In this exclusive interview, Susan Schachterle author of The Bitch, The Crone and The Harlot explains why all women should embrace growing older. And for the record, the Bitch is a woman who can make things happen but without visiting devastation on the people and situations around her. The second is the Crone who is a repository for all the wisdom and experience she has won in her earlier struggles. And the Harlot notices every delightful sensory experience who absorbs the beauty around her rather than being distracted by the frantic pace of her youth.

Change is in the air
There is a change happening in society and I do not think us ‘younger women’ quite realise it yet.
You may have noticed stories and pictures in the press of mature women celebrities on the arm of their much younger man.
Madonna, 50, is now dating 22-year-old Jesus. Carol McGiffin from TV show Loose Women is engaged to Mark, 22 years her junior. And of course there are the other famous toy-boy marriages - Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher and Barbara Windor and Scott Mitchell.
What does this tell us?
It tells us that these men are interested in something beyond beauty. Like an apple which is at its juiciest when fully ripe, these men seem to have found something similar in their woman companions.
For Susan Schachterle, author of The Bitch, The Crone and The Harlot, something stirred when she began noticing people referring to her as ‘mam’, a mark of respect in the US. ‘Mam’ was a form of address people used when referring to her mother and grandmother!
Invisible
Susan then noticed the women she counselled and coached were quite negative about reaching the mid point in their lives. “They would say things like ‘I’m getting older I should let the younger women take over’. And ‘people used to notice me and were interested in what I thought and felt, now I just feel invisible,’” Susan told me in the lobby of her hotel in South Kensington recently during her European tour, where she had been researching for her two new books out in the autumn.
Link arms
Susan was shocked because these women all felt they had outlived their usefulness when in fact “they were at a point in their lives when they knew more than they had ever known! They should be giving their gifts of wisdom to the world. Research shows there are well over 100 million of women in the over-40 age bracket across the planet. But because society up until now has said ‘you are no longer attractive’ at this age women have believed it. But this has to change and it can if we all link arms and by doing so we can change the criteria society uses to evaluate a woman.”
From external to internal
Susan went on to explain that during the first half of a woman’s life we are identified by our external factors “who I marry, the house I live in, how much money I have, my friends. However at the mid point we must go within and find our own criteria. It’s an opportunity to begin living a life which is much more internal in focus by finding her wisdom, a personal power.
“And discovering a different kind of sensuality, which means ‘of the senses’. By opening up our senses we take in more information and through our senses we learn. Like noticing that little flower growing in the crack of the sidewalk. We are then more available to ‘joy’ which is a full body experience and not intellectual in nature.”
that ‘je ne sais quoi’
Susan has a presence about her which makes you think ‘wow I want to be like her when I’m older’. She is indeed beautiful but there is that ‘je ne sais quoi’ which has to be due to her understanding the feminine gifts that the world could really do with receiving at the moment. “We are born with gifts of the feminine and at the mid point of a woman’s life ~ they are ‘full blown’.
In her book, The Bitch, the Crone and the Harlot she gives step by step ways of reaching this ‘full blown’ womanhood; which I think if put into motion by all women… should blow the socks off the patriarchy.
Step by step
And here she gives an outline: “The first step a woman can do is change her mindset. She must think ‘I now have more to offer than I ever have in my life’. By living and becoming these agents of change people will start receiving them differently, because they will emit a different kind of energy and so people will react differently. This is what I refer to in the book as power, wisdom, sensuality and awareness.”
Gifts
Susan said that the next step involves women being willing to bring these gifts into the world. “Women carry immense power which is why in some societies women are kept lowly. This is what happens in societies where that power is misunderstood and women are seen as a threat. So they make sure women do not give full exposure to those gifts.”
However Susan believes we can start to bring the full force of those gifts to the world. “I firmly believe that women are natural leaders and natural healers. Look at all those single-parent families headed by women or support groups. I believe firmly when women choose to remember who they really are and bring their gifts into the world they become agents of healing.”
Some issues just come naturally to a woman
She goes on to explain that women would handle certain global issues much better than how they are currently operating. A woman, mindful of her healing gifts would never use political action or military force to resolve a conflict according to Susan. And issues such as homelessness, poverty, hunger, war, ecological and climate change, abuse on women and children would be better handled by someone aware of the gifts of the feminine, which is something that comes natural to all women.
Lovely phrases
Susan adds: “To begin this healing process we must start by beginning to remind ourselves who we are and access those gifts in ourselves.” Susan shares a prophecy by the Hopi Native American Tribe: “When grandmothers speak the earth will be healed”. She explains this is because the feminine energy is a healing energy.
In addition she gives the Ethiopian proverb: “When spider webs join together they can tie up a lion”.
Sisters are doing it for themselves
In her book Susan gives a number of examples of women who have individually changed countless lives because they refused to sit back comfortably and say ‘someone should do something’. “Women must give up the old message ‘you are no longer valuable’ and take heed from women such as Madonna, Carol McGiffin, Demi Moore and Barbara Windsor… their men know the worth of a ripened women. I think it is time our mothers and grandmothers do the same. Because you know what? We younger women will one day be in their well travelled shoes… Isn’t it great we have a head start?
Susan’s next two books, out at the end 2009
a) Ripened Women, women of a certain age changing the world and how you can too
b) Women as Leaders, Women as Healers
And her current book can be bought at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bitch-Crone-Harlot-Reclaiming-Feminine/dp/1600700187/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237330503&sr=1-1