S5 E3 Blooming Amidst the War - Pt 1 (Alina Zievakova)

April 5, 2024

Episode Summary

Imagine having a silent witness, a partner who is with you all the time, even when you go through the hardest moments of your life. Imagine not being alone but instead being held, accompanied, supported. What might that feel like in your heart, in your body, in your bones? (This is part 1 of a 2-part interview with Alina Zievakova of ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine.)

Episode Resources

→ Blooming - Watch the Performance (47:49)
https://www.scenesaver.co.uk/production/bloom-in-violence/
(Registration is free and only takes a few minutes)

→ Part 2 of This Interview: https://ever-changing.net/episodes/s5-e4-blooming-amidst-the-war-pt-2

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Zievakova: This character is always there, is always ready to support or to connect or to offer a different way. And we believe that is one of the most important messages in the whole performance, is that even when you're alone, you are not.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today we have a treat for you. Today we are joined by Alina Zievakova, a film and theatre actress and acting coach. Alina will be speaking with us about her work with ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine, an independent, English-Speaking, safe theatre in Kyiv - safe because it is located in the basement where there is more protection from russian missiles and drones.

Alina is here to speak with us about the war, but in a very hopeful way. She will be walking us through the experience of birthing a unique theater production called Blooming. Blooming is a powerful work that traces the path of healing after violence, finding the way back home to self after trauma. It’s an important work that I’ve had the honor to watch - and you can too.

This is the first of two episodes where Alina will be with us. Today she will take us behind the scenes as the three female creators connected with their intuition to organically allow Blooming to come to life. We will learn how the piece has grown and changed over time. And we will explore the fundamental rites of passage we see happen in the show. We’ll go now to my interview with Alina, which got off to a bumpy start when I realized I had neglected to press the record button.

Thomas: So it is amazing to get to have an hour with you!

Zievakova: Likewise.

Thomas: And I… I've really been wanting to know more about this performance. When I watched it, I was touched by how many layers and depth it had, how many colors, how many textures, how much truth…. It just really blew me away and I'm curious, how did it come to be in the world?

Zievakova: Thank you so much for your perception, which is so deep and soulful rich. And yes, it would be a pleasure for me to share. So the show is called Blooming and originally it actually was called Bloom In Violence, but we will get to the point where we decided to change the name. And it is created by three women, which is Anabell Ramirez, who is the director of the show, Jasmine Sotelo, who is my partner on stage (she's a choreographer and dancer), and myself. So we have been together as colleagues in a place that is called ProEnglish Theatre that is situated in a basement in Kyiv. And this is where we… well, we… me and and Anabell and my other colleagues ended up being, starting from the 24th of February of 2022, to the beginning of the full-scale invasion of russian federation to Ukraine. And both me and Anabell started doing whatever we can volunteering and subsequently working as fixers - which is a kind of a field producer who is accompanying foreign journalists. And we have been going to different locations to document war crimes, and one of them being the violence and specifically gender-based violence. And we've felt both of us very strongly that there is something we should do with all of this knowledge with all these stories that women have shared with us. And we have been exploring different options, but at the end of the day, without like, theater being our main thing in life is the strongest instrument we have. So we decided to create a performance about it.

Thomas: Wow, that is incredibly powerful. And in a strange way, it kind of mirrors, in a tiny way what I was doing, which was watching things from here and being especially drawn to stories of gender-based violence, and then figuring out what is my strongest thing? That's how that one meditation series, Everyday Magic for Ukraine, came to be. Because it seems in some respects, like, “How could this possibly help?” But then “Well, this is my thing. This is where I resonate. This is where I shine. This is what I can do.”

Zievakova: Absolutely. And thank you so much for those projects. They're incredible.

Thomas: Thank you. So can you tell us more about the creation process?

