The Descent Journey

I feel guided to write about descents. I’m going through one right now. Many people I love and care about are going through one. Collectively, humanity has undergone a great descent through our pandemic journey.

And we don’t have articulation or teachings around this experience into the underworld and so perhaps I can provide some attunement through sharing what I know.

This post speaks to what a descent is, how to characterize and know it, how to sustain yourself through it, and a bit of how to hold space for another as they undergo one.

Let’s start with the ‘what’: what is a descent?

Descent is ‘an action of moving downward, dropping, or falling.’ It is a ‘moral, social, or psychological decline into an undesired state.’

To descend is to go under all that you are. It is to shed and expel parts of you that have died or are dying and need release.

A descent can be chosen, like a choice to end a relationship. Or, a descent can be unchosen, like the passing of a loved one or the loss of a job. It can be sudden and violent, like an experience of great trauma. Or it can arrive slowly, creeping closer and closer as the days and weeks pass.

I have come to know the experience of descent intimately over the past couple years, and most recently, over the past few weeks.

Covid was a descent forced upon all of us. Lock down, fear of sickness and disease and death, isolation. It was incomprehensible and utterly terrifying at times.

For me, the inward time that the mandated alone time Covid propelled created opportunities for self reflection and ultimately, chosen descents. The time to myself forced me to really look at myself.

I lost a dear soul, my animal familiar of 16 years, the first year of Covid. Her passing opened a gateway in me and so many things began to flood out.

Propelled by Her passing, I chose to quit my job. I was drowning in ego as a researcher and professor at a prestigious university; it was suffocating my soul and had me so out of touch with the work my heart needed to do. Perpetually exhausted, I was riddled with anxiety and depression and panic. I had to say ‘no.’

After this, I made a heartbreaking and guilt-infested decision to live far away from my family (this is a choice the universe keeps asking me to make over and over again). Doing so emboldens me to put my own needs and wants first.

For I cannot love and care for others when I myself am depleted and drained.

Next, I moved into a new house. Home and space is essential for me. I am a trauma survivor of intimate family violence. As a child, my home was often in literal disarray from rage-induced outbursts (imagine doors being ripped of hinges and broken glass everywhere) and so as an adult, a home space that is predictable, clean, and kept keeps me and my being safe and regulated. It is an absolute must for me to have my home as a haven and sanctuary or I cannot function.

Through all these changes, the ongoing descent I was on felt relentless. Like nothing would give. Like it would never end.

To make matters worse, I failed and failed and received rejection after rejection as I sought to carve out a new path after quitting my job. My savings dwindled. I didn’t know what to do next. I felt inferior and I felt like a loser.

The worst of it was that I no longer knew myself. And I felt like I couldn’t handle the despair. I lost my will to live. So I smoked myself into oblivion as a desperate way to cope. I turned to my trusted companions of marijuana and nicotine.

But eventually, I had to give that up too.

The descent kept asking for–demanding more and more of me.

So I entered recovery for addiction. I gave up the drugs that had been with me, had been predictable friends for many years. Plants that had once been magic and medicine for me turned to misery and I had no choice but to surrender them, or to lose myself to them forever.

I thought that would be it. It felt like enough. I had given enough.

But it was not. For in a descent, I do not get to choose what it is within me that must be given back to the Mother.

And so Finally, for the most recent stripping away, I ended my long-term relationship.

During my ongoing descent that has spanned the past two years of my life, I held onto my relationship for dear life. It sustained me. I drank and ate from it. And I received nourishment and the food of life from within it.

I prayed. On my knees, I begged God/dess to not take this from me. I had already experienced a complete and utter stripping away of everything that I was and that I knew. My relationship was all that was left.

But I heard my inner voice speak. I heard Her and saw the truth She keeps showing me. Without question, I received the invitation and knew it would not cease, and I would not align in my being and become whole once again, if I did not accept it; if I did not surrender to this demand.

I am being called to be alone. To close myself off and restore my own sovereignty and self authority as a woman on the path of priestess and healer and witch. And my relationship with this dear soul, best friend, and lover who I would throw myself on the alter for, had to end. He can no longer walk alongside me on this path.

So I succumb. And I surrender to the demand of the descent and I offered up this last piece of me I was gripping onto.

For I must. Or the descent journey will not end. I will not ascend. I will not become anew.

the descent will not cease until surrender unfolds.

Being in a descent is disorienting. It’s very nature of stripping and removing and dispelling parts of you create a sensation of being lost. Of being alone and gone. Anguish overcomes you. Anxiety infects you. Depression begets you.

