Remember when you started the journey? Remember how it felt, the call? Remember that thing that started it all? You said yes because you’d tried every door. You’d flung yourself down on every floor, waiting for someone to come along and rescue you, but no. You tried booze and smokes and beds (just go listen to Miranda Lambert’s song Vice, sums it up nice).

Or maybe you went the other way, maybe you went all the way to the top, climbed the ladder all the way up until you could see as high as the false gods and realized they didn’t have any answers, what then? Maybe you went to the gym and ran ‘til your feet bled (how did your old pair of sneakers turn into the red shoes you can never remove?), starved yourself, sacrificed your life on the altar of being a wife, mother, career woman, empty, help me, what are we all doing? But you kept climbing and pushing and finally made it, up there breathing the rarified air with the hollow gods and you looked around and saw, shit, they didn’t have the answer after all. They were part of the game, too, just like you.

Eventually you answered the call in your own hollow belly, went down and in, Inanna and her descent, removing veils one by one until she reached the end. You walked into the door of your own anguish, and Ereshkigal, down there, holding it all, slaughtered you where you stood and hung you dead on a meathook on the wall.

But then, then, maybe you got comfy down there in the dark. Maybe you started to see how beautiful it is to have it all stripped away. Maybe you learned to cry, learned the wisdom within your own bones and then maybe you died and realized that death was just a letting go, so you did, you let it all go. Maybe you learned to respect the wisdom of your own pain, the wisdom of the unheard, rejected parts of your own tender heart, and maybe that became your new best friend. Maybe now you’re leaning against the wall, drinking a spicy sweet tea with Ereshkigal, laughing like sisters, bonded down there in the dark, knowing there will come a time when you must rise and return to the world with what you’ve learned. You know you will be back. You know you can listen now to your own deep-in-the-belly self. In fact, you find yourself pregnant with it all. You find yourself full, soft, luscious, juicy, and now you’re getting a new call to return to the world, return to the up above and the tell others what you’ve learned.

So you begin the journey back, but find that none of the old rules apply. The booze and the running and pushing and climbing for climbing’s sake simply would not fly. You found that the machine is still all too happy to pull you back in, grind you back up, spit you back out. The world hadn’t changed (yet), but you had. How to come back to world, once you’ve been in the underneath, how can you invite the new little seed of you to sprout?

Here are my tips for emerging from the Underworld. There aren’t many. I’m still learning how to do it myself. But so far, they are plenty.

Get yourself a playlist that feels like joy and helps you dance in the morning.
Find friends who are not afraid of their suffering or yours.
Sleep as much as you want.
Orient your pace to the pace of Life Herself.
Learn to move the miracle of your body in ways that feel nourishing instead of punishing.
Keep having tea with Ereshkigal whenever she calls.