Zievakova: Sure. [LAUGHS] It's a bit non-traditional, I would say, since we are, all three of us are non-traditional. First of all, it happened so that both Anabell’s direction in her art and my direction in my art coincided in desire to step out from the traditional theater of the classical way of seeing things. And Jasmine being the choreographer and the… her language is body… also fit perfectly into our trio. So yeah, we… Our first meeting was just a conversation where we pretty much decided what is the most important message that we would like to convey… or messages… through the performance. And here comes the non-traditional no thing. So this might sound silly, and unfortunately, in the… at least in Ukraine, what I'm seeing… the notion of tarot cards is very stigmatized and very… is associated with something… fraud, or something icky. Whereas we see a lot of archetypical and depth and knowledge in that, therefore, we picked up a deck of tarot cards. And we decided to kind of lay a passage, a journey, through which the main characters go throughout this performance, exploring different emotions in different states of a person who has experienced violence. And it gave us the… also broader and deeper understanding of things that we can include into each of those steps.

Thomas: Wow.

Zievakova: Yeah, and interesting that when we started, we didn't have any text. So we went absolutely intuitively out of what we have felt, and we started creating a lot of physical aspects of the performance. Because as you can see, if you watch it, it is a lot of visual aspects of this performance. So it is lights and blocking and physical work of our bodies. And only then when you know, there was a fertile soil of that base that we have laid this way. We started picking the texts that naturally flew into this already created flow, which has been the text from a book called “Daughter” from Tamara Horicha Zernia who is a Ukrainian writer, and also personal testimonies.

Thomas: So it started with the body and the intuition.

Zievakova: Yeah.

Thomas: Yeah, it has such a strong, embodied feel. It kind of feels like since there are so few words... that it opens it up so that each of us can experience it in our own way, even more than if they were words. Does that make sense?

Zievakova: Yes, absolutely, absolutely! It gives more metaphorical meanings that can be interpreted by everyone. Therefore, that is what's crucial for us that even though it is a show created by women, based on a book written by woman, it's still for us, it isn't important that it's universal. It is for anyone who has gone through trauma or through violence. And that is, luckily, what we have managed to achieve according to the feedback that we have gotten through different audiences.

So now you have a sense of how the show came to life. But that was only the beginning, only the beginning of a true journey.

Zievakova: It was born in Kyiv. We performed it in June of 2022 and then it started its journey abroad, since we have been traveling and touring with it throughout different countries. So we've been to Italy, Poland, Denmark, Sweden with it, and we continue to plan. So our next stop will be Prague good this spring and… Well, first of all, we changed the name, the name was Bloom in Violence at the beginning, because again, the atmosphere in which we created, it was absolutely different than the atmosphere is, is now in Ukraine, for example. And the violence, the level of it in the air was visceral. You could feel it, you could touch it almost. And that's why it was so crucial for us to put a balancing aspect to even it out, to give a passage, to give an opportunity for people who have gone through such a horrible experience in their life to at least have a notion that there is a way. And it is absolutely individual for everyone, but here we are with some options for you. And therefore Blooming it was you know, this almost as heart-beating word to, to balance it out. But then as the time passed, and the atmosphere here changes drastically, atmosphere when you traveled changes and affects your perception. And therefore, after our tour to Denmark, when we came back, we decided that how the show was developing… Because it also it is, you know, it is an entity of itself. It grows with us, it develops with us, and we trust it, we listen to it. And therefore, it felt like violence has no place even in the name of the show, therefore, we left only Blooming.

Thomas: That's, that's so wonderful that you're letting it be a being and growing and breathing and telling you how it's changing. That's beautiful. How has it been for you… How many performances have you had? And how has it been for you as you've gone through all of those, like, the trajectory?

Zievakova: I think we had around 16. It's been different every time. It also… every time since it's a live performance, a theater performance, it depends on the audience, because they also are co creators with us. And at some point in the beginning, that's also something that has changed. We have been incorporating audience members at the end. We are inviting them on the stage and we are offering them crowns and flowers as this common ritual that we share as… as they are also characters of the show equally as me and Jasmine. And recently, we've also changed it, this summer. Because it also felt that even though it was a very powerful moment, and again at the moment it felt right. But recently we have discovered that we don't need even to bring people to the stage. We are entering the audience and we are sitting with them and giving them flowers and just sharing the space, you know? So, there is no pressure for people even in that regard to come out of the stage, because it also can be stressful and people usually are, you know, not so comfortable on the stage in general. So that is something that we have applied as well.

