With a structure inspired by the Greek myth of Persephone, Sheridan's "musicalogue" weaves the stories of lphigenia, Persephone, Cordelia, Eve, children's literature, pop-culture icons, and movie heroines into her own lifelong struggle with body image, eating disorders, and love. In some myths, pomegranate seeds, eaten by Persephone in the Underworld, are considered symbols of fertility and harvest, but also seeds of the dead.

"I once heard someone say they wanted to 'love the world back to health,' and that sounded like a great mission statement," says Sheridan, who has won awards at the Telluride Bluegrass festival and the Kerrville Folk Festival. She hopes her new show speaks to the "women (and men) who have felt shame and fear about their bodies, who have at some time in their lives gotten the message that their bodies are somehow "wrong."'

Sheridan's own years battling eating disorders, from age fourteen until her late twenties, made her feel an imperative to share her recovery with others. "I wrote The Pomegranate Seed partly as my own attempt to come to terms with regrets about my journey," she says, "sacrificing my health to an unrealistic body-ideal; dropping out of college; choosing some inappropriate lovers; and regretting how long it took to discover that my life and my body are just that: mine."

SHERIDAN FOUND HER FIRST GUITAR in an old cardboard case in her New Hampshire home when she was nine years old. By her senior year at Phillips Exeter Academy, she was testing her talent at local open mike nights-and then hurrying back to her dorm by curfew. After high school she enrolled at Amherst College, in Massachusetts, but left before finishing her first year, moving to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to become a folksinger. Her mentor, folksinger Harvey Reid, told her that college was a bloodless replacement for life.' Well, I didn't want a 'bloodless replacement,' I wanted life," says Sheridan.

"When I was fourteen, my father offered to buy me a new dress if I lost some weight. That was my first inkling that something was wrong."

She began listening to singers like Sally Rogers and Claudia Schmidt, and studying the songs of Bonnie Raitt, Peter, Paul and Mary, Tom Waits, Patsy Cline, and Memphis Minnie. "Living in Portsmouth in the '80s and early '90s was like going to folk-college." in fact, Sheridan learned her craft by covering the songs of the artists she heard on the local folk circuit, and then she began writing her own songs. Her rich, resonant voice-she has been compared to Nanci Griffith and Judy Collins-and atmospheric guitar have garnered glowing critical reviews. Sheridan's songs are "an original brand of honesty" says Catie Curtis, a fellow New England folk alumna. "I always feel like there's a real person behind Cosy's songs. She takes the listener on a journey of emotions throughout a show or recording."

When Sheridan won the Newfolk songwriting contest in 1992, it opened doors. She released her first album, Quietly Led, later that year, and in 1994 moved with her boyfriend, musician T R Ritchie, to Moab, Utah, where she now lives inbetween long stretches performing on the road. Sheridan eventually went back to college at the University of Vermont, graduating with a degree in psychology in the spring of 2003. While working on her degree, Sheridan began mining her past for The Pomegranate Seed, her exploration of being a woman in a culture that withholds the tools needed to become whole and happy A compilation of the songs from the show is being released to coincide with National Eating Disorder Awareness Month, this February.

"LIKE EVE I ATE THE APPLE," begins The Pomegranate Seed. "And the first thing I learned was that I was evil. Fat was evil, thin was not." Sheridan says, "When I was fourteen, my father offered to buy me a new dress if I lost some weight. That was my first inkling that something was wrong. I was about five feet, four inches tall, and I weighed 145 or maybe 150 pounds. I was thrown out of Eden: feeling innocent and at home in my own body My body was an enemy," she says. Wanting to please her father, she began dieting-and a lifelong journey "back into the Eden of my father's love and approval."

The Pomegranate Seed, which begins and ends with her father, is as much about a culture that lords thin and beautiful over young girls as it is about a father withholding his love and approval. She tells her story without judgment, sticking to the theme of loving someone even when they hurt you. One man at a performance in Portland, Maine, says that what she captured is pertinent to all men: "We may all inadvertently contribute to a problem by making what we think are harmless or innocent comments about a woman's appearance."

One of Sheridan's stage props is Oreo Barbie, the famous doll sporting an Oreo purse. The audience laughs as Sheridan deadpans: "Eating Oreos; body like Barbie: This is a mixed message." Then out comes a life-size replica with Barbie's most unlifelike proportions. She sings "The Barbie Doll," and asks, "is it really so demanding / to want a role model who is capable of standing?"

