Descent and Return

I am standing on the shore of Lake Michigan, watching as the waves transform from big to gigantic to monstrous. The waves tower above me, my blood pounding in my ears. I am overwhelmed by the realization that I am small and helpless and weak. An instant later, the waves are ripping down whole buildings and tearing screaming people away from what was just solid land.

I startle awake, overwhelmed by nausea. It was just a nightmare. Except it wasn’t, really. For millions of people on the front lines of the climate crisis, this is eerily close to reality.

A few years ago during the peak of my climate anxiety, I was haunted by nightmares where beloved landscapes were made unrecognizable by fires and floods. When I was awake, I could barely look at a headline without spiraling. I was constantly pushing down my fear of the unfolding climate crisis.

It felt impossible to imagine a reality where I was not paralyzed by this fear.

Over 4,000 years ago, ancient Sumerians explored the underworld journey through stories, including a poem known now as The Descent of Inanna. In the goddess Inanna’s journey through the underworld, she must cast aside material adornments and even sacrifice her life to reintegrate with the abandoned, vital parts of herself. When she eventually emerges, she is whole and alive.

The poem begins with Inanna being called to the underworld—“From the Great Above, the goddess Inanna opened her ear to the Great Below.” My fear could actually be an invitation to look closer.

I had to start somewhere. I am not a scientist or expert by any stretch, so I wanted to try to truly understand what was happening to the planet beyond the increasingly common refrain that “the world is ending.” With each piece of information I learned, I was crushed a little more. Wildlife has decreased by 73 percent between 1970 and 2020. Climate disasters affected at least 148 million people globally in 2024 alone. Ocean acidification caused by CO2 emissions crossed its planetary boundary, or natural limit, in 2020.

It is unnervingly easy to look at these facts and conjure visions of the apocalypse. It was not until I read marine biologist and writer Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book What If We Get It Right? that something inside me started to shift.

In the book, Johnson paints a very different vision of the future, writing, “Our surroundings are verdant. Spring is not silent; it’s cacophonous. We are putting the pieces back together, adapting to the climate-changed world with eyes and hearts open wide. We embrace possibility, continually moving away from the brink and toward answers to the grand question: What if we get it right?”

One fact I carry with me like a talisman is that so many of the climate solutions we need already exist, and this book introduced me to the superheroic people bringing those solutions into the world. While I had been dwelling in devastation, they were choosing the radical possibilities of the future.

Nature was always part of me until suddenly it wasn’t. One day I woke up to my life in a bustling city where I spent most of the day staring at screens of differing sizes. I could not remember the last time my bare feet felt the earth. Up until that time, the desert and the forest were the only places I had called home.

In Arizona, I felt the heat of the sun on my skin. I watered the orange tree in our backyard and watched as the white blossoms transformed into succulent fruit. I watched the monsoon clouds roll through the sky and covered myself in mud that smelled of creosote and renewal.

In Vermont, I waded through snow up to my waist. I walked along dirt roads to pick wild strawberries and raspberries. I held tiny tree frogs in my hand and sang along with the birds. I found fairy doors on trees and left small offerings at their doorstep.

I never meant to leave that part of me behind, but it is no surprise I did. Like so many people, I was incentivized to disconnect myself from the cycles and rhythms of nature in pursuit of ever-increasing production and consumption.

Slowly, I began to remember what the seasons meant. Spring was plunging into frigid water while it still crackled with ice. Summer was tending to and harvesting vegetables, flowers, and herbs in my neighborhood’s community garden. Autumn was watching bison roam restored grasslands just two hours away from my home. Winter was rushing outside every time it snowed to play and run and lie in the soft quiet.

Rediscovering this part of myself made me realize that my anxiety about the climate crisis was not the only feeling I was having. There was something else hiding down there. I was also grieving. I knew that the seasons would not feel the same next year. I have lived with grief long enough to know that it will never go away, but it is possible to alchemize it just by giving it space to exist and sharing it with others.

The way I feel is by no means unique. As Indigenous people across history and geography have understood, the relationship between humans and all life on earth and the earth itself is sacred, essential, and healing. Research is just now catching up with this truth, as one recent study measuring brain activity found that even just watching videos of nature has the power to reduce pain.

Just as connection with the planet can be healing, disconnection causes pain and distress. Three-quarters of sixteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds think the future is frightening because of the climate crisis, according to a global survey.

Communing with nature alone cannot solve the climate crisis or take away that pain, but it can be a salve. It reminds me that I am not separate from the earth. It reminds me that the earth does not demand perfection from any of the beings who live here. It reminds me that I have a responsibility to care for what cares for me. As Indigenous activist Nemonte Nenquimo says, “The earth does not expect you to save her, she expects you to respect her.”

There’s a reason why the underworld journey echoes throughout time. It seems that for thousands of years, humans have rejected essential parts of ourselves only to have to figure out a way to become whole again. Our reciprocal, loving relationship with the earth has been sacrificed in service of domination, greed, and extraction. It is up to us to collectively find a way back to repair and wholeness.

Inanna is also considered a goddess of cosmic balance. For Inanna, the underworld journey does not end with darkness and death, nor does it end with her emerging into a flawless world. Once she is whole again, life continues on with all of its hardship, joy, heartache, and passion.

In early June, I went to Lake Michigan for my first swim of the year. It was later than I would have liked, but the season had started off rainy, damp, and full of distractions.

As I ventured in, the water moved up from my ankles to my knees to my hips to my stomach. It was so clear I could see straight to the bottom and count every pebble and shell in the sand. I stood there as the minutes stretched, feeling tension build. I wanted to go all the way in, but I was suddenly filled with nerves. I placed my hands right above the water so the waves lapped against my palms. Finally, I dove down and let the water hold me.

We were never meant to be apart.