Maiden, Mother, Crone: Navigating the Long Middle Transition
As a professional organizer (my other vocation), I spend a lot of time inside people’s homes. Over the years, I’ve noticed that the amount of stuff we accumulate tracks closely with where we are in life.
The Expansion Phase
The transition from maiden to mother is, in many ways, an expansion phase. It requires more space, more systems, and more tools. Bigger homes, or at least fuller ones. Not just possessions for yourself, but things for other people. Baby gear, school supplies, sports equipment, musical instruments. Items that are frequently outgrown, either physically or developmentally. Alongside all of that come systems: systems for coming and going, for feeding people, for maintaining space, for keeping everything moving.
Much of my organizing work lives here. I support clients who are actively building and maintaining these systems, trying to keep pace with the complexity of work and family life. This phase is demanding, but it’s also purposeful. There is a clear sense of responsibility and forward momentum.
As a coach, though, I identify more with the next shift women face.
Many of the women who come to me for coaching are not primarily struggling with physical clutter. They are navigating an interior shift, one that has less to do with accumulation and more to do with identity. This is where I see women standing at the edge of another transition: the shift from mother to crone.
The word crone often lands badly, to say the least. It carries images of decline, bitterness, irrelevance. It’s not an identity many of us reach for willingly. I didn’t either, at first. But over time, I’ve come to see that much of the discomfort around this archetype comes from misunderstanding the transition itself.
These shifts don’t happen overnight. They are long, uneven, and often confusing. I find it helpful to think about this transition in the same way we think about menopause.
Menopause is not a single moment of change. There can be years, even a decade or more, of shifting hormones. You may still be cycling, still fertile. And yet, you are closing in on the day that you will have gone exactly twelve months without a period. That day, usually somewhere around age fifty-five, give or take several years, is what defines menopause. Every day after that is post-menopause.
The shift from mother to crone follows a similar pattern. There is a long liminal period where the old role is still very much in place, but something new is already making itself known.
When the Crone Arrives Early
For me, the crone came calling while I was still deep in motherhood.
I had my children later than my own mother did. I became a parent at thirty-four and thirty-six. My kids are now eleven and thirteen, and I am nearly forty-nine. By contrast, my mother had her children at twenty-five and twenty-eight. That decade-long difference matters. For her, the crone phase aligned more naturally with a time when the demands of motherhood had already begun to ease, and the body may have already changed as well. For me, those timelines are overlapping.
I’m still mothering. I’m still pre-menopausal. I’m still very much responsible for other people. And yet, I feel ready for some crone energy.
I’m tired of obligation. I’m tired of giving so many fucks about what other people think. I’m increasingly interested in what actually matters to me, not what I’ve been socialized to prioritize. This doesn’t mean I’m abandoning my family or my work. It means that my internal orientation is shifting, even as my external responsibilities persist.
We live in a culture that glorifies the physical beauty of the maiden. In response, many women reach for interventions that promise to maintain the appearance of youth well into midlife and beyond. But these archetypal phases are far less about how we look than about how we relate to ourselves and the world.
The maiden is relatively carefree. The future is wide open to her. Possibility feels abundant. The mother, or the queen for those who do not have children during this phase, carries tremendous responsibility. She works hard, often for decades, both inside and outside the home. She learns, stretches, adapts, and holds complexity. Toward the end of this period, there is often a dawning awareness that something else is coming. Not collapse, but a different quality of being: wisdom, discernment, and a reduced appetite for overcommitment. A deeper sense of identity that is no longer organized around constant output.
That is where I find myself now, and it’s where I’m focusing my coaching practice.
Most of us are not consciously thinking in terms of archetypes or life arcs. Still, we find ways to name what we’re experiencing. I have a group of friends who are on this developmental journey with me, and we joke about retreating into our “witch hole” when we’re in a mood. I can’t overstate how much joy this imagery brings me. The idea of being a wise, cranky witch who disappears into her lair to ponder, gather strength, and hatch plans feels both funny and accurate.
This is the energy I’m learning to honor in my own life.
It’s also complicated. I can’t live in the witch hole full-time. I still have kids to raise and work to do to support my family. The responsibility hasn’t vanished, and neither has the need to show up in socially acceptable ways.
Professional life requires a certain level of regulation, predictability, and restraint. Even in work that feels deeply aligned, we don’t get to bring our whole, unfiltered selves into every interaction. Understandably, there are expectations about how we present ourselves.
Sometimes I imagine a future where that’s no longer necessary. A life lived among people who don’t require polish or performance. Where I can appear without makeup or a bra, with messy hair, swear freely, pursue my deepest interests, and generally fuck about without explanation. That fantasy holds a lot of freedom for me.
I’m not there yet. Maybe I never will be. But even holding the image is powerful.
Discernment, Not Disappearance
This is why I’m interested in this transition, and why I argue it doesn’t need to be feared. Just as the maiden benefits from support, structure, and systems as she becomes a mother or queen, the mother or queen also benefits from new forms of support as she moves toward the crone. The work doesn’t end; it just changes. At one time, our lives required expansion, and now they call for discernment.
I’ve been dipping my toe into this next phase for a while now, and the water is nice. I don’t feel a need to rush it or define it too tightly. I’m simply paying attention to what falls away naturally, what’s worth carrying forward, and what’s emerging anew. There is a sense of relief in this noticing. I’m realizing that wanting less does not mean becoming less. And yes, maybe with modern interventions, I can have a bit of a maiden vibe while living it.
