Moving Forward Together: Day 28
March 28: Virginia Woolf & the Crone’s Demand for Space, Voice, and Stillness
Photo credit: By George Charles Beresford/ Adam Cuerden - Filippo Venturi Photography Blog, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50293324
Some voices echo louder after death than they ever did in life.
On March 28, 1941, Virginia Woolf—visionary writer, literary innovator, and radical feminist thinker—walked into the River Ouse with stones in her pockets, leaving behind a legacy that still ripples through literature and feminism today.
Her death was not the end of her story. If anything, it was the beginning of her myth—one that refuses to be silenced.
Woolf was one of the most important modernist writers of the 20th century, known for her stream-of-consciousness style, which tried not just to tell a story, but to capture the shape of thought itself.
Her novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves, were radical not because of what they were about—but because of how they asked us to experience time, memory, gender, and consciousness.
But she didn’t stop at fiction. In A Room of One’s Own (1929), she declared what women needed most in order to create:
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
That sentence became a battle cry for creative and intellectual freedom—not just for writers, but for all women seeking space, privacy, financial independence, and the right to think, create, and exist beyond the domestic sphere.
Woolf struggled with what we would now likely call bipolar disorder. Her life was marked by periods of profound creativity and crippling depression, and she often felt trapped by both her mind and her world.
During World War II, as London was bombed and her publishing house threatened, she wrote one final letter to her beloved Leonard, and walked into the river.
Her death is sometimes romanticized—but it shouldn’t be. It was the result of isolation, mental illness, societal pressure, and a world that gave brilliant women very few lifelines.
Woolf’s writing, however, remains a light in the dark, a reminder that to name one’s inner life, to demand space, to refuse erasure, is an act of rebellion.
Virginia Woolf is a Crone of the mind—not aged by years, but aged by wisdom. She gave us permission to say:
I need time. I need space. I need solitude.
I am not just a body or a role—I am a mind, a soul, a voice.
My inner world is not irrelevant—it is sacred.
Woolf teaches us that the Crone demands space for herself, not out of selfishness, but because she knows that creativity, truth, and sanity require it. She knows that silence can be both sanctuary and prison, and she walks the line between the two with her eyes open.
To walk the Crone’s path is to claim your own room—not just four walls, but the metaphorical room that allows you to think, feel, and speak without apology.
A Spell for Creating a Room of One’s Own
This spell is for those who need space—mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical. It is for those who are overwhelmed, unheard, or yearning for a place where they can think clearly and create freely.
What You’ll Need:
A blue or violet candle (for clarity, peace, and mental space)
A small key (real or symbolic)
A blank page or notebook
A small container or box (to represent your "room")
The Ritual:
1. Light the Candle of Clarity
Light the blue or violet candle, saying:
"I call in stillness.
I call in solitude.
I call in the sacred silence that nourishes my spirit."
2. Claim Your Room
Hold the key and say:
"This key unlocks my space.
My room, my refuge, my right.
No one enters here unless I open the door."
Place the key in the container or box, symbolizing the creation of a protected space that belongs to you alone.
3. Begin with a Blank Page
Take the notebook or page and write a single sentence—a thought, a line of poetry, a memory, or even just a word. It doesn’t have to be profound. It just has to be yours.
Say:
"In this space, I create.
In this space, I am not judged.
In this space, I exist as I am."
4. Seal & Carry the Spell
Snuff the candle when you are ready. Keep the box, key, and page together, and return to them when you need sanctuary, inspiration, or space to remember who you are.
Virginia Woolf gave us the words to say what we need and why it matters. Her life—and her death—remind us that we must fight for space not just for ourselves, but for every woman who has ever been told to be quiet, to stay small, to disappear.
The Crone does not disappear. She claims her place, holds her truth, and writes her name across time.
We move forward together—rooted in history, fueled by resistance, and weaving the future with our own hands.