Carolyn missed her mother more and more. She would talk about how much her mother would have loved this time, about how she wished she could ask her mother to help her choose a dress and to help her decide which earrings were the perfect match. When she had fights with her fiancé or felt prewedding jitters about her choice of a mate, she longed to have her mother there for a heart-to-heart.
The week before the wedding, Carolyn came to see me, inconsolable. She spoke through tears. “I just know if my mother were alive she would do something very special for me the day of the wedding. It would be something I had not thought of, something that would tell me she was thinking of me on this big day.”
We both knew that there was no one who would or could fill this role for her. Her mother had many friends who loved Carolyn, but she had no desire to turn to them. Only her mother would do, and her mother was not here.
Near the end of the session I said to Carolyn, “I don't mean to be presumptuous, but I am wondering if there is anything I can do?”
Without missing a beat, Carolyn cried harder and asked, “Would you come and see me right before I walk down the aisle?”
I was deeply touched, and my eyes filled as we cried together. It takes profound strength to admit that you need someone when you have been taught that you do not have needs or that the needs you have are wrong or irrelevant in the face of others' needs. By letting down her guard, she could begin to trust that I would be there to “see” her at that archetypal moment before she wed.
I once read about a nun who worked in a rough area of New York. Each evening, before leaving the church for the day, she checked herself for her level of vulnerability. On the days she felt particularly soft, she took a taxi home. Even on the days she was in a stronger frame of mind, she took precautions as she walked the dangerous streets to her bus stop. She did not turn a fool's eye to her circumstances or condition.
On the other hand, I have watched people pull out their stiff upper lip and muscle strength without admitting their vulnerability. This gritting the teeth does not bring resiliency; instead the stiff and muscled “heroine” is brittle and vulnerable to the next thing or person who is stronger and louder.
If we do not allow the vulnerability, the softness, or the tenderness, we are more apt to end up with sharp edges and holes in our heart. For example, a woman I worked with insisted that the barbs and slights from her husband didn't bother her. She could easily grin and bear it, especially understanding his warped “sense of humor.” Her avoidance of the pain his remarks instilled in her left her open to being treated the same way by her children.
During my own childhood I perfected the defense of denial. It took me years and years of concentrated effort and analysis to free the pain and thaw the icicles that kept me frozen within myself and unable to love or be loved. It took devotion to rediscover my vulnerability, and it takes faith and trust to remain in touch with it on an everyday basis.
A woman I worked with had, in childhood, developed a habit of using garbled talk so her father would not hit her for back-talking. This was a creative response to a threatening environment, possibly the only way she could find to maintain herself in the face of worrying she would lose her father's love and incite his anger. As an adult, however, this garbled talk kept her from being understood and seen, kept her at a distance from others when she desired to be close. What ultimately helped this woman was not just changing the behavior, but understanding it as a creative response to an outdated situation. She now has a better chance of becoming free to relate intimately because she allowed herself to be vulnerable to the old feeling of needing her father's love, of wanting to be seen and not hurt. She allowed herself to fall apart a little in order to emerge stronger.
taking the inner journey
Like so many of you I grew up with the myth of the hero and was told that conquering ourselves and the world was our most important challenge. That holds for some times in life, but once you experience loss, sorrow, or significant change, you recognize that there is another journey to make: a descent into the soul to understand the flow of feeling, emotion, and lost parts of ourselves. A journey to discover the threads that bind us to each other and to all aspects of the living world.
Myths of descent usually begin with an unexpected twist of fate or a deliberate dive into the underworld—the unknown path that lies ahead when we experience loss, tragedy, or serious disappointment—and the road not taken that calls to us when we enter a new passage. These myths give us a framework for overcoming adversity and enlightening the process of redemption, showing the heroes and heroines figuring out their own way and righting their course as a result of a great fall.
One such legend comes to us from ancient Sumeria: the tale of Inanna. In his book From the Poetry of Sumer, Samuel Noah Kramer tells of the power and influence Inanna's journey held for the people of that time: “The goddess who outweighed, overshadowed, and outlasted them all was a deity known to the Sumerians by the name of Inanna, ‘Queen of Heaven.’” Inanna is the tale of a woman's journey from her early days of being courted, admired, and enriched to her descent to the underworld in her middle years. It is about sacrifices she must make to achieve wisdom and affirm her purpose of life.
Inanna was much loved and revered, yet she voluntarily abandoned her office of holy princess of heaven and earth to descend into the underworld. This was a descent of uncertainty and danger, a descent to journey within the depths of the psyche. Before her departure she spoke to her faithful friend, Ninshubur, leaving elaborate instructions. If Inanna did not return, her friend must go to the gods and ask them all to save her, not leaving to chance that she might not be able to recover.
Inanna departs to the underworld to see her older sister, Ereshkigal, raw, bitter, and entangled, the Queen of the Underworld. But this place of grief and sorrow is not one we enter lightly. Inanna passes through seven gates, and at each one she is required to surrender a talisman or article of clothing, leaving her bowed and naked upon her entrance to the throne room. Her journey is stark and perhaps surprising, given that she has volunteered to go deep within herself. She is willing to unburden herself from all she has held dear, and yet when at each surrender she asks for the meaning of this stripping she is told that the ways of the underworld are perfect and may not be questioned.
Then Ereshkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death.
She spoke against her the word of wrath.
She uttered against her the cry of guilt.
She struck her.
Inanna was turned into a corpse,
A piece of rotting meat,
And was hung from a hook on the wall.
This is what a transformation—or the conscious reflection on a lifetime loss or change—can feel like. We descend to the underworld, leave behind all earthly attachments and accomplishments, and don't know what will happen next. It is a time of facing ourselves, looking squarely at the demons and feeling like we are a piece of flesh hanging from a hook on the wall, being seasoned and matured! This is a chilling image of vulnerability, a raw look at surrender. Why would Inanna leave her secure world and walk into the void voluntarily?
Because we cannot live a conscious life without facing the terrors of uncertainty and the unknown. Always staying within the safe zone simply doesn't work. No, our task is to open ourselves to the darkness—the realm of emotion, feeling, the unknown—and experience the anguish of sorrow, uncertainty, confusion, and powerlessness. We must be willing, mentally and emotionally, to be confused, to be wrong, to take a risk, fall down, skin our knees, be wrong again, be confused
