EPISODE 023 | Christine Mason Miller: Relevance is an Inside Job

In this soulful, grounded conversation, artist and writer Christine Mason Miller joins Lee Currie to explore what it really means to stay relevant in a world that often overlooks older women. Together, they unpack the evolution of visibility, the power of curiosity, the sanctity of boundaries, and the daily practice of gratitude and intuition. Christine reminds us that relevance isn’t about being seen by the world — it’s about staying engaged with your own life.

Key Topics Covered

• Relevance as personal alignment, not social validation
• Freedom in aging and letting go of the external gaze
• Intuition as a lifelong spiritual practice
• The importance of consistency and integrity
• Gratitude as a transformative force in grief
• Boundaries as acts of self-respect, not exclusion
• Quiet activism and authentic engagement
• Curiosity as the antidote to judgment and division

Once you’ve listened to the episode, reflect on this: How do you stay engaged in your own life as you age? Reflect on one small way you can reconnect with your sense of curiosity, purpose, or intuition today — and share your thoughts with us on Instagram @crone.rising.official or privately 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_01 0:15

It's so good to see you. Yes, yes. Um, so hi, thank you for being here. Welcome to Crown Rising. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure. So, how do you maintain your relevance in a society that wants to keep you invisible?

SPEAKER_00 0:30

We are diving right in. Oh my goodness. How do I maintain my relevance? I I think that's an interesting question because who am I trying to be relevant for? Is the is the first question that comes to my mind. And I think I I always do my best to discern where I'm needed, where I'm relevant. Like I'm always trying to discern God's invitation in any situation. What is God inviting me to do with whatever's going on? That's where my feeling of relevance comes from in being of service to whatever it is. It is it making my art? Is it, you know, taking care of people who come into our home? You know, it's all those things. So it's, I'm not necessarily trying to be relevant to the rest of the world. I'm not trying to live up to someone else's definition of success or standards. It's my it's my standards and it's my wanting to feel relevant in my own life and in my own body.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

It's been really interesting talking to different people about how they just stay involved in their own lives.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

That is a great way to put it, to stay involved in their own lives. In the context of aging, what I think about a lot is I'm doing things in my life now to take care of my 80-year-old self. I want to take care of her. I want to stay healthy, I want to stay engaged with the world, with my life, with my work, my art, my relationships, my family, because I've seen up close and personal what happens when you don't do that. And it's awful. You know, I don't want to diminish the kind of life this person that I'm thinking of have. It was a withdrawing that wasn't healthy. I'm always thinking about that. Not necessarily, well, if I'm on my deathbed, will I regret doing A, B, and C? I mean, that's part of it, of course, but it's it's a bigger picture about yes, wanting to stay engaged with my own life and with the world. So it's it's a it's a personal relevance. And I I actually think there's a certain kind of freedom that comes with that particular kind of evolution. I I remember hearing one woman I knew, she's older than me, and she was bemoaning that thing of she said, at a certain point, I just felt like they stopped looking, meaning men. She was she was not happy that there came a time when she wasn't quote unquote uh attracting a certain kind of attention. I found that interesting, that that it would be a a thought of some of a of a loss. Yes, like I look at pictures of my younger self and whatever, but that that I'm different now. I'm like this is what's happening. And there is a freedom in not being concerned about, oh, am I gonna look good for the fellas? Look or don't look, I'm I'm really that doesn't really concern me right now. I mean, I want to look nice and you know, but it may not like attract the male gaze, as they say.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

No, it's it I think everything is cyclical. I think at the end of your life you can have you have you can have it all. You just can't have it all at one time. Right. And you go through these and you have to learn through these phases and stuff. I you couldn't pay me enough to be my 26-year-old self.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

I know I try not to be too hard on my younger self, but I I do judge her a little harshly. But she just, you know, I had a lot of things to learn. And and I think that again, going back to that idea of curiosity, I think it's what we do when we are confronted by those feelings of invisibility, which we have throughout our whole lives for various reasons. We we go through this at all kinds of stages, in all kinds of situations. I mean, sitting at a dinner table with my family, I can't tell you how many times I will say something and it does not register, and I'll say it again. And it, I mean, one time I asked a question like four times, no one heard me. So I think it's kind of funny and interesting. So I've had to ask myself, okay, what am I gonna do with that, with this consistent weird thing that happens? No one's trying to exclude me, no one's trying to shut me out. That's not what's happening. It's just this weird thing that happens a lot. And so I try to be curious about it. And when I really want to be heard, I'll just tell everyone, stop talking and listen to me now. Whatever that whatever creates that feeling of invisibility, what are we going to do with it? Can we transform it? Can we use that to our advantage somehow? Can we use it to uh reinforce something within us that doesn't need this external approval or recognition or or whatever? I mean, I know we can't live in a vacuum and we do need to engage with the world and we want to be, we want to be seen and acknowledged and understood. That's all human nature. So when we're not experiencing that, how can we transform it into something meaningful? I think these daily choices matter. And if we're if I'm trying to develop a new habit or awareness or pattern, and I'm practicing kind of practice, it's all a practice on a daily basis, in I'll call them low stakes situations. Then when the stakes get bigger, because they will, like, oh, I've I've been practicing this. Now is when it really matters. Now is when the stakes are higher. And maybe it's a situation where no one will ever know what I'm doing in this moment. That is when it matters most.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