Thomas: Wow. Have there been any moments that you can share that have been especially powerful with relating to the audience?

Zievakova: Definitely. Well, there is another important aspect to mention before I go there. So usually we don't only perform this show, but we combine it as experience with a workshop that we're bringing. And the workshop is called RAW. It's abbreviation for Relief Acting Workshop, it's a workshop that I have created. Again, starting from the full-scale invasion. It's basically a training based on breathing techniques, meditation techniques, acting techniques, body movement techniques that we are… we have been offering in ProEnglish since the spring of 2022. And it is targeted to offer people the place to breathe out, to relief in any way that connects to them personally. And we have been cooperating with different organizations to offer and target it to different groups. For example, displaced people, refugees, military, cadets, military students, veterans, women, men, and family members of people whose husbands or brothers or sisters or mothers are in the military, in the service. So we usually, especially when we travel, but here as well in Kyiv, we have it as a workshop, first two hours. And after the workshops, it's like, final touch is the performance. So the person has, you know, this journey of their own as well. And it feels more personal for them. And when we were doing this in Poland, in one of the cities because we had a tour, there was a woman who's actually Ukrainian, she… she's a refugee there. And she came, and she attended the workshop. And then she attended the performance. And she approached us and she said that this event changed her life. And she… she said that, even though it sounds very, you know, fundamental and maybe too loud, but at the same time, she felt like it was something crucial that she needed to, to grasp in order to go on with her life. And, you know, stories like that - at least one story like that makes you sure that what you do is needed, is crucial to share. Especially in in this kind of way through art, when it is applicable, let's say to different people.

Thomas: That's wonderful that she was able… that she felt comfortable enough to tell you that because there may be people who felt that way who didn't actually tell you, right?

Zievakova: Right. Right

Thomas: Wow. And I didn't know you were doing it at the end of the workshop. That really paints a different picture for me, because I know how powerful it can be to get people together out of their regular routine, more into their bodies than normal, creating community… Being in bodies in a community in a safe place, can really open people up, bring a sense of safety that allow the hearts to open and then to have something once that space has been created… at the end of that it… I know it can be very, very powerful. So that's amazing.

Zievakova: Thank you. Yeah, definitely it makes all the difference in the world.

Thomas: Yeah. Have you ever done the show without the workshop?

Zievakova: Yes, we have. Because we adjust to circumstances and especially when we travel, we are not always able to control everything how it goes. So in some venues were not able… or some venues are not suited for workshops. So then we just have it also after the show, it is mandatory for us to have a discussion. So people who want to leave can leave and again, you know, digest and process in… on their own but people who want to share, there is this opportunity of creating the community in a discussion in Q&A in still an exchange you know, so there is a closure.

Thomas: Yes. Yes. That's wonderful. That's… that's really important too, right? Because there's an opening of the heart watching… I wish I had had that. Although I suppose I'm having it now with you. To get to, sort of, process everything that came up because it is such a heart-opening experience watching it.

[MUSIC]

Thomas: I want to go back for a second to when you said you're working with the tarot cards, just… I'm just curious. When you were working with them, were you like, looking through the tarot cards and kind of picking the ones that felt right that matched the journey you were thinking might be there? Or were you letting them fall out of the deck? Or did you reading? Or how did you interact with them?

Zievakova: I love that we're talking about this, thank you so much. I really want, to you know, to give honor to this and to be on that side that protects it protects its true meaning. So we chose, we took out the higher arcanes and we only worked with those. And kind of… we took turns each one of us out of three, to… having them all in front of us pick… seeing them, pick the ones that resonate the most when we talk about this performance. And we kind of, each one of us, built their own picture out of this higher arcanes. And we discussed again, then comparing all three and kind of combining them into one common passage, we decided what are the most strong ones that speak to us that we can use whenever addressing each element of the performance or each stage of the performance.

Thomas: Wow, that's so cool. I'm seeing the three of you now and then there's that powerful symbolism of the three women doing this work, right?

