EPISODE 021 | Reflection: Relevance Claimed, Not Bestowed

In this reflective solo episode of Crone Rising, host Lee Currie gathers the golden threads from her recent conversations with Nancy Drope, Tracy Trafford, and Kathy Clair-Hayes — weaving their insights into a meditation on relevance, resilience, and radical self-compassion. Lee explores what it means to stay visible and vital in a culture that too often erases aging women, reframing invisibility as fertile compost for new growth.

With warmth, wit, and reverence, she honours the ancestral independence Nancy inherited, Tracy’s joyful rituals of celebration, and Kathy’s soulful reframing of energy and choice. This episode is a love letter to every woman reclaiming her worth, her softness, and her joy — on her own terms.

Key Topics Covered:

• Fierce self-compassion and inherited resilience
• Reframing invisibility as fertile ground for relevance
• The role of play and joy as rebellion
• Intention, ritual, and celebration as spiritual practice
• Energy work, astrology, and navigating triggers
• Intergenerational wisdom and feminine sovereignty
• Reclaiming worth from within

Once you've listened to the podcast, answer this question: Where are you outsourcing your relevance? What would it look like to reclaim it from within — to celebrate yourself, soften your armour, and shine so brightly that invisibility becomes impossible? Share your thoughts with me over on Instagram @crone.rising.official or by email at hello@leecurrie.com.

