Crones Don't Whine

Concentrated Wisdom for Juicy Women

Bolen's playful sense of humor and keen insight combine to offer women thirteen qualities to cultivate.

Engage in these small practices and you're bound to be a happier person, who's doing her bit to make the world a better place.

Bolen's groundbreaking early work--most notably Goddesses in Everywoman--helped a generation of women realize their potential and their value. Half a million copies later the book still affects the lives of women.

Dimensions: 8.1" x 5"
Details: Hardcover, 128 pages
Author: Jean Shinoda Bolen

Testimonials

From Publishers Weekly

Bolen, a psychiatrist and professor at the University of California Medical School, believes that women need to stand up for their rights, wants and desires and can't afford to be complainers or whiners. Explains Bolen, the author of The Millionth Circle and Goddesses in Older Women, "To be involved and engaged in life is a juicy proposition. Every juicy crone taps into a wellspring or a deep aquifer of meaning in her psyche." They are, according to Bolen, smart, compassionate, courageous and humorous. In these brief essays, she offers commonsense wisdom, calling on women to empower themselves, but also to fight against any emotional demons or problems they have. For example, in discussing women who have been abused or otherwise have some secret from their past that they're ashamed of, she writes, "At some point in their lives, most remember fearing that this truth would become known. Crones, however, also recall when and with whom they broke this taboo of silence as the beginning of feeling whole. To speak the truth is to be able to say, this is who I am." Fans of Bolen's quirky, spiritual tone will find these words comforting. However, much of the text discusses why women need to be juicy crones without offering much practical advice to improve one's life.

From Library Journal

Many books seek to convince women over 50 that calling themselves "crones" is a positive next step in female development, e.g., Ruth Gardner's Celebrating the Crone, Dorothy Morrison's In Praise of the Crone, and Barbara G. Walker's The Crone: Women of Age, Wisdom, and Power. In the latest and most direct of the genre, Bolen (psychiatry, Univ. of California Medical Ctr.; Goddesses in Every Woman) dedicates a chapter to each of the 13 qualities that she feels crones should cultivate-among them, follow your heart, speak the truth, never whine, never grovel, laugh, and savor the good. These traits and more, she believes, can be fostered during the last phase of life because it isn't an end but a time of becoming. Rather than be bitter and unhappy, Bolen urges readers to spend time being who they were meant to be and who they want to be-points that are well said and well taken. Highly recommended for all public libraries and for academic libraries with women's studies programs.

-Mary E. Jones

"For women there is nothing more liberating than age...if they learn to use their energy, power and compassion. This is a lighthearted manual on how to become a juicy and wise old woman. According to Jean Shinoda Bolen, the last third of our lives can be the best. Mature women can be happier than ever before and, if they work together, they can change the world. I certainly want to be one of those crones that don't whine!"

- Isabel Allende

About Jean Shinoda Bolen

Jean Shinoda Bolen is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a past Chairperson of the Council of National Affairs of the APA, a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, a Fellow and former member of the Board of Trustees of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, and a former Board member of the International Transpersonal Association. She is a Diplomate in Analytical Psychology from the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, a member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, and the Society of Jungian Analysts of Northern California. She is a past member of the Board of Governors of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, and past Chairperson of the Joint Certifying Board of the Northern and Southern California Societies of Jungian Analysts. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Ms. Foundation for Women. She founded and co-chaired Psychiatrists for ERA, which was a major influence within psychiatry in the early 1980's, that evolved into the Association for Women in Psychiatry.

Dr. Bolen attended UCLA and Pomona College prior to graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1958. She then entered the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, receiving her M.D. in 1962, followed by a rotating internship at Los Angeles County General Hospital and a residency in psychiatry at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, University of California Medical Center, San Francisco. Her analytic training was done at the C.G. Jung Institute in San Francisco.

She brings an emphasis on the question for meaning and the need for a spiritual dimension in life to all aspects of her work, while also taking into account the powerful effects of archetypes within us and family and culture upon us. Her books are used as college and university texts in gender studies, women's psychology, mythology, spirituality, east-west philosophy, and psychology courses. She has been an advocate for women, women's issues, and ethics in psychiatry. With her former husband, she co-founded Psychic and New Realities magazines, publications about parapsychological, and mind-body-spiritual subjects. She is in the widely acclaimed documentary, "Goddess Remembered," the first of the Canadian Film Board's trilogy.