Zievakova: Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Isn’t that cool? I mean, that’s my type of theater production. Where intuition and archetypes are welcome. Where the story evolves on its own through deep listening and collaboration. I don’t want to give too much away about the performance before you’ve had a chance to see it, but I will tell you that in Blooming, we see a woman going on a journey that has many phases and many colors. She often has a silent companion with her who has a bit of an ethereal quality. As Alina said, most of the content is delivered through movement and sound, and music and lighting. There are very few words, which allows the actions to become even more noticeable. One scene that stood out for me was when this mysterious companion took out a tube of red lipstick and began drawing symbols on the wrist of the main character.

Thomas: Since Shame Piñata is all about rites of passage, I have to ask you a little bit more about rites of passage, I felt like that part where she was drawing those symbols on the arm of your character, that that really resonated for me as a beautiful rite of passage. And one that was… just felt like a rite of passage for me to get to watch it, right? That's the way theater can be. And… were there other aspects of the show that were a rite of passage that I might have missed?

Zievakova: Well, I guess it has several of them, because we do explore a whole journey. So we start when the main character is, you know, in this very light and infantile stage of her life, when everything is …light, yeah, I guess that would be the most appropriate word for it. But then whenever circumstances change, or events enter her life, she adjusts. But at the same time, there is the second character, the one that Jasmine plays who represents for us, well, it can represent so many things. And that's why we prefer not to give it a specific name. It can be nature, it can be intuition, it can be something that we cannot name, something present… presence. And this character is always there, is always ready to support or to connect, or to offer a different way. And we believe that is one of the most important messages in the whole performance is that even when you're alone, you are not. There is some so much in that second character again, who at the same time represents the Ancestors and the whole crowd of people being in one. And that's why she does the initiation. That's why she draws on my hand and on my eyes, and she shows me the way. She also interacts with the audience and, you know…in regards of rites of passage, that is what felt right to us at the moment of this unity in one.

Thomas: Yeah, and I love that description of her. I was trying to decide - who is she? At first I was waiting for her to speak. I thought she was just a person who was with you. She's also in the role of the witness, right? Which is such a sacred thing…

Zievakova: Absolutely. Yes, and you're right in. That's how… that's why that's why it's so up to interpretation. And in some moments of the performance, she does represent another person in the room with me. And she is a witness, which is such a precise word that you have chosen because that's what we were doing. We were witnessing other stories at the beginning in spring of 2022, and it was very important for us to give them proper dignity and proper way and rite of passage, actually, to transform it to, transcend it above of the physical reality.

Thomas: Yeah. So how can people see the show?

Zievakova: There is a website, a platform that is called Scenesaver, and you can register, it's absolutely free and it takes just a couple of minutes. And you can watch this show and many, many other shows. It's a great platform that offers a online theater experience. And also, we are touring. So maybe at some point, we'll end up in the US, hopefully. And yeah, we are looking forward every time to a new location, since the experience is different, the cultural differences, in fact the perception of the show, and it is also very valuable this international experience.

Alina will be back with us next time to explore the cultural differences the team noticed as they took Blooming on tour throughout Europe, to highlight some of the uniquely Ukrainian symbolism within the show, and to share some of the feedback the team received from survivors who attended.

In the meantime, I highly encourage you to check out the performance linked in the show notes and consider supporting the Relief Acting Workshops for the National Guard of Ukraine. These Relief Acting Workshops are ongoing so you can support them no matter when you are listening to this episode.

Alina Zievakova is a film and theatre actress and acting coach from Ukraine. Before February 24th 2022, she was dedicated to a career on the screen, premiering as a female lead in the film "Rhino" at the Venice Film Festival. However, during the russian full-scale war in Ukraine, she has mainly been acting in socially-relevant theatre pieces and adapting her acting coaching for stress-relief workshops.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on YouTube, IG and X at shamepinata. Reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out our new 10-part series 10 Minutes for Your Heart, Meditations for Ukrainians. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

P.S. Get up to 2 months of free podcasting service with Libsyn. Check out the show notes for your promo code to get started podcasting today.

