Descent

The intention of this blog was to write about birth and my experiences at MLL and it has gone beyond that to a deeply personal sharing of all that has unfolded.

I haven't posted about my experiences much lately at MLL, mostly because I have been in the metaphorical underworld.

The western world has a strange view of the underworld, a fiery place perhaps... but the underworld in myth is very different than that.

http://members.tripod.com/~ideomagi/library/inanna.html

There is an incredible story of Inannas decent that I tell in my Birthing From Within classes about a woman on a journey who decends to the underworld to give birth. It is a story of the stripping off of all of the images that we posses of who we are, it is a story about a deep journey into your shadow self, it is a story about crossing a threshold into another way of being.

Innanas decent is an ancient story of a journey with many facets and a journey that we take in our own lives as we transition into any new phase of life. It has a universal theme, mostly directed toward the female archetype.

So my journey into the underworld has been a long winding path and a stripping down to the bone of who I am. Some of it had to do with my fathers death but much of it has to do with the intense process that is MLL. For awhile, the process to becoming a midwife became too difficult to speak about. I was a bit stuck in politics, difficult births, difficult interactions, difficult self reflections, a heavy work load etc... to even begin to share lovely birth stories.

In short, I was in the underworld.

The story also speaks about ascent. After Inanna "gives birth", she begins her renewal and her journey back into the world. The original myth does'n't elaborate on that journey too much but that is where I am now.

It is May....In September I finish the clinical experience. And then what?