Sheridan laughs along with her audience, then says coolly, "I've swallowed the pomegranate seed. The Seed of the Diet and the Diet pill" — and rattles a box of Dexatrim. "I would faint in the shower from trying to survive on two Kraft singles and two slices of bologna. Somewhere along the way I got the idea that Ex-Lax was a nutritional supplement." With fewer calories, more diet pills, and tighter clothes, she believed she could succeed. "I think I can, I think I can," she sings in "The Little Train." In "The Losing Game," Sheridan points to a culture that continually asks for more and will never be content: "I was raised with the TV on / on young, long, lean and blonde/ beauty queens with high heels / you've come a long way baby, how does it feel? / Are you proud to be living in the USA? / Nothing beats a great pair of L'eggs / Be all you can be / don't be more than an eight /stretch yourself out, you're not the right shape."

Next Sheridan plunges into the Greek myth of Iphigenia, retold as a girl getting progressively thinner and, therefore, sicker. lphigenia, the gods demanded, was to be sacrificed by her father, Agamemnon, in exchange for the favorable winds needed to reach, and attack, Troy Superimposed onto Sheridan's life, myth and fact blur. She sings to her father, "I am lphigenia, the daughter you lost/ for all you earn I am the cost/ Ruling the world has a very high price/ I am Iphigenia, the sacrifice." The comic relief is over. No one is laughing. The seriousness of Sheridan's story has hit home, and few faces are dry-in fact, they look haunted by her deep and desperate love for her father.

Her partner, Ritchie, has seen Sheridan's show progress from its early stages, when she was focusing on comedic songs like "PMS," "Turbo Yeast," "Botox Tango," and "The Barbie Doll." Says Ritchie, "then came songs like 'Sharp Objects,' 'The Losing Game,' 'Bad Clichés,' and 'Litde Train,' songs about serious issues. She felt compelled to tell that story, too." In performance, Sheridan weaves a narrative of both the humorous songs and the more heart-rending stories of love and family Sheridan leads her audiencewith the emotional honesty of solo voice, acoustic guitar, and stories told unflinchinglyonto the knife's edge between tears and laughter, where they are most vulnerable. And most open to healing.

Dina Zeckhausen, Ph.D., founder and co-director of the Eating Disorders Information Network, based in Atlanta, recently invited Sheridan to perform for an audience of 150 parents, school counselors, therapists, and people recovering from eating disorders. "Cosy is so honest about her own past struggles with an eating disorder, her family dynamics, and the media pressures she felt to be and look a certain way," Zeckhausen says.

In "The Underworld," a song that seems to say that a journey through darkness will only make us stronger, she sings, "It's a long way in, a long way down / there's a lot of loss, before the found / ... There's a reason the world cuts a hole in your heart / The heroes have always been wounded and the wounded have always known / we are always arriving / and always leaving home." Through the rest of the show, this link bonds her to Persephone, who must submerge herself in darkness to reemerge whole each spring.

In Act II, Sheridan delves into relationships. "Persephone" has a love affair with an older man, a biker, named "Hades," with whom she travels across the country until she gets a venereal disease. Then he abandons her in a motel in the middle of nowhere. She writes to her mother, to ask for money to go to a clinic, and longs to go home. in "Sharp Objects" she sings that "Little girls are made of sugar and spice/ and other things that aren't very nice / ... The damage is done, mama won't you cry / tell your little girl it's gonna be all right." It rings true and edgy, one of the most beautiful songs of the show, full of anguish, anger, love, hope, and deep longing to be made whole by a parent who no longer can shape her adult child.

By the end of Act II, Sheridan sings about "Persephone" coming home to her mother's house, paradise, after following "Hades" around the country. Her point is that we're always going home, trying to figure out the 'now' we are living. We can go home again-and then we can leave stronger. This is, in fact, our life journey

"EVERY TIME I PERFORM the show," says Sheridan, backstage, "I am reminded of how my journey, with all its darkness and demons, has made me who I am today, and I like the woman I've become even though at seventeen I would never have chosen to become this woman. If nothing else, I feel that my lessons can help other women make better choices. Maybe at some level, I'm a cautionary tale with an empowered ending."

Sheridan hopes The Pomegranate Seed will translate for all audiences. "I don't know if I should say its just for women." The show might give women a lens through which to view their own lives amidst a culture that prizes a Cindy Crawford, airbrushed body and a Teflon sense of self. But it will also speak to mothers, fathers, brothers, artists, people who love great music and storytelling. When Sheridan sings her last words, "Mother do you follow, mother do I lead, mother I have swallowed the Pomegranate Seed," you hear a woman who has returned from the underworld in triumph. "I'm healed," she says, as she leaves the stage. And there isn't a dry eye in the house.

Caitlin Shetterly is a writer and the co-founder of the Winter Harbor Theatre Company She lives in Portland, Maine.