//The Hero(ine)’s Journey//what we are looking for is in us//we have everything we need//

birthsister
Aug 1, 2018
5 min read

Recent work with a client to process her previous birth brought me to seek out frameworks for understanding the journey we take in birth (heart and mind, together with body). After working with “Birthing from Within” , Pam England’s first birth preparation book, for a while, I started reading her more recent “Ancient Map for Modern Birth.”

The book revolves around the myth of Inana, an ancient Sumerian queen, who is called to journey to the Underworld, the “land of no return”, in order to participate in the funeral of the husband of her sister Ershkigal, Queen of the Underworld. Inana dons her finest royal clothing and jewelry as she sets out on her journey, however upon hearing Inana’s knock at the door of the Underworld, Ershkigal instructs the guards to bolt all the Seven Gates to the Underworld, and at each one, another piece of Inana’s royal jewelry - her crown, necklace, breastplate, scepter - and her clothing are taken from her before she is allowed to pass, until she is left crawling, naked and humiliated. When she reaches her sister, Inana is placed on the throne of the Underworld in her stead, where she is pronounced dead. When Inana’s faithful servant Ninshubur hears this news, she works to negotiate the release of Inana’s corpse and through magic, restores Inana to life. However, as Inana is about to ascend from the Underworld, her sister’s servant calls out, “Who has ever ascended unscathed from the Underworld?” And so Inana is escorted out of the Underworld by guards, who take dear servants and friends of Inana one by one down to the Underworld, ending with the descent of her dear husband. So though she has made it back from the Underworld, her life is forever altered.

Throughout her book, Pam England uses this story as a metaphor - a “map” of the journey that we take in birth, with a Queen Goddess as our heroine. She makes use of Joseph Campbell’s theory of the “Hero’s Journey”, dividing the journey into core stages - principally the Preparation, the Ordeal, and the Return: The heroine journeys from the everyday world into the unknown, where she encounters a great challenge which she must tackle and triumph - and which may result in some part of her (or all of her) dying and being reborn, and then she returns home changed or transformed. She maps our experience of birth and our return and integration of it onto these stages. And she offers the labyrinth - the ancient symbol of a journey - as the literal map of the birth journey, with its known end at the middle, its twists and turns, the coming closer and getting further from the center, with the difficulty it presents in understanding how far along we are and if we are almost there (further detail in her workbook "Labyrinth of Birth").

I have found this map to be so deeply affirming, nurturing, soothing, healing and strengthening. It is these deep echoes of myth that we need to give us the strength to pass through any ordeal. It is these queen goddess models that women so deeply need in order to push through labor and postpartum - through the unknown, the stripping of all we love and know, of the loss of control and dignity - and the return and integration of our changed selves and our babies into our lives.

Steeped in the work of supporting women through the preparation, ordeal and return, I found myself being called to the Adraba bookshop to purchase a book I first saw at the house of dear friends - a stunningly beautiful illustrated adaptation of the Sufi epic poem “The Conference of the Birds” by Peter Sis. I honestly barely remembered the plot of the story, only that the illustrations had made my jaw drop, and now that I myself have a young son, I thought that gave me a socially accepted reason to buy myself an illustrated story.

I entered the bookshop and found the book right away, on display near the door. I flipped through the initial pages, reading the story of how the hoopoe bird calls a conference of all the birds of the world, and tells them he has heard there is a king who has all the answers to all the questions and troubles of the world. The birds must go find him.

My first sense that this beautiful book followed the Hero’s Journey archetype was when the birds refuse to leave the comfort of their lives to take off on the journey. Such as the Duck who says, “I’m happy in water! It’s the source of everything,” or the Parrot, who says, “I like it here. I feel safe. They bring me food and water every day.” The hoopoe answers each and every one of them, and finally the birds take off to fill all the corners of the world.

My next clue came when, after journeying for some time, the birds must cross seven valleys. *Seven* - the same number of gates to the Underworld that Inana had to pass through, and one of the common numbers used in myth.

Each of the valleys the birds must pass through - Quest, Love, Understanding, Detachment, Unity, Amazement, Death - resonated more strongly than the last as a station along the Hero’s Journey archetype, but even more striking was the resonance I saw with birthing.

From the first valley, the Valley of Quest (which requires patience, the valley where the hoopoe says, "When you feel empty, you have to open up your heart and let the wind sweep through it."), to the third Valley of Understanding ("With time suspended, there is no beginning or end, only endless flight."), to the sixth, the Valley of Amazement ("place of constant pain and gnawing bewilderment."), and the seventh and final, the Valley of Death, where it becomes clear that the journey is only now beginning ("Valleys?" The hoopoe says, "They were only an illusion, birds, a dream. We've been through nothing. We are just now at the beginning of our journey.").

So I was indeed fully shocked to then find that at each valley, the illustrator had featured the image of a labyrinth. As I read about each valley successively, my heart quivered. Holding this magical book in my hand, it felt that it now was part of my own Heroine’s Journey - this was part of my call to delve deeper into this work. The journey to help other women’s journeying is calling you, Alex. And here is one of your tools.

As the birds learn that they are only now at the start of their journey, we read, "Some birds could not believe it. On the spot, they lost all hope. They dropped dead and fell from the sky. Some kept flying." At the dual moment of death and renewed resolve, the mountain of Kaf, where the king lives, appears in the distance. They approach, the mountain calls them to enter, and there, "they saw Simorgh the king and Simorgh the king was them."

It is clear to me that this book will feature prominently in my future work with clients, whether during birth preparation, birth processing, or both.

And it is clear to me that it is also lacking, as is even the myth of Inana. And that what we really need to do is write our own myths. Of living and birthing and motherhood.

If you are in the stages of preparation or return from your heroine's journey of birth (pregnant, preparing for birth, or in postpartum, however you define that) and you would like to explore myth further together with me, I would love to hear from you.