Hi, I'm a hag
Premature menopause brought me face to face with the power of my inner crone
Hi, there —
This is Micah from Modern Hysteria, your newsletter about the worst-kept secrets of womanhood — mental health, motherhood, menopause, and marriage.
When I was five I started having recurring night terrors about the hag from Disney’s Snow White.
Sometimes, she lived in the willow tree in my parents’ back yard, where the willow branches would part to reveal her cloaked figure. She’d capture me as I tried to run by in slow motion.
Other times, she waited in my closet until I was asleep to drag into the dark.
The hag haunted me for years. How ironic, then, that I came to identify with the “hag” in my thirties, as surgical menopause thrust me into my crone years twenty years early.
The Hag
The “hag” — an archetypal old woman — is resplendent in folklore and mythology:
Cailleach literally means “old woman” or “hag” in Irish and Scottish Gaelic
Banshees wail in the night
Strega Nona enchants a pasta pot
Batibat is a fat, old tree spirit
Kikimora has a hunchback
Jenny Greenteeth lurks in the trees
Baba Yaga (my favorite) fries and eats children
Rarely are older women portrayed as strong, glamorous, beautiful, or valuable to society. Quite the opposite: The “hag” archetype portrays older women as evil, creepy, or both. In pop culture, old women are invisible, matronly, grannies, or spinsters.
Our stories reveal just how little we value older women.
This — and a litany of physical changes — made premature menopause hard for me to accept. I was only 29 when I had a hysterectomy, and as grateful as I was for the benefits of the surgery, I struggled to reconcile my identity as a young mom with the hot flashes and night sweats I associated with old age.
But I would come to see the truth: That menopause and aging are as liberating as they are stigmatized.
How did we get here?
I wrote to you recently about about what it would be like to live in a matriarchy in which women, mothers, and female elders hold power.
That’s far from our current reality, in which older women in particular are seen as peripheral and burdensome.
“To be old in Western society is to be devalued, but to be old and female is to be doubly marginalized and oppressed.”
The image of the troublesome hag has persisted since Medieval Europe’s modern witch trials, when tens of thousands of older (mostly) women were strangled and burned under suspicion of witchcraft and demonic possession.
Scholars argue that the Church was threatened by independent, unmarried older women because they were hard to control and didn’t have husbands to “keep them in line.” They were women unto themselves, undefined by roles such as “wife,” or “mother.”
I picture the “hags” as insolent old women, unwilling to be subservient. Unfortunately, the patriarchal culture required them to be docile and compliant. The price they paid was their lives.
Older women are past their prime
Since then we’ve seen the role of the older woman in our society shrink to … what was it that JD Vance cosigned back in August?
Ah, yes: “That taking care of grandchildren is ‘the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.’”
No wonder we don’t want to age. It comes with a social penalty.
The patriarchy devalues older women because it equates women’s value to their physical attractiveness (in a narrow and unattainable beauty standard).
Once women hit menopause, they’re past their prime, like overripe and wrinkly peaches.
This is what hung over me as, after six months of injections to induce premature menopause, I saw my eyelids droop and my waistline thicken. My body stopped producing estrogen, and I experienced the hallmark menopause symptoms:
Hot flashes
Sleeplessness
Fatigue
Anger
Irritability
I was struggling with my new identity as much as the physical changes.
Then, I found this book at my grandmother’s house. She passed in 2023, right before I had surgery to make premature menopause permanent.
My grandmother, D, read it to me when I was my son’s age. Bony-Legs is a retelling of the classic Slavic Baba Yaga tale that, in equal parts, captivated and reminded me of my witchy nightmares.
But, as a newly-postmenopausal mother, I saw the story differently:
Living in a remote cabin in the woods sounds dreamy. So what if it has chicken legs? That’ll keep the door-to-door solicitors away.
I started to accept — no, relish — the idea of becoming a troublesome old woman. I’m in my hag era, I proclaimed aloud to my husband, who assured me that I was just as lovely as the day we married.
“No!” I corrected him. “I am a hag, and I’m good with it.”
Liberation
What I’ve found so far is that owning your “hag era” is delightfully liberating. It’s also far less burdensome than fighting the uphill battle against aging.
I just wish we talked about it more.
Ageism and sexism shrouded menopause in a social silence, so we don’t lead each other to the experience of menopause as a community.
But we could.
The “Hag” episode of this wonderful podcast describes a croning ceremony in which older women are recognized as wise elders and mentors. The ceremony acknowledge her contributions to the community and empowers her to step into the next phase of her life.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
In my hag era
Menopause is the best and only treatment for intractable PMDD, and, while it comes with its own challenges, I find it freeing.
Not just because there’s no menstrual cycle to contend with, but because there’s no pretense. Something about the “hag” era lays it all bare.
This past year I stopped thinking about my body as needing to fit into beauty standard for my age, because I’m not my “age” anymore. Not only was I freed from my reproductive years — which made me mentally ill — but also the sexual objectification that came with them.
So, at thirty-three, don’t be surprised if you see me retiring into a Baba Yaga. inducting myself into the House of Bony Legs on my own timeline. I’m ready to go full Strega Nona.
’s Hagitude is gorgeous and discusses many of these themes in detail.
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