S5 E1 Techno Cosmic Wedding (Pt 1 - The Plan)

February 2, 2024

Episode Summary

What would you think if you received an invitation to attend to something called a Techno Cosmic Wedding? Would you be curious? Avoidant? Undecided? What if it was framed as a post-modern, rave-inspired event where your whole self was welcome. How would you feel then?

Episode Resources

→ Techno Cosmic Wedding (Pt 2 - The Event): https://ever-changing.net/episodes/s5-e2-techno-cosmic-wedding-2

→ Matthew Fox: https://www.matthewfox.org/

→ The Cosmic Mass: https://www.thecosmicmass.com/

→ A Joyful Wedding Can Still Make Room for Grief: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/07/31/joyful-wedding-can-still-make-room-grief/

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Thomas: Can you hear?

Torres: Oh, now I can. Yeah, now I can.

Thomas: Good. Alright. I’m going to turn this light off because it makes a hum.

Torres: [HUMMING]

Thomas: Okay, say something.

Torres: That makes it hum too…

Thomas & Torres: [HUMMING]

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. So you’re invited. You are retroactively invited to attend my wedding. And joining us today to help me bring you into the scene, into the moment, is my amazing husband, Rodrigo. We’re going to tell you about how this unusual ceremony came to be, why it was modeled on an event called the Techno Cosmic Mass, and how it welcomed something you don’t normally see at a wedding - grief.

We’re going to share the story in two parts. Today we will fill you in on the who, how and why and take you through the planning phase - which as you know is really the richest part of any intentional event. Then, next time, you’ll hear how it all turned out, including the bumpy ride that led to the actual wedding day.

So, here’s the story. A long time ago, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend graduate school in spirituality. The school I attended was called The University of Creation Spirituality and it was run by theologian Matthew Fox. You may know of Matthew through his many books. He has actually authored 40 books over the past 50 years. Some titles that might sound familiar are “Original Blessing”, “The Coming of the Cosmic Christ”, and “One River, Many Wells”. Like several other students at the school, I felt that the universe had somehow called me out to complete that very program. And one of the pieces that spoke to me the most was an event Matthew and his team regularly hosted called the Techno Cosmic Mass. Now, unknown to me, Rodrigo was also attending the Cosmic Mass which at that time was held in the historic Sweets Ballroom in downtown Oakland. This was before we met, like way before we met. Here he is helping me describe it.

Torres: And the Techno Cosmic Mass was kind of a multimedia Mass held in a huge ballroom in Oakland, when I went to it. And you'd walk in, there was a lot of screens showing a lot of different spiritual designs and images and music. Very low lights. It was kind of like a rave, almost, the atmosphere… Not that I've really been to a rave, but what I imagine one to be like. And then there were altars in the big ballroom you could walk around to. And then when it would start, they would go through a whole sort of ceremony and kind of a four… four movements. Some of them were very upbeat and, and had like dancing, and were kind of like a rave, and some were very introspective and dark. It was pretty unique. It was pretty cool.

Thomas: And we were going at the same time and we didn't know each other then.

Torres: Right

Thomas: And I was volunteering at a lot of them. In fact, when I first came out to check out the University of Creation Spirituality, I just spent a weekend here in Oakland, and I just wanted to hang out at the school as much as I could to see what it was about and what the people were like, and if it was a place I wanted to study. And so I helped with… helped with the Mass, because that was going on over the weekend and I built this beautiful altar. I had, like, the whole day to build it. And all this big room of stuff. It was like multi-layered, different heights. I found a big bowl, a big silver kitchen-type bowl that had a glass, a really tall, clear glass, glued into it. I don't know why it was glued into it, but I put a candle like a taper candle inside there. And then it filled the bowl of water and then the candle was inside the glass and it burned down throughout the night. So it eventually was under the water. You know, it was just really… it was really meaningful to me and it was a signal that this was a place I definitely wanted to come and study.

