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Oct 14, 2023

"We're never done with our transformations; they just keep on coming round. We shapeshift all the way up to the end, casting off certainties like a selkie casts off her sealskin." --Sharon Blackie

The Irrepressible Matriarchs of the North

Sharon Blackie's latest book, "Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life," braids together myth, psychology and memoir. Within itm Blackie makes a passionate case for menopause as the threshold to a vital and rich phase of life, and she deftly explores the what flourishing at this stage when many assume decline, can look like. Surfacing little-known, yet potent elder women in European myth and folklore, she inspires readers to revision the last decades of life as perhaps the most powerful of all. "Hagitude," writes Sharon Blackie, "is dedicated to 'the feisty and irrepressible old matriarchs of the far north-east of England, who enlivened my younger years and taught me never to let the illegitimi get me down.' And indeed, growing up in County Durham, my childhood was dominated by old women...." Read an excerpt here.