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My niece got engaged to be married on Saturday.

After everything I went through in my own marriage and life, I thought that I’d be immune to the romantic power of these fairy-tale moments.

Yet when I started receiving the stunning pictures from the celebratory dinner that followed the ritual of the proposal—I was surprised by my own reactions.

I found myself incredibly moved.

As I watched the video that the owner of the restaurant (and a friend of the family) discretely took of the moment my niece’s boyfriend proposed to her, my eyes filled with tears.

I have watched that video a few times now and every time tears invariably come.

I look at these two figures—she wearing something delicate and flowy and pink, he on one knee in front of her, bathed in the light of the setting September sun, the shimmering lake in the background and the weeping willow in the foreground—and I cry.

“It was perfect!” my sister exclaimed as she was recounting for me all the juicy details during our call the following morning.

Yes, the setting was perfect. The weather cooperated. Apparently, the young man has been planning this for months, in consultation with my sister and probably with his own family. He was armed with a beautiful ring—a powerful symbol that communicates so many societal codes about value and worth, economic and social status.

What got to me most was the sweetness of my niece’s spontaneous exclamations of surprise, excitement, and disbelief.

Seeing them in their youth, their innocence, their hopeful plans for the future, triggered in me something that I am still trying to process.

As I write this, my mind is imprinted with their beautiful faces smiling and happy, and my eyes are filled to the brim. I feel a pressure in my heart and even a constriction in my throat, and I am surprised and curious at this powerful emotion that’s been living in my unconscious, unknown to me until this moment.

It felt like happiness when I heard the news, saw the pictures: a beautiful young couple made a decision to start a new family.

As a young woman, I was both conditioned and biologically programmed to want this.

As a 58-year-old woman, underneath the surface layer of giddy excitement around this event, I experience a layer of grief.

I was that young innocent woman once, too.

Engagement, marriage held so much promise.

And I felt happy for many years that followed.

Until one day, I woke up and saw that not only was I no longer happy but that I hadn’t felt happy for a very, very long time.

When I opened my eyes—some time in my early 40s—I felt empty and lost, despite living the life according to the societally-sanctioned formula for happiness and success.

The realizations that followed were so painful and disappointing, they crushed me, and led to a complete disintegration of who I’d thought myself to be.

Anger followed disappointment. I felt duped by that ridiculous fairy tale I bought into decades earlier. I hated how life felt to me then, and what a disappointment I became to myself in it.

The happiness I felt in that moment of choosing to be “together forever” did not last long-term.

The feeling of love that I counted on as a reward for all of my sacrifices and hard work of nurturing my family has become sporadic and unreliable.

It took me over 10 years to unlearn my childhood strategies to get love.

In the process, I learned that the source of my love (and safety, and trust) is within.

Once that became clear, I was able to forgive and reparent all the younger versions of me who have made the choices that I questioned later.

Learning to love for me meant learning to accept all that is not perfect—in myself, in my life partner, in my children, in my life.

I had to learn to love the messiness of it all, the raw and the real. Not only the shiny, the young, and the beautiful. I learned to love the space between the perfection of my youthful imagination and the reality of the ups and downs of life, as well as the changeable nature of the relationships that support that life.

As I contemplate the engagement of my niece, I celebrate my own growth in the 34 years of my own marriage.

The love I feel today is the mature love that rose like the phoenix from the ashes of idealized romantic love of my youth.

Losing the fairy tale was painful. But the pain eventually brought me to a deeper, truer, more mature, more lasting love.

In my late 50s, I am no longer that young Maiden that my lovely 25-year-old niece is now. I am grounded with the weight of what I have gone through as a wife, as a mother, as a woman, as a human.

I am currently guided by life and by my own biology to step into the archetypal energy of the Crone—the Wise Woman, the Elder.

I observe that many women resist stepping into that role.

Aging is viewed as shameful in our society, which keeps women attached to remaining in Maiden for longer than it serves us.

The Maiden is innocent and inexperienced and starry eyed. We all carry that archetype. There is beauty in that playful innocence, too.

However, the love of a Maiden—I observe—is what creates so much suffering in modern relationships. Our attachment to romantic and idealized love often leaves no room for a more mature, grounded in reality, and nourished by self-responsibility love that I write about.

The love of a Wise Woman endures the vicissitudes of life. This love can last beyond the transactional nature of the daily survival. The love that lasts is the one generated within, so we can offer it to others without looking for anything in return. The wisdom comes from the messy process of growth and transformation.

Many of us entered into committed relationships as young Maidens, full of hope and possibility.

Perhaps this is why so many of us are dissatisfied in our relationships: we get stuck on the level of hopeful expectations that love, happiness, fulfillment will be delivered by a special person on the outside.

As we step into the Crone, the way we love may change. Our love has the potential to grow into a more mature, more unconditional, more enduring feeling. We no longer look for it on the outside, but are connected to it from within.

As I step into the archetypal energy of the Crone—the Wise Woman, the Elder—I do not lose my Maiden. Her youthful, playful, and hopeful nature is an asset I want to have access to in my life. The wisdom of the Crone consists in integration of all the archetypes and roles we played before, including the playfulness of the Maiden and the nurturance of the Mother.

We need access to all sides of who we are for a full, satisfying life.

To my beautiful young niece I wish to experience the benefits of all the stages and roles that await her. May she step into each one with grace and acceptance, mining the wisdom contained in each stage of life.

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