Crone Rising with Lee Currie
You already know that midlife isn’t the beginning of the end - it’s the start of something powerful. Crone Rising is hosted by Lee Currie, a storyteller, writer, and neopagan witch, bringing you weekly deep dives into the wisdom, magic, and unapologetic truth of life beyond the maiden and mother years, through conversations with guest Crones. Each 15-minute(ish) episode will start with the same question: "How do you maintain your relevance in a world that wants you to be invisible?" The life experience of each guest will inform their answer. If you’re a spiritual seeker, a rebellious soul, or a woman embracing her divine feminine power in midlife and beyond, hit subscribe and join the conversation on aging, transformation, and the mystical path of the Crone.
Crone Rising with Lee Currie
EPISODE 015 | Danielle Rousseau: Validation, Visibility & Soft Power
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In this intimate conversation, Danielle Rousseau shares her journey of moving from the high-stakes world of critical care nursing into the softer, slower rhythms of Cronehood. She speaks about the hunger for validation, the quiet wisdom found in friendship, and the courage it takes to reclaim visibility after years of invisibility. From her “Gang of Bandits” coffee shop sisterhood to her deeply personal astrology and tarot practice, Danielle embodies the balance of empathy, boundaries, and soft power. Listeners will find themselves nodding along as she reflects on people-pleasing, finding peace, and the permission to say no without apology.
Key Topics Covered
- The importance of validation in midlife and beyond
- Finding support and belonging through her “Gang of Bandits”
- The transition from high-adrenaline nursing to softer rhythms of retirement
- Boundaries, empathy, and the practice of soft power
- People-pleasing and the courage to say no
- Storytelling, astrology, and tarot as tools of self-discovery
- Maintaining peace as a non-negotiable practice
Danielle reminds us that visibility, validation, and peace don’t just appear — they’re practices. After you listen this week, I invite you to reflect: Where are you still bending yourself into a pretzel for others, and where can you say no to honour your own peace? Share your reflections with me on Instagram @crone.rising.official.
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Crone Rising is for every woman who’s done being quiet and done being small. We’re not here to fade. We’re here to rise — unapologetic, unmuted, and unmissable.
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Hi, Danielle. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good, good. Thank you for joining me. How do you maintain your relevance in a world that wants you to be invisible?
SPEAKER_01You know, that is such a great question. And I went over a few podcasts and listened to some of the guests that you've had. And Thursday morning is our gang of bandits meeting. And our gang of bandits is made up of some of my nursing colleagues who we're really good friends and we support each other. And I mentioned I was going to be on your podcast. And I said, I have no idea what I'm going to talk about. I gave them the question and we we just kind of bantered it back and forth. And we all came to the conclusion, the four of us, that it's about being validated in whatever we do, whether we're the crone, the mother, or even the maiden. Validation is so important. And as you get older, you're not validated. You had a role as a mom. So when you transition into the crone, you really are invisible because your kids now have taken everything that you've taught them and they're going on their path and going along and doing them. And now it's like, oh, what do I do? What is it? Like, how do I find me again? And I think that's what it is. I think it's about being validated.
SPEAKER_00So maybe I'll ask a different question. How do you fill in the void?
SPEAKER_01Oh, for me, um, that was difficult at first because I was a critical care nurse, so I was always looking for that hit of dopamine. Where's that dopamine hit? And I ended up um two months after retiring, I broke my ankle and had to spend eight weeks in a room with my dog in the teeth. And I had to slow down, and it was really hard. I'm a I'm I'm a doer, I'm a cancer, and I'm a doer. I gotta move, I'm that kind of thing. And uh it was really hard at the beginning, and I can remember getting to a point talking to a girlfriend of mine. I I was eight weeks not walking on my foot, so and I was confined to our bedroom because we our house only has one bathroom and it's upstairs. So I learned to hobble down the stairs with my dog and my backpack to get whatever I needed during the day. My husband would come home at night and make me dinner and that kind of thing. And I remember crying, just crying and saying, I cannot spend another two weeks because it was eight to ten weeks possibility. I said, I can't do it, I can't do it. And she was great. She said, Dan, she goes, uh she goes, I've seen you through all kinds of things. She goes, you can do this, and I think that's part of it. I think if you have someone who sees what you don't see at that time, that gives you that little extra push to push through and say, okay. And I remember getting off the phone with her and just feeling relieved because all this pent-up energy, which had nowhere to go, was gone. And I thought, okay, I can do another two weeks if I have to. And if I have to, I will. As it turns out, I didn't have to do two weeks.
