I’ve been wanting to write about my wedding for some time, but struggling to find the right words, the right angle, the right language to express all that it was. I think one of the reasons I feel a bit frayed in approaching the topic is because there really was so much that went in to the actual process of getting married, of planning a wedding, of hosting a huge event and attempting to honour everyone who truly matters to you while also maintaining your own vision of how the day is meant to go, that it feels like nothing you say can really do the whole thing justice. But at this point, I figure I might as well try.
In the end, I think we did a pretty extraordinary job of creating our ideal wedding day. But ending up at the point where I can say that and really feel it in my bones, was one long, massive initiation.
Beyond having the perfect day, steeped in love and celebration, was a series of deeply important initiations that emerged on the journey. Initiations that I now see—on the other side of the event—were meant to prepare me for what came next in our life.
(I tend to perceive my whole life as a sort of ongoing psychedelic trip, where each moment has the capacity for immense meaning and ecstasy, and each struggle or bout of resistance is there to teach me something deeply important for me to live out the life I am meant to live… and the wedding process was not spared by this approach.)
When you pay attention, you learn what you’re meant to learn (the first time)
Preparing for and planning a wedding was a huge lesson in boundaries, autonomy, sovereignty, family, community, partnership, and vision. I am someone who loves to spend time alone, who loves to chip away at my inner world, creating things from the raw materials of what I find within. But the wedding process pulled me out of this rhythm and into one where I was in deep, constant dialogue with my community, regularly planning and immersing myself in events, having conversations with, extending invitations to, and deepening in connection with those around me. The edges and lessons I was being asked to face were no longer ones that would happen in the privacy of my own inner world, my own work. Instead, the lessons and confrontations were happening outside of that, in my community and in relationship with others.
Drawing boundaries, making compromises, distinguishing what mattered most to us, and where we were willing to prioritize others’ preferences…
The specifics of the initiations I went through in this process feel less interesting to share than the meta insight that came from them: that every single initiation we go through on our journey of life is necessary for what will come next.
The series of initiations I went through in my wedding process, were largely about this sort of cosmic separation from youth, from family, preparing me to enter a new chapter, distinguished as a new entity joined with my husband. We were getting ready to start our life together, our family, our home, as a truly separate unit from the people and places we came from… and so, of course, the challenges and moments of friction we would face on the way to that symbolic day of separation and fusion would come with confronting all the ways we were not yet perceiving ourselves as sovereign and separate.
What’s happening now is always preparing you for what will come next
In hindsight, I can see that every single challenge, conflict, difficult conversation, moment of stress… were all necessary for us to arrive where we are now. That is: grounded, rooted, and centered at the start of this next chapter of our life together. Deeply connected to each other, honouring where we both came from, but not placing our histories, our individual families, or the needs/desires of others on a pedestal above ourselves. There were many other big and small initiations, too, that came about during this time: ones related to friendship, belonging, sisterhood, self-image, partnership, the future, and of course—the seemingly never-ending volume of logistics and details that needed to be refined for the wedding to reflect our vision… (this particular initiation felt like a little too much of a personal attack on me.)
I hold each one of these initiations and lessons dearly and I feel grateful for them all; although they were not always easy and painless to move through.
But that’s the thing about initiations: every single one shows you where you are not yet free. Your initiations show you where you still have work to do.
Initiations are reveals
The reason is: if you did not have work to do there, whatever you were asked to confront would not phase you. You wouldn’t struggle and thrash against some conflict or pattern or theme, if it didn’t hold deep meaning or history to you that you needed to work through to get past it once and for all. And once we do confront the things that we really ought to confront, they no longer phase us so much. In other words, once we’ve been initiated into the recognition of what we were not yet seeing, we then know how to navigate that same situation consciously, effortlessly, and much more gracefully.
