About

A collage photograph of Meghan and Lizzie with the words Who are the Crones?

Who Are The Crones?

We are Meghan and Lizzie.

We are two women in our 60s who have discovered the joy of finding friendship later in life.

We are two women who are embracing our creative expression in a way we never have before.

In our 60s we are remembering and rediscovering how much fun it is to play … with words, with images, with our voices, with our art.

But don’t be fooled by our ages into thinking that we are only crones because of those numbers attached to our identities. We are crones because we are learning to see further. We are crones because we are embracing life and creativity.

The Crone as an archetype is many things. She has moved beyond her mothering years and is drawing her energy inwards. She is the witch, stirring a cauldron of dreams. She is a hermit, living at one with nature in her own internal wilderness.

She is also the woman who has done enough work on her inner self, that she, frankly, no longer gives a damn about the external world’s opinion of her.

We are crones. We are women who have done some serious work in our inner realms; but we know there is so much more for us to do. We know this is a life-long journey of remembering who really are and who we were born to become.

We are crones. We are women who have accepted the challenge to make the journey back to our source, our truths, our own buried treasure. We are on a quest to understand ourselves and our piece in the great collective puzzle of life.

We are crones. We are women who celebrate our creativity and who create for creation’s sake. We are reclaiming our creativity.

“… a woman’s creative ability is her most valuable asset, for it gives outwardly and it feeds inwardly at every level: psychic, spiritual, mental, emotive, and economic. The wild nature pours out endless possibilities, acts as birth channel, invigorates, slakes thirst, satiates our hunger for the deep and wild life. Ideally, this creative river has no dams on it, no diversions, and especially no misuse.” Clarissa Pinkola Estés

As we have stepped into our crone years and pulled on the cloaks of the Crowned Ones, the Wizards, we have discovered that there is alchemy in us. We create something from nothing. We create with our words and our images, our voices and our dreams. We are inspired to bring our creativity to the world.

“Creativity is the key to life. Inspiration is ALL human. Inspiration is spiritual because it serves to loosen the hold of your mental constructs, opening and expanding your capacity for love“. Richard Rudd

And there we have it! The secret to being a crone, the secret of being human … it is to open yourself up to love.

A photo of Meghan in the woods. A smiling woman with golden white pigtails and glasses, wearing a hat.
A photograph of a happy man and woman, both leaning their chins on their hands. Both wearing glasses and overalls
A picture of a barred owl by Vasilisa Romanenko. There is a quote - An artist's story is seizing an opportunity, taking risks, and having fun along the way.
a photograph of a woman with her dog. The woman wears glasses and has pigtails. The dog is looking lovingly at his mistress.
An art journal page about Gene Key 40 and the concepts of resolve and divine will. And it wouldn’t be complete without the cat! She is the Dream Arc animal for this key. A black cat. Try to love the questions. Practice, not perfection.
An AI generated image of an older woman with long silver braids in a sunlit forest, with bears and dogs.
A detailed watercolor illustration in a fairytale style, featuring an older woman with long, curly red hair, seated at a large, antique wooden desk within a magical library. She wears turquoise leather armor and a scholarly expression. Before her lies an open, ancient leather-bound book, emanating a soft golden light that illuminates her face. Also on the desk are fountain pens. The library is filled with towering bookshelves overflowing with books of various sizes and colors, creating a sense of depth and wonder. A lynx sits on the window sill.
A photograph of Lizzie, Crone2, journaling in her garden, writing in one of her own handmade books, with a fountain pen.
A photo of Lizzie standing on top of the car to make sure she gets the best shot. The car is an old Honda HRV. The doors are open. The landscape is Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.
sunset beach, Keyhaven, Dorset, waves, and sun shining on pebbles
A hand bound journal with a cyanotype print cover, with daisies. There are fountain pens and an ink bottle
Lizzie proudly holding one of her hand bound journals. Red haired woman smiling. Blue floral journal.
the golden path, an early morning walk on the Monarch's Way bridleway near my lovely Wiltshire home
bluebells and bokeh with Steve's homemade lens, Grovely Woods, Wiltshire
golden morning, a silver birch, a beech tree and the golden grasses on the common near my Wiltshire home

Meghan Deinhard, The Artistic Mystic

I live in the mountains of Idaho and spend my days communing with nature, making art and exploring my spirit. I live with my beloved and our fur family, walking our 22 acre woodland with my red heeler. Descriptors? Mystic, mother, partner, artist, grandmother, lover, contemplative, belly laugher, beauty lover and guide.

