Thresholds
I was recently re-introduced to the myth of Inanna, Sumerian goddess of love, sensuality, procreation and more. This has been speaking to the very deepest part of me. The parts that deal with matters of death and life, fecund pelvic matter.
It is a story of descent, a story of contemplation and thresholds. One where we are called to descend, seven layers deep, stripped of elements of self-identification and comfort at each gateway until we arrive at the core of our essence. It is here where we come face to face with the parts we have discarded, our shadow self. Here we begin to understand how to reintegrate, to re-member ourself back into wholeness. We remember first hand what it means to embody a sense of wild belonging.
As a cis-bodied woman, well situated within my peri-menopausal years, I am beginning to have different sensations and knowings within my body. I am having, what I can only describe as loss, and at times utter confusion. But this is also making way for fire, creative vitality, that I’ve previously known as birthing energy. It was from this place that I birthed and raised my babies, but also my practice. This is the center I dance from and the center that I do creative handwork from. It is relational, generative and erotic. If I sit with it long enough, and feel into her anima, my sense is that these cinders burn deep in my pelvic bowl and have fortified me since I took my origin breath. But this fire feels provocative, and it’s taking up more space, becoming more available than it previously had been, and I wonder if this is the beginning of my Inanna journey into the underworld. I’m inclined to say that it is.
I am being stripped bare of what I used to cling to, as a means to understand myself, my stories, my patterns. And what was once tolerable is becoming intolerable. What do I mean by this? Well, I think that hormones play a fantastic role in keeping us going, keeping us steady. And then, monthly (or so) I had this break from the pressure of staying knitted together, to tend to life and all of my commitments, and I had this experience of PMS (ahem…please make space) and as the veil lifted I could see what was not working for me, what was intolerable. I could voice my needs, or feel my fatigue. I would touch into the tender edges of my hunger - my desires. And that oceanic surge of clairvoyance came with tidal waves of emotion. But now that I am in my peri-menopausal years, the amount of time that I notice the veil lifted is a lot longer, maybe even inverse to before. Now it feels like the norm, with breaks for rest. Now what is intolerable is a lot more obvious, potent, poignant. And I am in my clairvoyance a lot more of the time too. I can see shit.
Where I once asked, “where am I in all of this?” - the young Inanna in the upper world who sensed a lost shadow self but didn’t know how to find her - is now intimate with her and all of the discomfort, the loss and the creative beauty and fury she carries. I am now wondering how to hold it all, how does one carry the ocean? As mammals once moved from the sea and carried the life-giving ocean in their bellies, I too carry this oceanic knowing in my womb. I feel an opportunity to transition from bleeding for the world and into a retention of my creative blood potential to rejoin the deep well of the feminine. But none of us are meant to solo journey, we were never meant to village alone. We all carry our own piece of the knowing, whose wisdom grows in spades when it’s collaborative. I believe that it’s in community that we dream ourselves into a new way of being. And I’m so honored and excited to dream that new way in community with you.
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