The Inner Crone

In my senior year of high school we staged the musical Li'l Abner. I was seventeen years old and wanted to play the ingenue, but got the role of Mammy Yokum instead. Initial disappointment aside, the part was worlds more interesting than the ingenue, and - more significantly - I had to find and get to know myself as an old woman while still a teenager. This experience proved an incredible boon that has given me lasting peace and eliminated all fret surrounding the issue of age. Been there, liked that.

It was also frankly quite a thrill to repeatedly go through the process of unmasking my theatrical oldness and being a seventeen year old girl again.