In Which We Discuss the Maiden, the Mother, and the Other One

In many, many different mythologies, there are three magical women - the Fates, the Norns, or Shakespeare's Wyrd Sisters, for instance. Generally, these three women are portrayed as a maiden, a mother, and a crone - the three main stages of a woman's life.

Of course, these days, as Terry Pratchett put it, a women can put off being at least one of those for quite a long time. So there are four stages. The maiden, something else, the mother, and the crone.

I'm twenty years old. I'm not a maiden, and nor am I mother. I'm not a crone. So, I'm currently the other one.

Incidentally, 'the maiden, the mother and the...other one' is also taken from Pratchett's writing, when Esme Weatherwax muses on the tradition. She doesn't like to think of crones, since that would be her role.

Anyway...

My first online name was Yunalookalike. I signed up to a games site, and although I didn't intend to stay, I wanted a 'game-y' name. My boyfriend at the time had exclaimed on how much Yuna from Final Fantasy X-2 resembled me, so I just quickly tapped in the name, and didn't think any more of it. 'Yunalookalike', or just 'Yunie' became my online identity for the next three years, as I aged from fifteen to eighteen.

Now, Yuna is obviously a maiden, and although I technically wasn't at that point, my mindset was far more innocent than it is now. The name, and the connotations it had, fitted that stage of my life. Soon after my eighteenth birthday, I started using the name Deis.

Deis is a character from the Breath of Fire games. She's an immortal sorceress Naga (half-snake, half-woman), and extremely sensual. At one point, in Breath of Fire IV, the party need to enter her mind, and find her waited on hand and foot by attractive young men. She's neither a maiden, nor a mother, nor a crone.

Now I'm a little older, I've started experimenting with the name Bartelmy.

Bartelmy of the Ban is a character in Sheri Tepper's True Game novels. She's a Dervish. In the world of the True Game, the Dervish are women who train themselves, and have tremendous willpower. The rites they put themselves through result in their being unable to bear children in the normal manner - instead they pay other women to act as surrogates. Unfortunately, the woman Bartelmy chose to bear her daughter refused to give the child up. Not out of love, but because she believed that the Dervishes could give her a new and beautiful young body. They couldn't, and Bartelmy's child was unaware of her for sixteen years. Bartelmy continued with her mission, while watching over her child from afar. She appears at key moments, when she is able to help. She is not a hands on parent, but she is a mother. An unconventional one, but still a mother.