I Write my Story with Love
*Thank You* on Healing Aloud's first birthday
“Ereshkigal is the opposite to Inanna’s beauty, glory, and adoration. She is the sister betrayed. Feared. Unloved. Alone. Rejected. Her pain has distorted her. Her hunger for love left unjustly unfulfilled. Ereshkigal is the aspect of Inanna, the aspect of us all, that lives just under the surface waiting for our consciousness to open to its call,”
— Chani Nicholas
My favorite astrologer, Chani, has been talking a lot lately about the myth of the Descent of Inanna — Sumerian goddess of love, beauty and sex — into the underworld, heeding the call of her sister Ereshkigal, goddess of the land of the dead.
It’s a story associated with Venus retrograde, which is coming up March 1—April 12. To sum up one version, before Inanna heads down, she tells her confidant to send help if she doesn’t return in three days. As she descends through seven gates into the underworld, one item of protection is taken from her at each — her crown, staff, amulets, robe, etc. When she arrives to her sister, she is naked, defenseless. Ereshkigal burns with envy, with the pain of being the sister who is rejected and alone. She kills Inanna.
Three days pass. Inanna’s assistant on the other side alerts the gods. Magical helper beings are sent down to find out what has happened. They find Ereshkigal moaning over her sister’s body.
Oh, oh, my insides!
Oh, oh, my outsides!
The beings respond:
Oh, oh, your insides…
Oh, oh, your outsides…
They go back and forth, over and over again until Ereshkigal wakes up — until, as Chani puts it, “the spell of her own pain is broken because she has been witnessed and mirrored.”
As Ereshkigal wakes, she thanks the beings and asks what she can offer in return. They, of course, want Inanna. Ereshkigal revives her sister; Inanna is reborn and carried back up, forever changed.
“I see my own pain, I see my own fear, I see my unwillingness to meet this moment… I see all of the sides of myself.”
Chani explains that we can understand all the characters in the myth as parts of the same being: There’s the part that calls us down, who needs witnessing. There’s the part that travels down, has her defenses entirely stripped along the way, arrives vulnerable, must die — and won’t be revived until her pain is seen. And that’s where the magical being of transformation comes in, the part who can look, listen and reflect.
“I see my own pain, I see my own fear, I see my unwillingness to meet this moment… I see all of the sides of myself,” says Chani. “And in that witnessing we can be released from the spell of our own anguish.”
Damn have I been out here trying. To “see all the sides of myself.”
For me, the magical being of transformation is my inner creator / writer, and she has really struggled to be a witness over the past couple months. Turns out that what I’ve set out to do — “unravel disempowering relations with men” — has brought up A LOT OF SHIT. In that post, I talked about going back into the cave, I said it would get ugly… and it sure has. This is treacherous territory.
The parts of myself I’ve continued to reject are coming out of the shadows to show me their suffering. Feelings I’ve pushed away with phrases like “it wasn’t that bad” cloud the air. They condense and slide down the rock walls, leaving a trail of slime.
Snot and tears.
An endless dripping I’ve been ignoring.
Trying to write what I see has left me feeling heavy, hanging in and near despair. It’s been really fucking with my day-to-day.
But I haven’t given up on my own words:
“I think it’s what I’m here for. To go into the cave and shine a light into the shadows. Because I know there are also crystals in this cave — parts of myself I need to reclaim and treasure — but I won’t find them unless I turn my ass around and tread back into the darkness.”
And here at the entrance I’ve been creeping in and out of, I think I’ve found the first crystal. One of the shiny nuggets of learning I sensed would be worth this journey.
While I was really in the thick of it last month, an image arose as I sat quietly in the womb room, breathing together with a close friend. I saw a glowing flame at the center of my heart. It was brilliant, unwavering. And with it came an important message: this represents your capacity to love — and that starts with yourself. Above all, nurture this flame. Make sure it’s burning brightly .
And as I’ve entered the cave over the past weeks, the flame has flickered and dimmed. The dank air makes it hard for this fire to breath. On many mornings, I haven’t been able to venture in.
The struggle has made me realize: without this flame growing stronger, all this shit will just stay there, lurking in the dark. My capacity to be a witness to my own pain depends on how fully I can love and accept all parts of me.
That is the key to releasing myself from my spell of my own anguish.
So I’ve been working to feed this flame — with kind words and soft touches and deep rest and tasty food. I’m learning, again, to slow down, to stop pushing, to reach out for support when I need it. To stop trying to hold it all together and just let myself be the way I am.
As I write, I take lots of dance breaks to release and to reconnect with my spirit of joy.
Sometimes I lay on my back on the floor. I put one hand on my stomach the other on my chest and aim to undo the impacts of any self-berating that happened during the writing process. Any comments I made about “how stupid that sentence sounds” or how “bad” or “unhealthy” some decision was that I’m writing about. The harsh voice that repeats, “how many times are you going to have to learn this lesson?”
Shhhhhh, shh, shh, shh. I say to myself. There, there. I feel the warmth radiating from my palms to the tender parts of me.
She didn’t mean that.
I’m so proud of you for doing your best.
This has been transformative.
And still, sometimes what the light exposes me makes me want to turn back around.
But when I do, you know what I see? I see your candles, there at the cave’s entrance. I see the light you cast as you wait to witness what I bring back. I think of each of you who have let me know something has resonated, who have been here in any capacity, supporting me with the invaluable gift of your attention, your listening.
You have been with me through this process that I’ve been aiming to share with you in nearly real time. You have made it possible.
Knowing you are there holds me accountable to sharing the most vulnerable parts; what often goes unsaid; the parts I might skip over if I just did this in my journal — because I know it’s the Really Real talk that resonates.
So, as I celebrate Healing Aloud’s very first birthday, I want to deeply thank each of you reading this. All of you who have read any of the posts here in the past year.
Thank you for being the warmth at my back on this journey, your candles a reminder that these stories are not just my own.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
❤️🩹
Happy Birthday Healing Aloud! Your courage inspires me, always.