Reflections on my big initiations
For example, one of the biggest initiations I’ve experienced was quitting my job to focus on writing full time and gradually building my own business. A decision that honoured the autonomy, creative freedom and sense of alignment between my inner and outer world that I was craving at the time. To finally face this initiation, I had to work through so many beliefs that were keeping me in a path that wasn’t right for me… everything from thinking I needed a prestigious job to be approved of/impressive, to thinking that the intellectual, quantitative part of me was more valuable than the creative one. (Eventually I came to realize these parts are not all that siloed and what’s most important is to actually choose the path of greatest aliveness so that the full breadth of your intelligence can express itself and act on the world… but that revelation might belong in another essay.) That initiation also brought up all kinds of things around belonging, legibility, becoming who I actually was, and all the confusion and uncertainty that emerged in the void space between taking the leap and landing in a new chapter, grounded in what I was meant to be doing, feeling fulfilled by my work while honouring my ambition and intellect, as well. That WHOLE process was full of initiations! And while there are still many to come, of course, I have actually conquered many of them that freed me from that old way of being. I no longer believe those things that were keeping me stuck, that were making my world feel (and genuinely be) smaller, that were leaving me feeling like I needed to stifle my potential and what I truly wanted just to make sense to others and have a ‘safe’ life (a total fallacy by the way: no path is truly safe—the world is always changing—and betting on yourself is usually the safest path you can take, in the long-term…) all of that stuff, I’ve more or less learned now. And you can read about the majority of it on this substack!
As a result of how much I got out of taking that courageous leap with eyes wide open, and embracing all that came with it—I decided to do the same thing for my wedding. I wanted to squeeze all the juice I could from this chapter, learn all I was meant to learn during this process. And so of course, it brought up everything I needed to learn and be initiated into in that domain, to have the kind of marriage and life with my husband that we truly want.
This axiom, of recognizing that every initiation is a necessary and expansive portal, bringing you deeper into the life you’re meant to live, extends to everything.
Your initiations pave the way for you to become who you’re meant to be
Posting online and letting yourself be seen when you feel cringe or awkward, is an initiation, bringing you into a greater sense of freedom and authenticity as your highest self. Meeting your hero and having them disappoint you, is an initiation teaching you that no one is truly superior to you, and usually the qualities you were admiring in them also exist inside of yourself. Having to stand by a viewpoint you strongly believe in while consensus tells you that you’re wrong and stupid, is an initiation reminding you how uncomfortable but important honesty and independent thinking is when you want to live a life in deep contact with reality. Going viral and being deeply misunderstood, is an initiation teaching you that with more visibility and attention comes more misunderstanding, but the people who truly know you won’t adapt their views to what an online mob says about you. Trusting yourself and acting on a gut feeling even while your rational mind rages against this choice, is an initiation teaching you that sometimes your body knows what your conscious mind cannot yet understand. It’s all an initiation. Everything you need to know will be revealed to you in the initiations you are going through, that you willingly open your eyes to.
The more you embrace these initiations, and deeply learn all that they are trying to teach you, the faster you get to accelerate through life, into becoming the highest version of yourself with the most agency and consciousness possible. Conversely, if you avoid your initiations, they reappear and pull you towards them in new and creative (and often increasingly painful) ways, until you finally learn your lesson, and let yourself be initiated into a new plane of awareness.
The bottom line
Enter your initiations willingly, learn what they are meant to teach you, and embrace the necessity of their wisdom. They won’t always be painless or easy (they are usually revealing to you where your perception of yourself/reality is distorted—which can be quite uncomfortable to confront), but when you go through them fully and consciously, you come out the other side transformed. For the better. More prepared, awake, and enlightened to what will come next, and the version of you it requires.
Integration
Ask yourself: where am I being initiated right now? What transformation is trying to happen inside of me that I am resisting? What am I afraid of, that is on the other side of this change? Usually, we can spot our pending initiations by simply noticing what the challenge we are currently facing is revealing to us and why we have not yet accepted or allowed it to be true.
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Related essays you might enjoy: why I quit status games, reflections on love, let yourself be loved, and self-trust.
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