The Descent of Inanna: An ancient Sumerian Myth for Every Woman in Perimenopause
There is an ancient Sumerian myth that speaks to what us women in modern world experience often during perimenopause. The story of Inanna and her sister Ereshkigal is not just a myth — it is an archetype of descent, death, and ascent. It is and ancientmap that can help us understand what is happening with us when we enter perimenopause and start to feel we arefalling apart. When we can no longer live like we lived before. But have no idea where we are going. What is ahppening to us. We are starting to descend like Inanna in the myth.
Inanna and Ereshkigal are sisters in the myth — but symbolically, they are two parts of one woman. Two halves of the same psyche. Two opposites of the same.
This is the story of every woman who feels herself breaking down during perimenopause and becoming someone she cannot name or see.
This is the story of our descent.
Inanna, the queen goddess of the upper world, decides to visit her sister Ereshkigal who is queen of the lives in the underworld, darkness, shadow, and death.
Before leaving, Inanna tells her loyal servant Ninshubur: “If I do not return, go to the gods. and ask them for help.” Ninshubur is the archetype of the inner ally — the part of a woman that advocates for her when she cannot advocate for herself.
As Inanna starts her descend to the underworld, she must go through seven gates. At each gate, she is forced to remove one symbol of her power — her crown, her jewellery, her clothes, her symbols of her status. At the time she finally reaches Ereshkigal, she is naked, stripped of everything she was in the upper world. She is bare naked before her shadow sister.
But Ereshkigal does not greet her happily. She screams angrily and kills Inanna. Not because she wants her death but because she has lived in pain and hidden away while Inanna thrived therefore she must die. She hangs Inannas body on a hook to disengrate.
For three days, Inanna`s dead body hangs on a hook — suspended between who she was and who she will become.
In gthe upper world, when Inanna does not retur, Ninshubur goes to the gods and asks for help. Most refuse, only Enki, the god of wisdom and deep waters, agrees to help her. He creates two tiny sexless beings — the galla, creatures of empathy and understanding — and sends them into the underworld with instuctions to just repeat after Ereshigal when she moans in pain. In the underworld galla mirror ereshigal`s pain and for the first time Ereshkigal istruly seen.
She is moved by their compassion and she grants them a gift the request: the body of Inanna.
Inanna is brought to life. She raises transformed, as she integration her shadow. She returns with depth, truth, and a new kind of power that comes from having faced what she once feared, her own darkness.
But this rebirth has a price.
The demons that accompanied her ascent demand a substitute — someone must take Inanna’s place in the underworld. Inanna looks arond who to sacrifice and finds her lover/husband Dumuzi, who is sitting on her throne, celebrating instead of mourning her, and she chooses him. Symbolically, Dumuzi represents the old patterns of comfort, dependency, and unconscious privilege — the parts of a woman’s life that benefited from her old identity and resisted her transformation.
Dumuzi is taken to the underworld, and and Inanna rules again with newfound intergity.
Inanna: The Woman We Were Before Midlife
Inanna is the goddess of light, sexuality, beauty, status, ambition, social identity. She is the woman we are in the first half of life:
competent
pleasing
responsible
high‑functioning
carrying everything
performing all the roles
being “the good one”
Inanna is the part of us that knows how to succeed in the world. She wears the crown, the jewellery, the symbols of identity. She knows how to hold everything together.
Until she can’t.
Ereshkigal: The Woman We Become When Truth Arrives
Ereshkigal is the goddess of the underworld — of grief, rage, exhaustion, shadow, truth. She is everything we pushed down while being Inanna:
the sadness we never voiced
the anger we swallowed
the needs we ignored
the fatigue we normalized
the losses we minimized
the our true wishes we postponed
Ereshkigal is not the enemy. She is the part of us that has been waiting.
She is the truth that finally demands to be seen.
The Sisters Are One Woman
This is the key to the myth: Inanna and Ereshkigal are not two separate beings. They are two aspects of the same feminine psyche.
Inanna is what we show to the world. Ereshkigal is what we hide. Even from ourselves. She is the truth we buried, our shadow. Buried deep in our psyche. Until she starts calling us. Usually when we hit perimenopause. And our hormonal buffer that kept us in Inanna phase no longer functions.
During perimenopause, women often hear Ereshkigal`s call. Because our psyche starts demanding wholeness. And the two sisters must finally meet — but this is, as in the myth, often not a rosy meeting. It is usually brutal, leading to confusion, feeling we are falling apart, that we now longer know anything and are forever stuck in the underworld.
Perimenopause is the moment when the woman we were must meet the woman we are becoming.
The Descent: Perimenopause as an Archetypal Journey
In the myth, Inanna must go through 7 gates and at each gate she is stripped of her outer symbols of success - her crown, jewellery, clothing, every symbol of her upper world status.
This is exactly what happens to us in perimenopause.
We can lose:
the identity that once worked but feel this is no longer us
the energy that once carried us forward, when we feel completely depleted
the tolerance for nonsense, bs, fakeness and politeness
the desire to please, take care of everyones emotions,
the ability to pretend, wear masks, be young and pretty
the willingness to carry emotional and mental loads
the illusion that we can do it all
Perimenopause is not some sort of a hormonal shift we must suffer through. It is an invitation to descent into our inner world. Descent to what we truly are. But never dared to show to the world. Or even to ourselves. This is the archetypal stripping.
A necessary death of our old identity.
The Death: When the Old Self Cannot Survive
In the myth, Ereshkigal kills Inanna.
This is the moment in midlife when women say:
“I cannot live like this anymore.”
This is not our failure ot weakness.
It is the death of the woman we were trained to be. But she was never truly us.
The death of the woman who carried everything, because patriarchy thought her so. The death of the woman who never rested, because needing rest is a personal failure. The death of the woman who never asked for what she truly needs and wants. Because wishes are selfish and not womanly. The death of the woman who never broke down. But now she broke into pieces.
And this death is sacred.
The Rebirth: The Woman Who Rises
Inanna is eventually reborn and rises again — not as the woman she was, but as a woman who has integrated her shadow.
She rises with more clarity, clearer boundaries, more self‑respect, wisdom and truer identity.
This is the rise of the midlife woman. Rotted in her depths she no longer hides or fears. She is no longer driven by performance, job titles, status. She is no longer willing to carry the whole world, just not herspelf.
She finally becomes whole.
Why This Myth Matters Now
Because women in midlife are not “breaking down.” We are temporarily descending.
We are not “losing themselves, overreacting or being too emotional or difficult”. We are shedding what was never truly ours. We are meeting our Ereshkigal — our truth, our anger, our rage. We are being reborn.
Perimenopause Is Not a Crisis. It Is a Descent. This is the descent of Inanna. This is the embrace of Ereshkigal. This is the rise of the woman in menopause. This is the birth of the new world.
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