Still Rising – Differently

Why I still ask the question that started it all

Somewhere along the way to midlife, I internalized the belief that I was always wrong.

Too loud. Too sensitive. Too big. Too smart. Too rebellious. Too dreamy. Too driven. Always too much, never quite the right kind of enough.

On my 59th birthday, the truth landed: maybe the people who kept telling me I was wrong weren’t trying to help me. Maybe they were trying to keep me small. Manageable. Quiet.

Right then, I made myself a bold promise: by my 60th birthday, I would be standing inside my right-sized life.

What followed was a year of radical reclamation. I leaned hard into weekly therapy. Addressed long-avoided health stuff. Went east to Saint John, NB, to gather context for old family stories that still haunted me with unanswered questions and dots that wouldn’t connect.

I read every sacred text on the divine feminine I could find — Estés, Blackie, Murdock, Sue Monk Kidd, Katherine May — with some Joseph Campbell and Jung thrown in for (patriarchal-ish) balance. At a retreat in Tuscany with my eldest daughter, I pulled the Buffalo card from a Spirit Animal deck, and the tears came unchecked, in public. The Buffalo is the only animal that walks into the storm. It was also the city where everything came off the rails in my twenties. Message received.

To celebrate my birthday, I took myself to the Modern Elder Academy in Santa Fe, NM. I circled back to old creative projects. I built a Crone Rising prompt deck while living above my garage with two dogs and sparse amenities through endless renovations.

And somewhere in that chaos and clarity, I heard a voice rise up.

What if I made a podcast?

Not a podcast full of answers. One shaped by a single question. The kind of conversations I needed to hear.

But let me be clear — starting a podcast wasn’t a leap of faith. It was a cliff dive into tech hell. Buzzsprout, Filmora, Otter.ai — they all sounded like spells from a tech coven I hadn’t been initiated into. My learning curve looked more like a brick wall. I cried. I cursed. I questioned what the hell I was doing.

But I kept going. One YouTube tutorial at a time. One rough (very rough) edit at a time. One brave, messy (very messy) episode at a time.

Leap before you’re ready – isn’t that what all the young influencer coaches say?

Well, I wasn’t ready. But I did it anyway. Why? Because the fear of getting it wrong was nothing compared to the regret of staying silent.

Crone Rising was born out of that regret-refused. Twenty-five episodes in, it’s still the question that drives every conversation:

How do you maintain your relevance in a world that wants you to be invisible?

A year ago I tried to be everywhere — Substack every weekday, podcast every Wednesday, Instagram in between, the whole influencer-shaped script. I burned out. I disappeared for stretches. I came back. I disappeared again.

This time I’m coming back differently. The work follows the moon now — slower, steadier, aligned. A handful of posts a month. No more racing to be everywhere. No more apologizing for the pace.

The question is the same. The cadence has changed.

Here’s how I answer it.

The first time I realized I was getting older, I was speeding through town — music up, windows down, no kids in the truck — and suddenly, sirens. The officer leaned in, gave me a once-over, and chuckled.

“Miss, do you know how fast you were going?”

“No idea,” I replied truthfully.

He smiled. “You remind me of my mother. I’ll let you off with a warning.”

Wait. His mother?

Cue the slow-motion crash of an identity I hadn’t realized was shifting.

A few weeks later, I sidled up to the bar to order a drink. The young bartender ignored me entirely — busy trying to impress the pretty twenty-something at the end of the bar. A young woman finally came over.

“Don’t mind him,” she said. “They all hit on the young ones. But I know where the real tips are.” She stated with a cheeky wink.

Smart girl. But also? Oof.

That was the moment I realized that my desire to be noticed, to be validated, to be SEEN — had expired. Not because I no longer mattered, but because the currency had changed.

I had a wild time in my Maiden years. Reckless. Curious. Bold.

In my Mother years I anchored down. I mothered hard — not just my kids, but everyone around me, partly because the mother I’d had set the bar too low. (Turns out healing doesn’t come with a manual, but it does come with a mirror.)

Now, as a Crone, I’ve traded performance for presence.

Let me be clear, a Crone is not an old hag to be feared; she is, in fact, the wise woman in the village. The keeper of stories, the healer, the gatekeeper, the holder of mysteries and magic. As a no-nonsense truth-teller, free from the need for approval, I can’t even imagine not wanting the freedom and alignment that comes with speaking uncomfortable truths and setting firm boundaries.

I don’t need to charm my way out of tickets. I don’t need to compete at the bar. I don’t need to squeeze into someone else’s template of relevance.

This season of life is not a fallback. It’s the main act.

My vow now: To show up. Fully. Authentically. To live with kindness, but not compliance. To walk through the world with love and an unshakable ‘hell yes’ to my own worth. To be grateful — and not apologetic. To smash the systems that whisper you’re too much, or you’re not enough. Because both are bullshit.

That’s how I answer the question. Performance traded for presence. Currency changed. Visibility radiating from the inside out.

I’m having the existing 25 episodes re-mastered by a pro as I’ve decided to claim back 40+ hours a week of soul-crushing tech and edits. I’ll indulge in my favourite part: the conversations, the wisdom held in stories of lives well lived — through all the challenges and joys. The first interviews were with women I’ve known for years, and many I barely knew or didn’t know at all – wisdom showed up either way.

So here’s the ask:

If you’re a Crone — a woman in the second half of life, refusing to vanish, still rising — I’d love to have you on the upcoming resurrection of the Crone Rising podcast. The next round of episodes is being scheduled now. Same question. Your answer.

How do you maintain your relevance in a world that wants you to be invisible?

Email me at hello@leecurrie.com. Tell me your name, your work, your nearest big city, and one sentence about what you’re claiming for yourself now. That’s all.

There’s no expiry date on your voice.

Or your relevance.

Or your beauty.

Or your dreams.

If no one told you that before — let this post be the start.

May the one question keep asking itself in you. And may the answer keep changing.

* Relevance. Ritual. Rebellion. *

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