And so I did. And I loved the school and loved my classmates and loved my teachers and had an amazing time. And then over the years everything kind of faded away. I’m sad to say that the school actually closed shortly after I left. The Masses continued for a while but then they stopped too. And then, many years later, I met Rodrigo through a completely different community. And we did all the things. We dated and moved in together and were not going to get married. And then changed our minds. But when it came to wedding planning, it was a little bit difficult.

Torres: Well, our spiritualities are different and I'm… I think I was pretty sure that wasn't something very conventional and I think you didn't either, that’s my guess… I’m not sure… or did you?

Thomas: We did a lot of thinking and talking about that about traditions. Like what are the wedding traditions? What… Why are they there? What do we want about them? Because I think it's always fine to pull them in if…

Torres: If they make sense.

Thomas: If they're meaningful, right? If it's not just, “Oh well we should….”

Torres: I think we were trying to find… something that was meaningful to both of us.

Thomas: Yeah, and we couldn't. We hadn't. We were in limbo as I recall and then we went that night to… well, as luck would have it, or as synchronicity would have it, they started doing the Masses again - right then. Because they had stopped.

Torres: They hadn’t done them in a long time.

Thomas: Yeah, just out of the blue they started and I… I saw the flier that with that old art they used to use with the… you know, the event flier. I was like, “Oh, my goodness!” It's like I mean, Oakland, not at Sweets Ballroom but in Oakland, right. And we went and Matt was there and he was welcoming people from all the different faiths, which was one of my favorite parts. Getting to represent for my underdog faith, and then getting to be welcomed in and then the dancing and... I just remember, we were dancing. It might have been the Via Creativa dance, the Via Transformative dance - I think it was toward the end of the night - and just looking over at you and being like, “I want this for our wedding!” And you were like, “Yeah”. And I was like “Oh my gosh, we finally found something!” And we were both a big yes to it.

Torres: Totally. And that was good to find the big yes.

Thomas: Yeah. And looking back at it from now, what was the yes to you?

Torres: It just felt right. It just felt aligned. And it felt like it wasn't… it wasn't even a very conscious thing, it was just “Yes”. Just like from my gut. How about you?

Thomas: Yeah, it definitely had that perfectly right…. and really excited to hear that it felt that way to you, too, because sometimes we're not on the same page. So I was like, “Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, definitely. We're on the same page!” And for me, it had always been like, you know, I'm super into bringing the body into worship into ritual and remembering we have bodies and coming into the bodies and dancing with the body and you know, all of the… bringing the chakras and the colors and the lights and the celebration and the grieving that's in the body too like, the whole way that it's so embodied and so fun. Yeah.

Torres: Yeah. And it had, like elements of what felt like a wedding, like bringing a whole bunch of people together and doing ritual and ceremony and… But it was like, a different way of doing it.

Thomas: And we… It felt sort of divinely guided because like we said they came up with a Technic Cosmic… they started doing the Cosmic Mass again out of the blue from our perspective. And then we jumped in and started volunteering with a Cosmic Mass crew for about six months to learn how to do it. And then pretty much right after we had our wedding, they stopped again, they stopped doing the Masses again. So we got in this tiny little we know, which was like maybe nine months or a year or something?

Torres: Yeah.

Thomas: I think they're still doing the Mass, but they do them only at events now. So they… it's an on-the-road thing. But we were perfectly aligned and and doing the volunteering with them was great.

Torres: Yeah. Yeah, we got to see kind of behind the scenes.

Thomas: Yeah

[MUSIC]

So at this point you might be wondering what actually happens at a Techno Cosmic Mass and why we would want to use it as the foundation of our wedding. Bear with us as we take you into a bit of the spiritual framework behind the event.

Thomas: So in Creation Spirituality, there are four “tivas”, as we call them affectionately. There are Four Paths of Creation Spirituality. There is the Via Positiva, which is joy, awe, and wonder. And the Via Negativa, which is about darkness and letting go, grieving. The Via Creativa, which is about… we are creative beings, creative as the… divinely creative as the Creator is divine, right? And then Via Transformativa, which is where we ready ourselves to return to the world as spiritual warriors - that's how I always think about it.

Torres: Transform.

