Listening to songs on Cosy Sheridan's new CD, The Pomegranate Seed, is like walking barefoot in the grass after abandoning itchy, tight, corn-producing ruby slippers. Most women can relate to her sometimes quirky, often tragic, and ever-feminine odes to body image and finding strength and wisdom in the truth of our bodies. References to ancient myths abound - there's Persephone, emerging from the Underworld with eyes of wisdom, Cordelia struggling for self-identity despite her father's arrogance, and lphigenia, who shows up as a 65-pound anorexic, the sacrifice of a modern world gone mad with diet fads and impossible beauties.

The CD is also a soundtrack to Sheridan's onewoman show (which played in Salt Lake in February), and registers as a personal emblem of Sheridan's own life- her battles and triumphs as a woman facing the brave new Overworld of transforming self-loathing into self-loving.

Sheridan, who resides in Moab, began the project as an assignment for her Transpersonal Psychology class in 2001 . She soon found herself immersed. "I think mythology is one of the coolest things on the planet," she says. "My mother even took me to Greece for my 35th birthday." The Persephone myth was particularly relevant. "It became my story in mythic form," she explains. "It's how I found my way back home."

For Sheridan, "home" hasn't always beer. easy to define. As a teenager, she struggled with eating disorders and body image issues, but through a long process of healing day by day, she has discovered home to be a state of mind. "It's about being compassionate to myself and others," she says. "Now I'm at home in my body." As with Persephone, Sheridan has come through the Underworld with a new clarity, and the ability to share her story. She hopes that her music and onewoman show will help other women "find the wisdom and myth" of their own lives. Her songs are earthy and accessible with clear-as-crystal guitar work, a fabulous backup band, and a voice that resonates, full of life, grace, and wit.

The CD begins with the title cut "The Pomegranate Seed," a song about Persephone's Matrix-like journey where once the pill or seed is swallowed, there's no going back. Sheridan then shifts into modern territory, exploring the myths of body image, with songs like "Barbie" and "The Losing Game",eventually verging down a darker path with "The Underworld" and the devastating "Bad Cliché," a reference to childhood sexual abuse. The second track, "Dorothy and Eve," is one of the most intriguing. Defying time and space, the two icons meet at a fork in the yellow brick road. Dorothy says she's heard the almighty wizard's great, while Eve warns ' "Just don't tell him what you ate." Dorothy is a 20th-century Persephone in that she wants to go home and find a happy ending; instead, she finds herself "riddled with doubt" as Judy Garland's real-life tragedy seeps into the song.

"It's not so much that Dorothy's story gets us," says Sheridan, "it's Judy Garland, portraying Dorothy, that gets us. At some level, all of us in the modern world have an outer life where we try to look successful to the neighbors, and an inner life where we try to have an authentic self. Judy Garland, in that movie, is living that [dichotomy]."

Coming full circle, Sheridan brings the CD home with "My Mother's House" and the poetic "You Can Always Go Home": / went down to the roots of a tree / Where I have lately gone searching for home / Down a spiraling stair, a dark cave at the bottom / Where the truth is sometimes shown.

The CD is a fluid and epic journey through life's mythologies and discoveries of personal truth. Anyone who has gone through tough times and come back with eyes wide open will find common ground in these songs. After all, there's no place like home.

Mandy Jeppsen is a Catalyst staffer who sings for local band Mona.