. I think my head is my shed. Yeh, I'm a shed-head.”
So did Woolf have a shed of one’s own?
Of course she ruddy well did! That’s what an annual inheritance of £500 a year (equivalent to 28k in today’s money) gets ya!
And according to ‘My Cool Shed’ by Jane Field-lewis, Virginia was excited about the prospect of having her own private space where she could write without any interruptions:
“There will be open doors in front, and a view right over to Caburn. I think I shall sleep there on summer nights.”
One can but dream… 💚
Subscriber SheSheds for Solitude
Thanks so much to the following Crone Clubbers who shared their SheSheds for Solitude in response to last month’s #CroneAssignment.
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Coming up in Issue #3…the beauty and the beast with @Cathi Rae
Issue 3 is both a celebration and a critical exploration of the #StyleCrone and the age positivity movement. Insta legend Cathi Rae - poet, body positivity model and campaigner against ageism in the world of fashion - explores the darker side of the age positive movement. Are we part of the problem? Get ready.
Crone Assignment
Send us an image of a style crone who inspires you or stop a ‘cool crone’ in the street and ask if you can take a pic of them for our magazine. Send it in with a ‘Just 17’ style summary of ‘what they’re wearing’.
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🙏 With much love and croneage.
Juzza xxx
It’s your cabin !!!