15
The Descent
Meeting the Shadow
As a woman in search of freedom from food and weight obsessions makes her way through a labyrinthine tangle of thoughts, feelings, and desires, she eventually comes to a path that plunges her down into the center of her Self. She now realizes that complete recovery requires a willingness to descend deep into the depths of her being, to confront all those aspects of herself that she would just as soon leave hidden in the dark.
In an ancient Sumerian myth, Inanna, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, decided it was time for her to replenish her powers since she was feeling them waning. She knew that in order to do this, she needed to descend into the underworld. Her people pleaded with her not to do this for the underworld was ruled by Inanna’s vicious sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Great Below. It was a very dangerous place and many of those who journeyed there never returned. Inanna insisted, however, and so her closest assistant devised a plan to send help in the event that Inanna did not return in three days.
Even though Inanna was the Queen of Heaven, Ereshkigal insisted that she enter the underworld the way everyone else had to: by passing through seven gates. At each gateway she had to remove a piece of her magnificent regalia and be judged by the gatekeepers. She arrived in the kingdom of the Great Below, naked and judged by the seven gatekeepers. Ereshkigal, true to form, killed her and hung her body on a peg.
After three days had passed without Inanna’s return, her assistant set in motion a plan to rescue her. When Inanna’s parents refused to interfere with the ways of the underworld, Inanna’s assistant sought help from Enki, the god of waters and wisdom. Enki sent two little creatures, neither male nor female, both endowed with the gift of empathy, to rescue Inanna. The creatures were able to slip through the gates unnoticed, carrying the food and water of life.
When they encountered Ereshkigal, they found her mourning the recent death of her husband. The two creatures sat with her in her grief. Ereshkigal was so touched by the empathy they offered and was so grateful for it (since no one before had ever approached her with compassion), that she granted them their request for Inanna’s body. They took her body and revived her with the food and water of life and Inanna returned to her kingdom with her powers fully restored.
When a woman finds herself frantically wolfing down muffin after muffin, or incapable of chewing a stick of gum without counting its calories, or unable to stop herself from bingeing or purging, or seduced into eating the entire cake in the refrigerator, she feels weak and out of control. Like Inanna, she feels her power has eroded. And, again like Inanna, she must take the journey down into the underworld to find a renewed sense of strength.
For the longest time, she has been frightened of this journey into the darkness, frightened of what horrors she may find there, and she has dealt with her fear by trying to avoid it, by denying the importance of the dark places of her being where her deepest secrets reside. The underworld has continually tried to make its shadowy presence known and she has persistently tried to keep its existence out of her awareness: by eating, by watching her weight, by running—anything but confront her shadow sister that lives in the dark and contains all the aspects of herself she has denied, rejected, or repressed. She eventually discovers that whenever we try to disown the shadow parts of our being, they seem to acquire strength and begin to take over our lives in the form of obsessions and addictions. Her eating becomes an addiction, she obsesses about her weight, and finds herself running compulsively.
Exhausted and depleted from her endless struggle for control, she comes to realize that no one can fix her, that there are no miracle pills, no magical diets. At some point she recognizes that the only solution left is to go within, to explore the dark, hidden places of her being and find out why she does what she does with food. She is frightened of being destroyed by some evil aspect of herself that she believes is buried deep within her, hidden from view. In her desperation, she finds the courage to make the descent, to face her fears.
Like Inanna, she discovers that to make the journey, she must shed her clothing, the parts of herself that she shows the outer world, that represent who she thinks she should be. And as she begins to reveal to herself the feelings and desires that she has covered up for so long, she encounters all of her self-judgments: “I am too selfish... I am too sensitive... Others won’t like who I really am...” and so on. Stripped bare of all the cultural expectations of how she ought to be, she arrives at the center of her being, naked and vulnerable, ready to face the truth about herself.
In meeting Ereshkigal, her shadow sister, she confronts her own dark side, that part of her that has been split off from awareness. As terrifying as it may be to face our shadow sister, to look her in the eye, face her we must because it is she who will reveal the root issues that underlie our distorted relationship with food. She is the keeper of our deepest, darkest secrets. She will tell us about the shame we feel for having suffered, for not being good enough or smart enough or pretty enough—for being sexual, for being different, for being female.