Thomas: Transform. Yeah. And in the Mass, traditionally, my experience was that they did a trance dance, a joy dance, during the Via Positiva, and some kind of group grieving during the Negativa. And then they did the Eucharist during the Creativa…

Torres: Right.

Thomas: …the actual taking of the bread and the body of Christ. And then the Transformativa was another trance dance. Yeah, to prepare yourself to go out into the world and be a warrior for social justice. So I remember when we were planning the wedding, I was really enamored with the idea of having a dance for the Positiva, cause I really loved having the trance dance. And then grieving for Negativa. But then instead of the Eucharist, we wanted to come up with something non-Eucharist-y to do there. So we came up with honoring the cosmos. It kind of feels to me like at the Mass, the Techno Cosmic Mass, the focus… a big part of the focus was on the Eucharist, since it's a Mass, right? So… But yet for us, we realized that the Transformativa might be a really good place for the wedding ceremony itself.

Torres: Yeah. I mean, that was what I thought was our sort of more… our focus in terms of the wedding itself was the transformation of being two people that weren't wedded to two people that were wedded.

Thomas: Correct. Exactly.

Torres: And so… I mean, for me the Transformativa was kind of a no brainer, because it's like, yeah, it's a transformation. So we have to have the wedding in the Transformativa. And the dancing is interesting, because in a lot of weddings, the dancing is… comes like afterwards, and it’s like the reception, it's not part of the wedding. So, I liked it that we had it as part of the part of the wedding ceremony that people were dancing.

Thomas: Yeah, me too. I loved that.

Torres: Yeah. I think we really liked that about that. And then we… I think the Negativa was kind of… we sort of knew that that was kind of going to be like the most unusual thing to have in a wedding.

Thomas: Yes. My mom was not happy, to say the least.

Torres: What did she… Do you remember what she said?

Thomas: Oh… No, I don’t. I remember talking to her more about the song that we had our really good friend Dara sing before… because she had that wonderful album, and we wanted to incorporate her music into the day and we listened to it and she had a song called “I am Not Afraid” that I think you were like “Oh, I think…” Of I forget which one of us was like, “We need this right before we get married!”

Torres: Yeah, I think it was me.

Thomas: Because it’s this song about, “I’m not afraid. I am so afraid. I am not afraid, but I am so afraid…” It was just.. it was such a beautiful song and I remember playing that for… or telling my mom about it. I think I didn't play it for her. And she was like, “Oh, no, no, no, no.” She was like trying not to put her foot down about anything I think throughout the, you know, year I was telling he plans for the wedding and then she had to with that. She was like, “That is a bad idea.”

Torres: For some reason I had the story flipped in my head that she was saying that about the Negativa, about having the Negativa. I think she was pretty much also against having the Negativa from what I remember.

Thomas: Yeah. I mean, she's pretty traditional. And it sounds like a weird thing to have people crying at a wedding… on purpose.

A communal grieving ceremony in general might be something you’re not used to experiencing - but imagine it at a wedding. We actually had a mix of folks at the event, some of whom were more traditional and weren’t really sure what to do but kind of went with it, and others who actually had a lot of experience in holding space for deep emotions in a group setting. And a lot of this latter group were from Rodrigo’s work community at a non-profit called Challenge Day.

Torres: It's interesting because I think part of the… part of the reason that I felt more sort of comfortable with that was because I had gone through a lot of Challenge Day stuff, so, which is kind of an emotional workshop that I did and then I worked at for many years. And there was kind of a lot of that sort of going into your feelings and being okay with that and doing it in kind of like a group setting. So I felt a lot more comfortable with that then much more than I would have had I… had I not gone through that sort of experience. And kind of like seeing… not as not seeing it as a kind of a negative thing is a kind of a healing thing.

Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. And you'd been to the Masses to where that was also part of like, you know, really, really presencing the destruction of the planet or the destruction of the rain forests or whatever the focus was that night at the Mass. Like really, all the stuff that we know is happening in the world but we don't want to think about, becoming really focused on it and aware of it and allowing the pain of it to really become present and allowing ourselves to grieve. Grieve the things that we try to not look at - in community. I mean, that's not a… that's not a normal experience, a day-to-day experience in the US so like getting our… getting comfortable with that learning what that is and that it might be weird, it might feel weird. But yet going through it, especially in community can be very healing.

