Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken
~ Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
My first degree was in English Lit, and this was always my favourite Shakespearean Sonnet.
It’s funny what we know, before we know it.
I’m really good at showing up as myself. (Look, I wore a purple wedding gown…) I’m good at standing in authenticity and integrity. But I’m definitely still in training when it comes to the vulnerability piece. Sharing what feels super private. Wearing my pain on my sleeve.
So this is me, committing to full on truth telling.
This wedding was truly one of the greatest days of my life, made even sweeter for the many, many times over the last 6 years that we didn’t know if we would ever get here.
Sometimes, those tempests are all you can feel, especially when they’re coming from outside forces that are beyond your control.
In the past, I would have run. Chucked it all to the wind, decided it wasn’t worth it, and asserted (loudly) that I could do it all myself and didn’t need this crap.
There were so many times that I questioned my sanity in the face of the insanity around us.
Each time, I would open my heart just a little bit. BREATHE, deeply. Pray, and trust, just a little bit more. I would lean into how beautifully I was loved by this man. How deeply respected and supported I was. I would look into his eyes, and see how he looked at me, and how he loved my children, and the walls would come back down. The sirens blaring in my head would silence for a time.
I leaned into my own personal growth. Over, and over, and over again. The happier I could be, the more I knew myself, the more I demanded my own growth and embraced every possibility, the more joy I could offer to him. To us.
I used ALL the essential oils. Really. All of them. I surrounded myself with a community of goddesses, a sisterhood of women demanding more from their own lives. I built an incredible, glorious business that I didn’t need a vacation from, and I built it in the midst of what often felt like personal despair. I leaned into that business and those women as a golden net of love and safety and creation.
And I learned to be patient. To slow down. To trust. Not my strongest suits, any of them. But I grew.
Blending families? Lord. That’s fodder for at least 10 blog posts, and definitely not for the faint of heart. It’s likely never easy. It’s definitely far less so when some of those children are regularly being fed poison. So we loved them. Each of them individually, and as a collective. Often, it felt like we were starting over and over again. There were days when my heart felt closed, and as an adult and a deeply nurturing mama bear I would demand more from myself, and open it again. I cried, and railed against the Fates, and settled down, and dove back in. I stretched, and stretched, and stretched. And over time, they all started to, as well.
We have 5 incredible children. All unique, and in different places in this crazy blended family journey. All learning to expand their hearts into greater possibilities. All becoming truly excellent human beings.
And our wedding, when we finally got there? It was glorious, and sacred, and tear-soaked, and so very, very joyous. It was a culmination of 6 years of love, and pain, and chaos, and hope. Of every single prayer we had ever uttered, and every wish fulfilled.
The joy you see in these photos was hard won, and so worth waiting for. Because the lessons that came with that wait, the growth and the healing and the self-awareness, the patience and the tears and the willingness to open and open and open still more, are worth more than all the jewels in the world.
As for me, I will bask in the joy of this day for a very long time, and welcome the deeper healing that will still come from it. And I’ll get back to work, sharing with other women from a place of authenticity, and integrity, and now greater vulnerability, as we all rise up together.
