The Witchy-Body Stage of Life

Weather, bodies and lessons in narrative point of view.

A really interesting thing happened to me this week that made me re-think the perspective I am using to imagine this story.

I’m currently deep in the great plains of southwestern Saskatchewan. I wasn’t born here, but I spent the second decade of my life in this landscape becoming myself. The weather systems that move through are big, powerful and changeable. I think it’s why I later felt so comfortable with the powerful weather near the ocean. I love to see it coming and enjoy the volatility.

Throughout the seasons here the temperature fluctuates from the -40s to the +40s (Celsius). Last month we had days where the change from night to day was over 25 degrees. It never phased me, or maybe I didn’t think about it, as a kid. But for the first time I was physically floored by it. For the last two days it had gotten much cooler, but there was also a very warm front trying to move back in. And it is here in the open expanse of the great inland once-sea that the battle is fought between the two.

The skies alive over southern Saskatchewan.

The sky needs to find release for the building energy that comes from these forces knocking against each other in our atmosphere. It turns to thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes to reground it. But this little human body of mine had no such release. For the couple of days it was building, I experienced a heaviness and deadening of my limbs. Not feeling ill but not being able to do much. Pressed down almost. By yesterday keeping myself upright just wasn’t enough support for the weight of my physicalness. In the evening I dragged myself out to walk the dog just before the storm was forming and moving overhead. The air was kinetic. Something was definitely happening. And once it did, I found relief. I was completely fine.

I wondered if my new skill as human barometer has something to do with the mostly uncharted changes in this menopausal body of mine? The way we don’t know nearly anything about what happens to women’s bodies at this time. We’ve barely begun to point our science towards its understanding. And it made me wonder, always the best start for me with this story, what symptoms like this would have been treated as in the middle ages? The unexplained witchy-ness of our chemistry as we aged. And it made me realize that in order to tell the breadth of the tale I seek to for Erna I need to tell the story from here. From the perspective of a middle aged (pun intended) woman.

I can write of memories of a young woman, but I can no longer write as a young woman. I am here. In the witchy-body unseparated from the weather stage. Young Erna couldn’t tell me what I needed for this story. That’s why she’d gone quiet. Older Erna, like the Cailleach in her cave in summer, waited amused for me to figure out I must come to her and ask. I need to go sit beside an older Erna who has seen some stuff and is still trying to build and create and add to a world that was willing to use her, but not treasure her.

Of course I do. This story is always being forged from a relationship with the landscape and it doesn’t surprise me at all anymore when things like this come to me. Thank you to this place I find myself on now for helping me move forward, again.

Susie