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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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome back to Crone Rising. I'm Lee Curry, storyteller, podcaster, perpetual question asker about what it means to age well in a world that doesn't always make space for us. If you've been listening for a while, I'm so glad you're here again. And if you're new, welcome. This space is made for women like us, curious, complex, a little irreverent, and still wildly interested in who we're becoming. Every so often I'd like to pause between conversations and take a breath. To look back at the wisdom that's landed and ask myself, what did I actually learn? Today is one of those episodes. So pour yourself something comforting and settle in. Let's unravel what these wise women taught me and maybe what they'll spark in you too. There's a particular alchemy that happens when you sit down with women who have lived, lost, endured, risked, created, raised, loved, and still, still wake up curious about life. With Nancy Drope, Tracy Trafford, and Kathy Clare Hayes, I heard echoes of resilience, permission, and fierce self-compassion. This episode is my chance to braid their wisdom together, to sit with the threads of their stories and ask myself what it means for them, for me, for us to stay relevant in a culture that would rather render us invisible. And spoiler alert, invisibility isn't the opposite of relevance. It might even be the compost from which relevance grows. Nancy arrived in our conversation grounded, steady, and carrying the weight of generations with her. She is 67, a grandmother to six, and the granddaughter of women who knew hardship in ways most of us only read about. Her maternal grandfather died by suicide, leaving her grandmother to raise five children alone in the 1930s. Her paternal grandmother divorced in the same decade, a radical act of sovereignty in an era when women were expected to endure quietly. These women, Nancy says, are still on her altar, cheering her on. From them she inherited a model of independence, sometimes too much, she admits, that fierce independence became both armor and anchor. But what Nancy has chosen to pass forward is different, not just toughness, but compassion. To quote her, the greatest lesson as a crone that I have learned is to just continue to stay in love and self compassion. Fierce, fierce self compassion. It's one thing to grit your teeth through life. It's another to soften enough to meet yourself with kindness. Nancy's gift to her grandchildren isn't survival by stoicism, it's survival by grace. She also spoke about play, naming it as something she wants to bring more fully to her life, not as an afterthought or a luxury, but as an antidote to the constant weight of duty. Another quote I'm looking to have fun. I am looking to play. I'm looking to add more of that. That's what she told me. For Nancy play isn't frivolous, it's resistance, it's relevance. It's how she makes sure joy has as much weight in her life as resilience. This is the paradox of Crone Energy. Resilience, yes, but resilience softened by joy, mischief, curiosity, and a refusal to let life calcify. Tracy came to our conversation with a question. Do we even want to be relevant? She's a self-described regular girl, quirky, playful, part twelve year old boy with googly eyes in her pocket and a talent for finding the lewdest jokes funny. For her, relevance is less about external validation and more about an internal state of peace, curiosity, and intentional living. Jane Fonda's reflections on turning sixty influenced Tracy deeply. Like Fonda, she's asking, what does it mean to live a life of intention? How do you craft meaning in the years you have left? For Tracy, relevance is stitched into daily practices. Celebrating her relationship each month with small gifts or dinners, booking one on one time with each of her three children, even as they've grown. Traveling with her partner and saying yes to Gibraltar, to Morocco, to wherever curiosity points. Joining a book club with strangers, pushing herself outside her comfort zone. There's a theme here celebration as survival. She makes clear that her wrinkles, laugh lines, and jiggly belly are not liabilities, but living archives of her story. They're evidence of a life lived, and she refuses to erase them. To quote her, I don't want to give away any of the wrinkles, the laugh lines, the jiggly belly because they all mean something. That was part of my life. That's who I was and how I became who I am now. Tracy also spoke about legacy, not in grand world-changing terms, but in the quiet assurance that she's raised very decent human beings. Her life's work as she sees it is not flashy, but steady, and in that steadiness lies her relevance. Her story reminds us that relevance doesn't have to be spectacular. Sometimes it's found in small rituals of connection, the stubborn insistence on joy, and the courage to celebrate yourself without apology. Kathy is a psychotherapist, astrologer, and energy healer who reframed our whole conversation on relevance. For her, the question isn't how to be relevant, but who gets to decide what relevance even means? If relevance is always measured against external power structures, women will forever be deemed invisible. So Kathy flips the script. Relevance begins internally. To quote her, maybe really the work is kind of owning our own power, owning our own relevance, owning our own soul's mission, and getting really comfortable with what it is within ourselves. End quote. She draws on astrology to understand the energetic system each of us carries, what we need to feel safe, to show up, to hear our intuitive voice. For those who are empathic or energetically sensitive, the world can feel like a flood of inputs. Astrology becomes a map to navigate the overwhelm. Kathy reframed triggers not as failures, but as choice points. Do we withdraw, fight, or freeze? Or do we pause, breathe, and ask, who do I want to be in this moment? This perspective, she says, rewires the brain away from autopilot reactions and into intentional responses. Her wisdom resonated deeply with me because it's both practical and mystical. Grounding practices, breath, nature, crafts, books, aren't frivolous. They're survival tools for a nervous system hijacked by modern life. She also spoke about intergenerational wisdom. The crone's role is not to fix, but to offer a step up, a bit of guidance so the next generation doesn't have to stumble over the same stones. And perhaps her most radical observation, as she is aged, she feels younger, more willing to try, to risk, to risk looking foolish. Aging, she insists, is a process of becoming lighter, not heavier. So what do these three conversations reveal when woven together? From Nancy, fear is self-compassion rooted in ancestral survival and their reclamation of play. From Tracy, intention and celebrating as quiet acts of rebellion. From Kathy, energy work and triggers as choice points, redefining relevance from within. Each woman in her own way insists that relevance is not bestowed, it is claimed. And each points toward practices, not platitudes. Yoga mats, book clubs, oracle cards, travel plans, monthly anniversaries, crafts, breath. These are not the big gestures our culture worships. These are the small, daily commitments that make a life whole. I'll admit, listening back to these conversations, I had to sit with my own relationship to relevance. Like Nancy, I've inherited resilience and independence from women who had no choice but to survive. But what does it mean to soften that inheritance with compassion, to break the pattern of stoicism? Like Tracy, I've struggled with celebrating myself. I'll celebrate everyone else's wins all day long, but when it comes to my own, I move the goalposts. Maybe the invitation is to honor myself monthly, weekly, even daily, in ways that feel celebratory without needing external validation. And like Kathy, I've learned that relevance has to begin internally. No amount of podcast downloads or Substack subscribers can substitute for the energetic alignment of knowing I'm living my own mission. Triggers don't mean failure. They mean I've been handed a doorway. These women remind me that being a crone isn't about retreat. It's about showing up differently, less apologetically, more joyfully, with wrinkles and laugh lines and googly eyes in our pockets, with astrology charts taped to the fridge, with fierce compassion stitched into the marrow of our bones. So here's my invitation to you, dear listener. Ask yourself, where are you outsourcing your relevance? Where are you waiting for someone else to tell you that you matter? That you've arrived, that you are seen. And then what would it look like to reclaim that from within? To celebrate yourself as you are, to meet your triggers as choice points, to soften the armor of independence into the embrace of compassion. Maybe relevance isn't about refusing invisibility. Maybe it's about lighting up from within until invisibility becomes impossible. If this conversation stirred something in you, that quiet little spark that says, Yes, I felt that too, then you're exactly where you belong. These reflections always remind me that relevance isn't something we chase. It's something we claim in how we show up, how we soften, and how we love ourselves enough to keep learning. Thank you for being here with me for this crone rising reflection and for walking this path of visibility, courage, and wild compassion right alongside me. If you've enjoyed today's episode, share it with other women who are learning to unhide herself too. We rise stronger together. Until next time, keep showing up in all your wise, wonderful, witchy glory. I'm Lee Curry, and this is Crone Rising.