Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life

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It is heartening to read a progressive view of the women’s movement and one that links with care for the Earth and all living beings. This book is very well recommended.’ GREENSPIRIT MAGAZINE Women have long been told to “know our place”. This powerful and inspiring exploration of the female relationship with landscape turns the diktat around, showing us what may be gained from doing just that.’ Melissa Harrison, author of the Costa-shortlisted ‘At Hawthorn Time’ I was born in the north-east of England, a Celt through and through: my family and ancestry is both Scottish and Irish, and I was raised on an imaginatively rich diet of Irish myth, poetry, music and history. After studying psychology, I spent several years as an academic neuroscientist/ psychologist specialising in the field of anxiety and panic, and working at the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris and the Institute of Neurology in London. After a few twists and turns, including some unwise years advising a tobacco company on smoking and health and safer cigarettes, and the acquisition of a master’s degree in Creative Writing, I moved to a croft in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. There I returned to my roots, in practice as a therapist specialising in narrative psychology, myth- and storytelling, as well as in other creative imagination techniques and clinical hypnotherapy. My passion during those years was, and still is, creating transformation in individuals and groups.

I believe this course is a most precious gift and magical legacy that you could gift a woman of this time.’ Carolyn will join us to talk about her Book of Hag, wrapped around travels into old age and towards ancientness, and the grandmothers from her Weaver’s Oracle, created from thirty years of paintings, mythic tales and work with women’s archetypal mysteries.

It may be the first time CBC or BBC book recommendation and interviews have let me down. Hagatude is almost in it’s entirety a memoir of their menopause and post-menopausal life. Did I need to know about their husband’s midlife crisis, NO. Did I really need so much information about their cancer, NO. Not more than as a transition point that made them face their own mortality and thus an intro into the next elder woman archetype. Maybe I’m the wrong age, maybe the author and I are too many generations separated, maybe our realities and understanding of the universe is too different, but this book did not work for me. How can we find inspiration from archetypal women in our old myths and fairy tales to help us navigate this transition?

Beautifully written, honest and moving, If Women Rose Rooted is a passionate song to a different kind of femininity; a rallying cry for women to reawaken their natural power – not just for the sake of their own wellbeing, but for love of this threatened earth.Our old women are the dark heart of the forest, the stone womb of the mountain, immanent in the living land itself. They’re elemental beings: storm-hags, fire-keepers, grandmothers of the sea. Then she reports that even a lesbian (gasp!) shared her views, as though finding one person in a more marginalized group who shares your views to bolster your own absolves you of your intolerance. I recently had surgery turning me into a hag, un infertile woman, so this felt like the perfect book to read. I loved all the folklore and stories about elderly women. In some way it rekindled my love for old stories and myths. I want to read more. I really liked all the "shed the old, embrace the new", the rebirth into a different sort of being, the hag (with an attitude).

My husband David Knowles and I founded literary publisher Two Ravens Press (now under new ownership) in 2006, and in 2012 launched EarthLines Magazine, a full-colour print publication for writing about nature, place and the environment. If women remember that once upon a time we sang with the tongues of seals and flew with the wings of swans, that we forged our own paths through the dark forest while creating a community of its many inhabitants, then we will rise up rooted, like trees.My first event in The Bone Cave, in December 2020, was a free live webinar based on If Women Rose Rooted. I spoke about the process of writing it, how the inspiration came about, and how my ideas on reclaiming the mythic feminine have progressed in the intervening four or more years. There was also a chance for participants to ‘ask me anything’ about any issue related to the book. In her trademark mythopoetic style of writing sharing deeply researched folk legends from our very own British Isles, and with a wild and deep attachment to these lands she inhabits, this book will remind you of just how powerful and transformative this midlife journey we are in truly is. As well as writing five books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted and her latest, Hagitude, her writing has appeared in anthologies, collections and in several international media outlets – among them the Guardian, the Irish Times, and the Scotsman. Her books have been translated into several languages, and she has been interviewed by the BBC, US public radio and other broadcasters on her areas of expertise. Her awards include the Roger Deakin Award, and a Creative Scotland Writer’s Award. Her next book, Wise Women: Myths and folklore in celebration of older women will be published by Virago in 2024. Today, Mary teaches classes in Gaelic song and its surrounding culture, mostly online. She specialises in The Keen (Irish Funeral Lament) and Fairy Song. She holds certificates in Vocal and General Education, Shamanic Studies and Sound Therapy. She also has an MA in Chant and Ritual Song and a PhD in Traditional Irish Song Studies, which she began at the age of 60. She is currently working on a book about the Irish Keen.