I have traveled The Gene Keys Golden Path as well as The Dream Arc multiple times since 2020. This work is so beautiful, evocative and transformative. I have been a seeker my entire life and nothing I have ever done before has brought me home to myself in the way playing with the Gene Keys and the Dream Arc has.

I have a YouTube channel, The Artistic Mystic. I explore my inner transformation onscreen weaving together the Gene Keys as well as The Dream Arc, nature, the inner work and my own art journaling. I have found that my service and creative practice entwine as I work through my current personal contemplations on camera. Not only is it transformative for me, but can be for my viewers as well, as I connect with humor, tears and personal storytelling.

I am also a guide in the wonderful Gene Keys online membership group, Gene Keys Unleashed with Hayley Curtis. I hold the Dream Arc space in that membership for those also playing in the Dream Arc course. Use this unique link below to check out all of the details and get your first month free: Meghan’s Offer.

In this incredibly supportive Gene Keys membership, I also record bi-monthly video/podcasts with my friend here in A Cauldron of Crones, Lizzie Dewey, called Conversations with a Couple of Crones. We riff on all subjects ‘inner work’ related. Lizzie and I are also offering these podcasts to our readers here on A Cauldron of Crones! You can find the link in the menu.

Fun Facts

  • I was a widow who found the love of my life, online, when I was 53
  • I have two grown sons and two granddaughters
  • My dog’s name is Merlin
  • One of the many jobs I had in my long lifetime was as a topless dancer
  • A peak experience in my life was flying in for a curtain call to a standing ovation as Peter Pan in my university production of the musical
  • An even more incredible experience was blissfully birthing my second child in the car in the early morning hours during a snowstorm Christmas week
  • I have never been happier and more fulfilled than I am now in this third phase of my life
  • I have a BFA in Art with a focus on ceramics, although I haven’t played with clay for decades… my current chosen medium is art journaling which utilizes mixed media
  • Hubby and I live in a 620 sq foot home but have big hobbies, so he built me my very own art studio we call Meghan’s Arthut and he has a 4,000 sq ft barn.

How Did we Meet?

Lizzie and I met when we joined Hayley Curtis‘s inner work membership, then called The Journey Home (now called Gene Keys Unleashed), on the very same day and said hi to each other virtually. Our friendship continued weaving in and around as we both worked one-on-one with Hayley, did a group container together, and then served as guides in The Journey Home. The friendship exploded with joyous connection when we began the group program Devoted with Hayley in January 2025.

The message of Devotion is this ... trust your heart above all else, and never worry about the consequences. To be devoted means to lie forever in the lap of the Divine. - Richard Rudd

Lizzie Dewey, Redheadwondering

I am Scottish, but now I live in the heart of the West Country of England, just a couple of miles from Stonehenge (think Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and you’ll be able to imagine it!). I live with my lovely husband in a teeny tiny house in the gorgeous Wiltshire countryside.

I have been a journal keeper since 1998, and I’ve been showing up for myself in the pages of my journal pretty much every single day.

For so long now, I have been looking for a way to share my love of journaling and the inner work with like-hearted, like-minded women, so creating this vessel with Meghan is a dream come true for me.

So, let’s start this intro with a little bit about me … I’m a journaler, a writer, a Creative to my very core.

I create with words, with my camera, with Cyanotype prints, with flowers and paper and books. I’m a bookbinder who aspires to be a book artist!

It’s taken me a long time to own my creativity, but, since connecting with Hayley Curtis, and since I started on this glorious part of my odyssey home to myself that is my journey with the Gene Keys, I am proud to say, “I am a Creatrix. I am a woman who creates!”

