For me, postpartum was a journey to the Underworld

When I was two months postpartum, a friend asked me how she could best show up for me in this season of my life. Without thinking, I replied: “you know, it’s really a lot like grief.” I thought back to the time, six years ago, when my best friend died suddenly, and my phone was filled with a flurry of well-intentioned texts from friends asking how they could help. While appreciated, I found that these requests were hard to field and even harder to answer. I had no idea what I needed. But there were people who didn’t ask, they just did—like my friend Jen who shared her frequent flier miles with me to get back home for the funeral, no questions asked. Choices were helpful too: Not “can I order you dinner?” but rather “I’m sending Uber Eats—Chinese or Thai?” Questions that didn’t require any executive function were about all I could handle.

Postpartum, I found, was similar. While there was the constant unfolding of new highs—fierce, boundless love for my daughter and utter joy in her existence—I also found myself grieving parts of myself that I didn’t know I was going to lose. This shift started as early as the third trimester as I made contact with the liminal space between what my life has been and what it was about to be. But after my daughter’s birth, this only intensified. I mourned my alone time. I missed an evening without “shushing” and swaddling. I grieved reading a book before bed, I longed for a connection with my partner that wasn’t centered around infant logistics.

Put simply, I grieved my maiden form.

Finding the story of Innana

It surprised me just how ill prepared I was for this season of life. I pride myself as someone who is well-versed in mind/body modalities; I had access to thoughtful, supportive midwives and a postpartum support group. But while I was privileged to have physical and even emotional support within reach, I found myself craving a deeper level of support—one that I can only describe as spiritual—to help me navigate my internal landscape that was shifting at lightning speed.

It was during this time that I discovered the story of Inanna: A popular mesopotamian myth. In the ancient story, Inanna—a queen in the “Upperworld,” full of riches and comforts—hears a call to the “Underworld,” also known as the “land of no return.” At first she ignores the pull, but it only grows lounder, until Inanna finally acquiesces and begins her journey down below. Each entrypoint or “gate” asks Inanna to relinquish an earthly possession, starting with her crown. When she finally reaches the bottom, she lies naked—wrung out on a meat hook, no less—and is greeted by Enki, the god of wisdom, who guides her back home. Upon her return to the Upperworld, Innana realizes that her abandoned possessions no longer fit. She grapples with how to re-enter, and comes to one conclusion: Her job is to share what she learned down below.

The story of Inanna is an obvious metaphor for pregnancy and motherhood—transformed by an event so cataclysmic that you return unrecognizable, with no ability to fit into your previous life. But after having my daughter, I realized how much the “Underworld” was a metaphor for the postpartum period.

I felt lost in a completely foreign land, in a completely foreign body.

Yes, I was sleep deprived. Yes, my body was wrecked from a 30-hour labor. But it was more than this. I was changing so quickly, so furiously—the descent was so immediate and so disorienting, that I struggled to catch my breath.

The dichotomy of postpartum

The problem with our culture, I’ve realized, is the complete dichotomy of how the postpartum period is represented. Most of the rhetoric I’ve found either describes postpartum as a blissful love bubble or a dangerous depression. My experience was neither, but rather, rooted in paradox: a blinding, almost unhinged love for my baby and a deep grief about letting go of the woman I used to be.

I was yearning for a way to mark this transition and transformation, and decided to look toward cultures outside of my own. It was after some internet research that I learned about a ceremony with roots in Ecuador and Mexico called the “Closing of the Bones,” a ceremony created to nurture the mother after her passage through giving birth, and her journey into motherhood.

I found a postpartum doula in my area to come over and perform the ritual, and laid on my bed as Suzy used a traditional Mexican shawl called a “rebozo” to rock my hips. Along with helping calm my nervous system that was still fried from an intense labor and delivery, it helped me acknowledge my descent into the Underworld, and slowly, my re-emergence.

Embracing matrescence in my postpartum journey

It turns out, there is a term for this transformation: matrescence. Like adolescence, matrescence is a transitory experience, which represents the dramatic physical, hormonal, and emotional changes associated with becoming a mother.

At first, I found this gray area extremely uncomfortable, and it dawned on me why so many of the texts I had read mourned the absence of the “village”—I desperately longed for elders to shepherd me through the Underworld. It wasn’t until I realized that there could be potency in this gray space that I started to find my footing. 

Some days I find myself in the Upperworld, feeling social and bubbly. Other days I’m back on the meat hook, navigating yet another sleep regression. This ricochet, I’ve realized, is where the transformation happens. This dance is how a mother is born.