Warrior Marks
My image of what a hero looks like and what heroic means has been changed by watching ordinary people go through the ordeals that an illness and medical procedures take them through. Speaking before large groups of women survivors of cancer, seeing many with turbans covering their bald heads, or heads covered with fine downy hair from chemotherapy, knowing that most also bear surgical scars and some have radiation burns or bone-marrow-site scars, and that all of them have gone through or are in the midst of underworld descents, I have felt humbled by being in their presence. They are veterans, survivors, unrecognized heroes; the rest of us are civilians in comparison.
The only similarity for me was how I felt during my medical school and training years, especially in internship with our thirty-six-hours-on, twelve-hours-off rotations; then it felt that we were on the front lines of life and death, while the rest of the world were civilians. Yet we were not at risk of becoming casualties, of being a statistic or a number in a body count.
Cancer patients are like soldiers in ongoing conflicts: they are living through uncertainties and risks, lose their friends to the enemy, run into unexpected complications, and the appearance of new symptoms is the equivalent of being ambushed, stepping on mines, or being shot at by snipers. The enemy is near, deadly, and for the most part unseen. Patients, like soldiers, can be caught up in a war that lasts for years, while contemporaries go on with their lives as usual. Buddies matter. Members of a cancer support group know what a bad day or bad odds are, as well as how small victories are reasons to celebrate. Support groups that are circles with a spiritual center find that when they meet, check in, and meditate or pray silently together that this becomes a source of invisible support as well.
Medical conditions can flare up or go into remission. Some patients have multiple hospitalizations for diseases such as heart disease or diabetes as well as cancers. Some will have multiple surgical operations, each one an ordeal. It takes fortitude and courage to undergo major surgery when you know that there are risks and can anticipate difficulties, pain, and exhaustion. To do so is heroic, though it is not respected as such.
When my son, Andy, had to go through a series of major and minor operations, I saw his courage, character, and quiet strength emerge. His fate was to have Neurofibramatosis-2, a rare and progressive condition in which non-malignant tumors could grow on any cranial and other peripheral nerves. The year he turned twenty-one, Andy had a nonmalignant tumor removed that was located in a dangerous place. It was pressing on his spinal cord in his neck and had already displaced the cord to one side. If it wasn't removed, it would result in a spinal cord compression. On the other hand, any mishap in surgery could result in serious damage to the spinal cord or the nerves that come off it. To reach the site, neurosurgeons had to go through the bony vertebral bones of the spine, and then the dura and other finer protective coverings. Under the circum-stances, surgery was not only risky, it was very long, and recovery from anesthesia and from the operation also took time and was very uncomfortable. Because this surgery coincided with his becoming twenty-one, it made me think of the rites of passage that some indigenous cultures have required before a young man is acknowledged as an adult. Anthropologists describe these initiations as physical, psychological, and spiritual ordeals that are tests of courage and endurance. In such rites of passage, success is usual but not without risk to life, limb, and soul, which was also the case for Andy's surgery. The operation was successful, and the spirit in which my son made the passage was indeed admirable. Inspired by the title of Alice Walker's book of the same name, I thought of his surgical scars as “warrior marks” and told him so.
Difficulties are soul shaping, depending upon how we respond. They can be lessons that lead us to know who we are, and they can stretch us into becoming larger souls and more authentic human beings than we were before. I think of soul journeys as heroic when they begin with unwanted and unchosen circumstances: a crippling accident, the loss of a significant relationship, sexual, emotional, or physical trauma as well as any life-threatening illnesses. That which we all hope to be spared, happens all the time to some-one, somewhere and that person may now be you. Some people become bitter and cynical, which is toxic to the soul. These same circumstances can result in developing soul qualities of compassion, wisdom, and courage. Ordinary people are quietly heroic when they persevere, endure, and do not give up on love or on there being meaning and purpose to their lives.
4
LIKE GREEN MEAT ON A HOOK
When Inanna went down through the seven gates into the Great Below, the proud and powerful goddess entered naked and bowed low, looked into the baleful eyes of death, and was struck down. Her body was hung on a hook to rot. She became a slab of green meat. This is a picture of how it feels to be reduced and humbled, powerless and without illusions, to be vulnerable and rejected, to feel putrid. There are phases of being ill in which people feel like Inanna on the hook, when the infected, dysfunctional, or malignant cellular level of their being permeates the soul, and they feel as if they were dead and rotting. This is what suffering can feel like as well to those who make a psychological descent to uncover sources of chronic depression and anxiety in the depth work I do as a Jungian analyst.
This also powerfully parallels the experience that women and some men have had in abusive relationships that have stripped them of layers of self-esteem and psychological defense. There is physical, emotional, and spiritual battering in abusive relationships, and the most malignant of them can become life-threatening. The need to get away, the difficulty of doing so, and the effort to recover psychological health and not return have many similarities to what it takes to recover from a malignancy.
One who lives with a chronic illness such as diabetes, Crohn's disease, or hypertension when it is out of control and escalates into life-threatening crises and repeated emergency-room admissions, shares similarities—at the soul level—with the person who has repeated, increasingly serious bouts with alcohol. To bottom out, one way or another, is a descent into suffering.
Anyone with a malignancy, a chronic illness, a drug or alcohol addiction, a mental illness, or repeated trauma may identify with Inanna at this low point in the myth. You may have been depressed and anxious before you became ill. You may have been psychologically naked and bowed low before this, and the symptoms of the illness have further reduced your spirit. Sick physically, you may now feel as if the cells of your body are dying and rotting. And the illness may do what psychological distress did not: it may cause you to go down into your own psychological depths, to be with the pain, wounding, and rage that is there—to that place in the psyche where a woman or a man is both suffering Inanna and suffering Ereshkigal.
Seeking to Know What Lies Below
Why did Inanna make this descent, anyway? What made her leave the Great Above where she was Queen of Heaven and Earth to descend into the underworld? When she knocked loudly at the gate to the Great Below and demanded that the door be opened for her, the gatekeeper asked,“Who are you?”and she said,“I am Inanna, Queen of Heaven, on my way to the East.” When he asked, “Why has your heart led you on the road from which no traveler returns?” Inanna replied, “Because of my sister, Ereshkigal.” Once she learned that her sister goddess Ereshkigal was suffering and in mourning, Inanna was compelled to make this descent, to be a witness.
Put in a medical context, Inanna's reason for unknowingly beginning a descent is like learning that something is physically wrong—“Ereshkigal is suffering” may translate into a suspicious finding on a routine physical examination, or noticing something oneself that cannot be ignored—and being compelled to go through the doors into the hospital, clinic, laboratory, or specialist's office to do whatever is required for the diagnosis and treatment.
Inanna's