Sometimes a woman reaches a point where her familiar life stops working. Everything that once held her together, relationships, goals, identity, roles, control, productivity, begins to collapse. During these periods, it can feel as though life itself is breaking us apart. Yet ancient myths viewed this very differently. They saw it not as an ending, but as a descent.

Long before religious doctrines and modern ideas of what a “proper” life should look like, women were already passing down knowledge about the inner cycles of the soul. One of the earliest known female authors was Enheduanna, a temple priestess who lived more than five thousand years ago. She wrote hymns to the goddess Inanna, creating a sacred map of the feminine inner journey.

In the Sumerian myth, the goddess Inanna willingly descends into the underworld to meet her sister Ereshkigal. As she descends, Inanna is stripped of her jewelry, symbols of status, power, and identity. In the end, she is suspended on a hook in the darkness of the underworld.

What makes this myth extraordinary is that no one overthrows Inanna. She chooses to enter the darkness voluntarily. Because she understands that the deepest transformations do not happen during moments of external success, but through the destruction of an old form of life.

Modern culture teaches us to move only upward: to improve, achieve, remain productive, and never “fall behind.” Yet nature itself never moves in a straight line. Everything alive moves in cycles. Day becomes night. Summer turns into winter. A seed first disappears beneath the earth before it can grow toward the light.

Transformation begins not with ascension, but with descent.

It is in darkness that we encounter the parts of ourselves we once avoided. Fear. Rage. Exhaustion. Grief. Confusion. Emptiness. The emotions society has taught us to label as negative, irrational, or dangerous.

But the shadow does not disappear when it is rejected. It simply moves deeper into the subconscious and continues shaping our lives from within.

Ancient cultures understood this. That is why nearly every mythology carried goddesses of the underworld, destruction, and death. Persephone, Hecate, Kali, Sekhmet, Hel, and Morana all reflected the same wisdom: destruction is part of life, not a mistake within it.

Even the image of the “light” goddess Lakshmi carries a shadow counterpart. In ancient traditions there was also Alakshmi, the goddess of misfortune, chaos, and loss. These archetypes did not divide existence into “good” and “bad.” They reminded us that wholeness emerges through the capacity to hold both.

For women, this wisdom is deeply embodied. Every month, the female body moves through its own cycle of descent and return. Expansion is followed by withdrawal. Activity is followed by rest. The body itself remembers that silence, slowing down, and inner retreat are not weakness, but part of life’s natural rhythm.

Yet modern society demands constant performance. Many women have learned to live as though they must remain equally productive every single day of their lives. As a result, the shadow becomes interpreted as personal failure.

When in reality, exhaustion may simply mean the psyche is asking for stillness. Anger may signal violated boundaries. Feeling lost often precedes the birth of a new identity. And the darkest periods of life become the space where an old version of the self can no longer survive.

This is initiation. 

Perhaps this is why so many spiritual traditions teach that wholeness requires meeting one’s own shadow. No human being becomes truly mature while rejecting half of their inner world. Self-love begins not at the moment of perfection, but at the moment we stop waging war against our own emotional reality.

And perhaps this is why the deepest answers rarely arrive through noise, productivity, or endless movement. They emerge in silence. In solitude. In collapse. In the underworld of the psyche itself.

So if you are currently living through one of the darkest periods of your life, maybe this is not punishment. Maybe it is not the end. Maybe you are simply in your own underworld, where the old version of you is slowly dying so that something entirely new can finally be born.

And one day, you will rise again. But you will not return as the same woman.