And it's the cumulative effect of that that people will notice. They're just not going to notice the micro steps.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Right. Or maybe they will notice the micro steps and I'm not aware anyone sees any of this, but then all of a sudden someone will say, Oh, I see that. Yeah, and it's a good reminder, not to go, oh, good, I'm being noticed, but to say, yes, like my actions matter, and whether I'm aware or not, they are being observed. So it is important for me to be consistent. I want my words and my actions to be in alignment.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Totally agree with the whole consistency thing because and but you can literally feel physically when it's out of alignment. Yes. If you're so consistent with your alignment. So somebody can walk through a door and you can feel it. Yeah. Or order something and then realize, oh, no, come back. I don't want that. I think the more you practice, the more you know who you are.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

And you can just make the choices that will serve you. And it's not to be uncurious, because there are some things that within within the confines of that consistency, you can kind of step out of line and learn new things.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Right. I think those param for me to be within certain parameters, whatever those are, that's where the greatest freedom lies. I just thought of another example of something that has helped me stay relevant. I think about in the past when I was still learning the hard way, the importance of listening to my intuition, like really honoring that no matter what. I can look at specific examples from my past when I did not, and of course it didn't go well. And I it did feel it didn't, it's not that it made me feel irrelevant. Well, it kind of did because it because I was not seen, because I didn't honor what my intuition told me to do. So I think because I have those examples, one of one of the ways I stay relevant to my life, to the world, is by honoring my own intuition. It's so not negotiable for me now that I don't feel like I have to necessarily work on that. It's just so deeply ingrained. And if I ever need a reminder, all I have to do is think about one or two of these situations, go, remember that, remember how that went. I mean, it's a it's a different kind of feeling of invisibility, but it but it was a feeling of, oh, I'm not being seen. I wasn't being seen by this person, by this entity. It was a company that I was going to work with, and I ignored my intuition and it didn't go well. And I should have listened to myself when I recognized they're not getting me. They're not getting what I do and who I am, which to me felt kind of weird because this is when I was doing swirly. Most people get it. You're not getting it.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Well, the other thing is I find um when you follow your intuition, you are following your authentic self. And if you don't show up as that person, you aren't going to be seen.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

I control nothing. It's probably one of the very first things I learned when I kind of had this evolution into okay, you're now an adult. You know, but I found two things. I found um I control nothing and gratitude. If I can wake up every day being grateful, even for the shit days.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

100%.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

You know, gratitude can get you very far.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yes, I think it's number one.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

When my pastor partner passed away and I was able to wake up the next morning and just be grateful for even having him around, that was like my first thought. And then I thought, wow, you've come an awful long way for that to be, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

That's huge.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

At some point you have no choice.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah, it again, what do what do we do with that? What do we do with that trauma? What would do we do with the loss? What would do we do with the feelings of invisibility, irrelevance, whatever it is? What are we going to do with that? Are we gonna let it bring us down and define us and turn us down a dark path, or are we going to transform it? And that that's not something that happens in a day or overnight. It's that, you know, and there might be a time when we're going down a dark road. Of course, you know, we're not robots. That's the other thing. I'm not a robot. Sometimes I'm gonna screw up and mess up and wallow and cry and have a big pity party, but I can't stay there forever. That's and that's not my nature.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

That's the that's the other gift I think in growing older is that boundaries really do protect you.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Absolutely. I'm I'm a firm believer in setting them, and it doesn't have to be some big grand gesture. It that it's very important.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

I do it for myself. I don't it's not to keep somebody out. Right. It's just to keep me safe.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Like my activism has changed dramatically over the years. And it's now something very quiet, deeply personal, yes, that starts in my home. And and I'm okay with that.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

You know, I don't I don't do that the way I used to, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yeah. So I've probably grown more well, I'm certainly better educated now in a lot of things. Um but yeah, my my the way I show up for my causes is far more personal and less performative. But I think a lot of everything kind of starts with a conversation.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

And curiosity. Yeah. Because you don't know what you don't know until you know it.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Right. I think that's a big part of the problem is people aren't curious about other people's beliefs and opinions. They just, oh, you have that opinion, you have that belief, you're out. End of story. Like what purpose does that serve and to make these blanket judgments about people? Like it it really, yeah, we don't need to go down that road.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

But no, it and it is divisive.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

One curiosity would be better. How about that?

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Yes. I'm I'm getting the high sign from my son. I have to I have to go I have to help him with something. But thank you so much. I really appreciate the time that you spent with me. It's so nice to catch up with you. Yes, it was great. Thank you for the invitation. Oh, absolutely. Hopefully we can just diving right in. Yes. Yes. Well, I knew there was a lot to cover. So thank you. I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Likewise, my dear.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Bye.