Some women who struggle with disordered eating have deep, shameful secrets that they struggle desperately to keep out of their awareness. One woman may feel so ashamed of her mother’s alcoholism that she cannot bear to remember her childhood. Another may suffer deeply from the lack of attention and affection in her upbringing and feel ashamed of her neediness. Yet another may have suffered such physical and emotional abuse that she still feels the sting of her humiliation. But these memories and experiences can never be fully disowned, only relegated to the shadows. And whenever they try to surface up out of the darkness, they come forth in a distorted, toxic form: as food obsessions, secret binges, diets gone out of control.
When a woman chooses, consciously and deliberately, to go into the dark and meet with her shadow sister, she no longer needs to live in fear of her destructive, unannounced visits. As she listens to her shadow sister and honors her suffering, she will not be bombarded with demands for attention.
Because our culture for centuries has banished the true beauty and power of feminine sexuality to the underground, so that it can be discussed only through innuendo and inference, many women with disordered eating have kept secrets about their sexuality they must address. Childhood memories of sexual exploration or teenage memories of promiscuity may need to surface and be recognized and accepted as a natural part of their growth. Their experience of having a woman’s body that has been talked about only in hushed tones, laughed at for being fat, or subjected to leering stares, taunting whistles, and sexist ridicule needs to be acknowledged. For one woman, being able to talk about the way her brother’s friend “felt her up” and then laughed at her distress was an important part of her recovery process. Another woman was able to stop bingeing and purging only when she revealed that a professor she had held in high esteem had been making unwanted sexual advances. Yet another woman, in order to let go of her obsession with food, needed to tell her story of how she unwillingly lost her virginity to a trusted male friend who had seduced her with alcohol. Many women have had to reveal secret horrors of molestation, rape, and incest so they could be free of the humiliation and self-loathing secret-keeping brings.
When we go to the deepest, darkest part of ourselves, many of us encounter the pain and suffering we have tried to disown. Our patriarchal culture demands that we bear our pain stoically, keep it hidden from view. We have been reprimanded time and time again for engaging in “self-pity” when we have tried to pour out the pain we feel in our hearts. And so we deny our pain and say everything is “all right.” As a woman finds the center of herself in this journey toward wholeness, she encounters her deepest pain: the pain of abandonment and isolation, of feeling unworthy and inept, of unrealized dreams and missed opportunities, of physical or emotional abuse, of the loss of loved ones or failed marriages, and the pain that comes with being female in a world that does not honor the feminine.
When a woman who has used food for so long to hide her wounds meets her shadow sister, she is often overwhelmed by the sorrow that permeates this outcast part of her being. She may be flooded with tears and must learn to let them flow, instead of distracting herself prematurely with thoughts of diets, exercise, or food. There is no place in the underworld for coldness toward her own pain, no room for expectations of invulnerability or for denial of her wounds. In the dark, suffering is respected. Pain is allowed.
A woman’s descent into herself culminates in death. The old “her” must die in order for rebirth to occur. Her image of herself as victim must die. Her view of herself as wrong, damaged, worthless, unattractive, incompetent must die. Her callous apathy toward her own suffering must die.
In the darkness, she is reborn. Her shadow sister with the power to destroy also holds the power of transformation and renewal. When she meets her, naked and without pretense or denial, she can begin to make sense of her past, perhaps understand what happened and why, discover what lessons are to be learned, what truths she needs to realize. She can receive the inner wisdom that will enable her to create a whole new way of being with food, with others, and with herself.
In the end, it is empathy, the ability to view herself, her feelings, and her needs with understanding and appreciation, that comes to the rescue. It is the ability to “be with” her pain that helps her move through it slowly so that deep healing can occur. Because of this empathy, she is able to discern the connections between her upbringing and her disordered eating without blaming herself or others for her situation, and without denying her wounds.
When Ereshkigal feels heard, she allows the creatures to restore Inanna to life and nourish her with the food and water of life. Only when her shadow sister is heard with compassion and understanding can a woman receive the real nourishment she desires in her own life.
In order to heal her disordered eating, a woman must embrace the darkness that precedes renewal. She must recover the rejected and lost parts of herself, retrieve her disowned experiences and denied feelings, and integrate them into the wholeness of her being. It is this wholeness that strengthens a woman and holds the promise of renewal and change.