SPEAKER_00All that worry for nothing.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and that's part of it, and that is something that women do. And it, I think we've been taught to do that. That we anticipate, especially with children, you anticipate what all the possibilities that could happen, what could go wrong instead of what could go right.
SPEAKER_00Well, I love the fact that you have a close group of friends. Do you meet in person or do you meet online?
SPEAKER_01We do. We meet in person once a week, Thursday mornings at a great little coffee shop in Point Claire Village, which is a real cool little place, and it's called Studio 77. I'm gonna give a shout out to David on that one. And when we don't show up, the regulars go, where have you been? And Thursday mornings is we block it off. I will not do anything Thursday mornings, and neither will the other four girls, three other girls. We have one uh who comes once a month because that's how it works for her. And okay, that's how we do it. And we don't, we won't let anything interfere with our gang of bandits meeting because that's what one of the girls calls us. The other thing we've all come to realize, our little gang, is that we will never lose that. We will never lose that because that's who we are, that's innate in us. I've I I used to think somebody could learn nursing, but I've come to realize no, most nurses have the caring, empathetic nature to begin with in order to do the job. And it's a tough job. And the other thing is, as nurses, you're not seen. You're not seen at all. And I had that experience this morning. I had to have an issue with the tooth, and I had to go see an oral surgeon. I kept trying to interject because I had a question and he kept pushing me back, pushing me back. It was a lot of information coming at me, and I don't deal well with that. I I just went, shit, he's not seeing me. And he knew who I was because we have another connection. And then finally, at the end, I managed to get a bit of an opening so that I could say what I had to say. And I told him, I said, you know, I said, This is a lot. And I said, I don't process when stuff is being thrown at me. And that's the reason why I kept interjecting to get a pause. And he went, Oh, I went, please take that in. Please take that in because it's really important. And I'm like, you're on a treadmill, you're just doing the treadmill.
SPEAKER_00I also find that that's part of our purpose, being older and a little bit wiser, and we've gotten off the treadmill is to teach those who are currently on the treadmill that maybe they want to slow down.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and it's okay to get off the treadmill and take a break and then hop back on. It's it's really important for your own self-care, for whatever you need to do to cope with what's going on. It's really, really important. And something that I do say to myself is tomorrow's another day. Tomorrow's another day.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's the other thing. It does, it gives you a little bit of grace. Yeah. Which we never gave ourselves up to this point, I don't think. I think we've kind of we're collectively easing into just something a little softer.
SPEAKER_01And it's okay, it's okay to do that. And um I came across on um on Substack, actually, I came across a uh group of women called um highly sensitive women, and they talk about that soft power. And that that's I think what the crone is, is that softness that you can still have empathy for that person, hold the boundary, not take it in, but be soft about it. And I think that's important too. I think that's really important because by taking in and doing for other people, you stop them from maybe having a really important experience in their life that helps them along the way, that teaches them something, or just it also gives you the break to say, no, don't gotta do that.
SPEAKER_00It's been an interesting transition, just you know, taking in all the things and and and making the conscious choice to keep what works and give back what doesn't.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Yes, Barr, that's really important. I I think that's that was another lesson I learned this year as well, is that I would do for a lot of people and just do, just do. And I've learned, well, do I really want to do this? Do I want to spend this amount of energy? I know it'll make you happy, but do I want to do this? And sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes it's yes, sometimes it's no. And saying no is okay. It's okay to say no.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, like you were saying earlier, uh a no can be a yes to yourself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very much so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, I think a lot of us spent far too much time making sure everybody was happy. You know, and turning ourselves. Yeah, a lot of people pleasing and turning ourselves into pretzels.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, so much so. And I don't have to be a pretzel anymore. I don't.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Or if you want to be a pretzel, it's because you choose to be a pretzel. But if you don't want to be a pretzel, you don't gotta be a pretzel. So I'm I have to say, um thank you very much for your writing prompts that I get in my email every day. I really, really enjoy them. I I really do like to write. Um, I do journal, but the writing prompts have got me challenged, which are what I needed. I needed to be challenged. So thank you for that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you're welcome. I was so thrilled to, I was terrified but thrilled to have discovered Substack because when my children were younger and I was a big scrapbooker, I would write my blog so that I had the stories someplace so that they would eventually end up in a pay on a page. And but now with Substack, and now that I have a different perspective of things and I don't feel like the family recorder. Oh, I can just, oh, this was interesting this week. Let's explore that and share it. And I've always been like, I want to share information with people, but now it's not the family stories. It's just the, you know, maybe some personal stories, but not, you know, entirely focused on, you know, somebody's sports event or play.