I am also a guide in Gene Keys Unleashed with Hayley Curtis, and it is such an honour to host The Transformation Station in GKU, where women can share their transformational journeys with the Gene Keys, and where I share mine. And as Meghan said above, she and I also have a glorious podcast/video offering, Conversations With A Couple Of Crones in GKU.

The Inner Work IS My Life’s Work

I believe wholeheartedly that the most important thing I can do in this life is the inner work, and the main tool I use to do that is journaling.

Writing allowed me to right my life!

And writing set me free.

I am now working with my Gene Keys, and since I started on this Golden Path, the most incredible things are happening to me, inside me. I’m digging deeper than ever before, I’m looking at my whole life, my whole self, through the lens of the Gene Keys, and I am seeing things in a whole new and exciting way. It’s as if the Gene Keys were written specifically FOR me.

You see, writing and language are so important to me. When I am writing, I feel more real, more whole. When I am writing, I am soothed, I do my thinking on the page, and I am able to untangle my thoughts.

I think the reason the Gene Keys “work” for me is that their essence is captured by the most perfect words. Not only does Richard Rudd express himself so beautifully, so poetically, Hayley then wraps her words of interpretation and guidance around the Gene Keys’ text, and I feel as if I am held in a web of words.

And then I write, and it is as if all of our words are woven into the most exquisite tapestry that is my life.

I am a word weaver … I take Richard’s words and Hayley’s, and I weave my own threads of words through them to create the life I am destined to live.

I have no idea what the cloth will turn into, I am simply content to weave my words in my journals.

And now I get to do some word-weaving here, in A Cauldron of Crones. How completely perfect is that?

How Do We Build/Maintain/Nurture Our Bond?

Lizzie lives in England, Meghan lives in the US. There is a seven hour time difference. Yet our friendship thrives. We Voxer each other every day, meet online every two weeks to record a podcast, and the other weekends we see each other in group call recordings for our Devoted program. Perhaps we don’t go to each other’s houses for coffee, but we are in each other’s hearts always.

Why we are Devoted to the Gene Keys!

You have probably guessed by now that we both use the Gene Keys in our inner work. If you’d like to know more about what the Gene Keys mean to us, and indeed, if you want a behind the curtain peek at our Gene Keys charts, check out this article! If you’d like to explore your Gene Keys profile, you can get it here.

A photograph of the sun rising over Churston Cove in Devon. The sun is sparkling on the sea.. It is overlaid with a quote from Richard Rudd: "The Gene Keys are a living wisdom. These are teachings to imbibe, contemplate and apply in your daily life. As you allow them to percolate inside you, one by one your troubles will begin to fall away, and you will find yourself inhabiting a new and brighter life."
An image of parchment with a blue quill pen. Words - You are cordially invited to watch our welcome video. Click on me.
An AI generated image of a pink flamingo standing in a lake surround by lush foliage and pink flowers.

Why the Name A Cauldron of Crones?

1. We both LOOOOVE aliteration
2. It came forth intuitively when we were texting each other one day throwing out names 
3. It's our whimsical take on the names for groups of animals like: 
A Sloth of Bears
A Flamboyance of Flamingos
A Murder of Crows
A Caravan of Camels
A Parliament of Owls
A Mischief of Magpies
A Charm of Finches

Lizzie says: Why did we call this space “A Cauldron of Crones”? Well, for starters, we are a couple of crones who are deeply embracing our Crone years. And our Cauldron, this space, this online magazine, or blog, or whatever you want to call it, this is our cooking pot of creativity. This is where we want to mix up our potions of words and art; we want to sprinkle in our devotion to the inner work; we want to ladle in great dollops of high play … we want to create, to transform, to embrace our Cronehood … and most of all we want to suck the marrow out of life and enjoy every minute of it!
The Alchemy of Creativity

In the Gene Keys Venus Sequence, Richard Rudd talks about The Alchemy of Creativity as a healing tool.
"With the right music we find we can open more deeply to the pain inside. It becomes more bearable and somehow more bittersweet. Music gets us breathing, remembering and sometimes it gets us moving ... music oils the alchemy inside us, smoothing the way, softening the blows, rounding the sharp edges of our minds."
If you would like to listen to some of the music that "oils the alchemy inside us", you can check out our Spotify Playlist here.