It’s pretty fucking intense.

You feel powerless and often like you’re being tossed and thrown around in some dark hole the universe dug for you to bury yourself in. It’s dark. You cannot see. It feels like there is no.way.out.

And you cannot think your way through it.

You must feel your way through a descent.

Light a candle for yourself. Literally, light a candle ritually through your days.

I ended my relationship almost a month ago. And I am so grateful I have an understanding of what descent is before I chose the break up, because I have known somewhat of what to expect and how to care for myself during this time.

Mostly, I have been almost unable to work, except for the very basics to keep my work afloat. I am lost and waves and waves of big, heavy emotions hit me unexpectedly. I cannot predict when they will come.

So I have made space around me. I do not try to intellectualize my experience or think or plan my way out of this.

Instead, I ritualize.

Each morning, I make mint, honey, and lemon tea with tea leaves from a plant I grow and nourish daily. I sit in the same chair and meditation for 5 minutes each day.

Most days, I go for one, sometimes two walks with my dog, down the same streets by the same houses. I stop and literally smell the flowers– the rose bush at the intersection two blocks north of my house, the peonies flowering in front of the brick house a street to the left.

At night, I take long, hot baths filled with epsom salt and essential oils.

Under the full and bright sun, I garden. I put my hands in the dirt and I push new seeds down into that darkness.

When I cannot speak, I write poetry.

Regular stream of consciousness journaling does not fit during these times when my thoughts cannot be contained or made coherent. So I let the verses and rhythms of words flow through me and speak for me.

I keep playing the same songs on repeat, over and over again. In the moments I feel like I might explode, I go for drives down the wide open highway and turn the songs on as loud at they will go and I sing out.

Nearly every evening when the sun is setting, I go and visit the field where the crops grow and I pray to the field gods and ask for their blessings.

Over and over again, I choose pleasure. I self pleasure. With tenderness and love, I massage my sacred and wanting body. Then, I feed my body food I have grown and prepared and made ready with my own two hands.

I do the things that will bring me a sense of still being here, still being alive. Because a descent is a dance with death. It is a journey into the underworld and in it, you are lost.

So to remain tethered to the above, you must drink from the water of life and eat the food of life.

And You must allow another to be your witness.

Descending alone is dangerous.

Sometimes in a descent, we may become too lost in our own darkness that we lurk too long over the void. We lose ourselves beyond being able to find our way back.

And it is for this reason that having a witness to our descent may keep us tethered. Someone who is rooted and grounded in the above, in the garden of life, can watch over us and hold our spot there while we go under.

The job of the witness is to first and foremost, allow the descent of the other to occur. The witness is not there to fix or make it better. They are there to witness and to hold steady and unwavering in the belief that this person will rise again, anew, and rebirthed.

When you are going through it, there is nothing more soothing and reassuring than someone you know and trust fully believing you will resurface. This holds weight and power and it becomes fuel to help guide you back up. Someone believes in me, that I will make it through this.

The witness infuses you with beauty; with simple yet profound gifts. An hour of listening, a warm meal, a kind gesture, a hug, a poem, a song, a flower.

Who are your witnesses? Who is holding space for you as you descent deep into yourself through a journey to newness?

This journey of descent can be annihilating.

But it is temporary. And most importantly, it is a gift.

A descent gives the gift of soul forging.

It is shaping you. It is creating a stronger, more attuned, more aligned, more truthful and wise version of you. The descent reorients you to the path you are destined to take.

You are being remade. And the process of making– of creating and forging– is a messy one. It is bloody and dirty and it fucking hurts like hell. It is hell in a way.

But you must let the fire burn. For it is only from the ash that the Phoenix rises.

Be well, dear souls. Be brave. And most of all, be kind and compassionate to yourself and to those you love who are journeying under. Come up for air. Drink the water of life and eat the food of the Earth.

You will reemerge and you will fly once again.

---

A Clear Prayer

I pray
you feel
your two steady
feet hard on Earth

and Mother wind
wisps you of
fairy speak and
twilight rays

of light ignite
your bright smile
and your soul
remembers how

to come up
for a full inhale
of the air
as crisp and sweet

as emerald green
grass thumping
to the beat
of your moving hands

and again, remember
to stand,
to call out,
to cry

to the sky
so blue
and true
and ripe

of change
anew.

I see you
and you are not alone.
And you are here.
And it will all become clear.

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