With softened faces
and rounded bellies,
an aging woman's beauty
is its own natural world,
each changing curve
of hip and breast lovely
as the earth itself,
like the loden-washed vista
of a high desert flat,
the snow-painted Sierra
its far horizon.

Call it visible grace,
not for the altar
of her body, but for love
and kindness given
like the charity of light
from a crescent moon,
or the full sky's gift
of steady rain.
Her eyes, un-aged,
are star windows
in darkness, reflection
of god-beauty:
the inner nature
found in us all.

Shawna is a registered nurse, mother, and vision quest guide. She has been writing poetry for six years, and has won two merit awards from the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and been published locally in The Dickens, Women's Voices, and also in the Permanente Journal.  She draws her inspiration from the deep wells of human nature and the natural world. Shawna Swetech participated in an "Elder Quest" which was guided by Anne Stein and Ann Linnea. 

Anne Stine of  Wilderness Rites and Ann Linnea of Peerspirit http://www.peerspirit.com have co-facilitated an ‘elder passage wilderness quest' for the past three years.  Women 50 and older who are ‘called' to mark this eldering stage of life travel to the Sacred Mountain for 9 days, and with intentionality and determination  ‘die to' what needs to be left behind, in order to step fully into being an initiated elder. Anne writes,

"This ancient ceremony is really about guiding us into the next stage of our life as an elder.  Earth-based cultures viewed elders as living treasures. Elders were viewed as shamans, wise women and men, keepers of the wisdom and sustainable life styles.  They initiated the youth into the deeper mysteries of life and guided them through the dark passageways into young adulthood.

 This is what we are doing as we go out on the mountain together.  We are reviving these ancient and honored roles that our ancestors held naturally in the tribe and community.  In ways that are meaningful to each woman, elderhood is discovered with dignity and purpose.  Rather than being a period of decline, silence and invisability, it’s a time of coming forth with the fullness of life experience and the inner life.  Our later years are really a whole new period of life, often of many years length, when we can give away into our communities all the gifts of our own lives.

 Above all this is a celebration of the whole magnificence of each woman.  With grateful hearts, service to all the children and renewed creativity, we leave our legacy for all to enjoy."   

 Participants in Elderquest 2006