SPEAKER_01Or yeah, I am the family storyteller. I'm the one that they come to and say, they'll say something, I'll go, no, it was like this, and then they'll go, Oh yeah, that's right. Or it was like this. Are you sure? Yeah. Because of my birth order and all the rest of it. So the family stories, I know those. Um I'm getting away from that. Because it's okay to get away from it. It's it's one more thing that's being put on the side.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, and for me, I'm happy to have raised adults that they can create their own stories. I don't need to be the recorder. They can oh yeah, they can keep track of their own and have their own impressions. You know, every once in a while I do have to correct them, but no, I think you're misremembering. But then Oh, I love that. Oh no, but that's the problem is the phrase misremembering is very much a gaslighty phrase. Yeah. So I like I'm very careful about like, no, I'll tell you my version, and then you can figure it out from there because I don't want anybody to think that you know, I'm right, you're wrong. It's just this is what I remember happening.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's so great. I'm gonna I'm gonna borrow that if you don't mind. I love that. I'm misremembering. I think you're misremembering. Oh my god, that's so good. That's so good, especially especially a lot of us who were gaslighted and manipulated. Yeah. This is uh my first step in being seen because I've I love the background. I'm so I love being in the shadows. But um my friend Nancy, who's who you have interviewed, I believe. I think he's done Nancy. Nancy and I went to UNB together and uh we found each other on the gym stairs one day. And she was just sitting there, and I I went over and I said, Hey, I'm Dan. Who are you? And she kind of looked at me as like, Who the hell are you? And I and she said, I'm Nancy. I said, Hey, cool. And then we just started intertwining, and and she said to me, She too went to a private uh girl's school, and I'm sure you know her background. And she said, I said, so what's the big deal? And she goes, You were the first person who never wanted anything from me. And I went, Well, other than your friendship, like that's what I wanted. And we were like thickest thieves through university, and we we always are in and out of each other's lives. And she's the one who said to me, She's the one who got me into astrology, and from astrology I went to tarot last year. Um, I didn't do oracle cards, I do have oracle cards, and I if I want to, I can read them. Um, tarot is more structure, which I like for me. I learned more about myself through astrology than I did sitting in a therapist's office, and I did that three times. I just learned more about myself and and who I am. And one of the things is I whenever I was seen as a kid, I was pushed down. It's that tall poppy syndrome where you're standing up for yourself, but you're squished back down in the box. And I would learn how to get out of the box, but in a way that I wasn't seen. So Nancy said to me, she said, Dan, you should do this. And I went, Really? And she goes, Yeah, you should do this. She goes, listen to her podcast and see what you think. And I was like, Why don't you do this? And I I had lost the part of me was that if I I would go and seek out the challenge to meet the challenge, and I had lost that. And I was I was like, I should do this, I should just turn and face the dragon and do this because my astrology practice is such that I do one chart one chart a time, it's word of mouth, and it's usually people have people come around to me, and I already know that they're coming to me just by the way they're talking. I'm thinking, oh, I'm gonna read your chart. Okay, I'm good with that. I'll read your chart. This is what I charge. And if it's family, I don't charge them because I I just don't feel comfortable with doing that. And I just said, Okay, it's time, Dan. It's time to be seen again. Because as a nurse, you are seen and you get validation from the family. The family validate you because they are so grateful for what you do that that's your validation. As one of my friends said to me today, she goes, That's our validation, and it's not monetary, you can't put a price tag on that. You know that you've helped somebody through a difficult time in their life, and that's what you were there for. So when that left, it was like, now what do I do?
SPEAKER_00The quieter energy is far more where I want to be because, like you, peace has become paramount.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, that's one of my intentions every month. Maintain my peace. And has been for the last uh six, seven months for sure, probably since uh January. Maintain my peace, maintain my peace. And if you're fucking, pardon my English, fucking with my peace, I'm out.