Torres: Totally. Yeah.

Thomas: It was a very NorCal wedding.

Torres: Absolutely.

Thomas: California wedding. [LAUGHS]

[MUSIC]

Torres: Oh and the… also the altars were important. Creating the altars…

Thomas: You didn't really want the altars though. You didn't really care about the altars.

Torres: Yeah. I guess. I don’t remember.

Thomas: You were like, “That’s your thing.”

Torres: Was… really?

Thomas: Yeah, but that was okay because I was excited. Yeah, so at the Mass there… If you walked into the Techno Cosmic Mass, you would see two or maybe three really big projection screens and then four… at least four really big altars at the four directions. And sometimes they would be set up to honor the Four Directions, you know, earth, air, fire and water, the elements. And sometimes they were themed in some way, depending on the theme of the Mass. But we decided that we wanted to honor relationship in its various forms and so we decided to have five altars. So we had a self altar like love of self, and then a friendship altar, love of friendship and romance altar for romantic love, and a family altar for family love, and then an earth altar for honoring the Earth. And we also had a moon lodge because that was my thing. And I was really excited about the altars because I wanted them to be very interactive. So they were kind of like little sets, almost like, like at a play. So we wanted the self altar to have a beautiful mirror where people could sit in front of the mirror and look at themselves. [LAUGHS] And the friendship altar was meant to look like a front porch where the checkers set and rocking chairs. And then the romance altar we set up at a fireplace which was in the… in the venue. Yeah, at the venue, there was a fireplace and so we set the romance altar up in front of the fireplace with chocolate boxes and..

Torres: Pillows. Like throw pillows.

Thomas: Pillows. And the family altar was the richest, it was beautiful. It was all of these beautiful Ancestor items and your father's paintings were… ended up there. And we had some Day of the Dead coloring books. It was very… it was the most, I think, interactive one. People really liked it. They really gravitated toward it. And then the Earth altar was sort of just a very big houseplant with the globe or something. [LAUGHS] It wasn't very impressive, but it was… They were all meant to be very interactive and very… and so that people could be at the event and they could also kind of wander by and interact with the altars.

Torres: Like at the Mass.

Thomas: Like at the Mass - but even more interactive than at the Mass. At the Mass it's kind of like you look at them they’re really pretty and they’re interesting but you don't really do anything at them.

Torres: Yeah, you really wanted to sort of have it there as sort of something that people that came to the wedding sort of interacted with and participated in.

Thomas: Yeah.

Torres: Yeah. I think I was thinking it was your thing because I… there was so much to organize and I just felt overwhelmed. I was like, I can’t do altars on top of everything else, I'm sorry. It’s like… if you want it, you’re welcome to do it. So, sorry about that, but I just didn’t have the bandwidth.

Thomas: That’s okay.

Torres: I mean, we had… along with all of the regular sort of wedding things, we also had kind of to put on this sort of multimedia presentation of like, big screens and provide our own sound system…

Yeah, so suffice to say, we were planning a big event. It was multimedia, it had trance dancing, it had interactive altars, and it was a wedding… So we took our time and were intentional about it.

Thomas: What was your experience of the planning time which was a huge part of it.

Torres: Yeah. I think we went into wanting to be very comprehensive and very careful about every detail. And I think we were. So that was really nice. And very conscious and sort of wanting the wedding to be part of sort of creating community and the planning to be creating community. And it felt like very much like us doing something together. And, you know, we also had, like, our spreadsheet with like, 25 tabs or something like that.

Thomas: Totally.

Torres: We were very organized.

Thomas: And then toward the end. I remember you found some way to draw the room. You created diagrams of exactly… because at the end of it at the end of the planning, we sort of reached the point of needing to turn it over to our…

Torres: Our team.

Thomas: To our team. And so there was this like process of like, making sure they really got it, and we really got all our thoughts and… We were really sure. And how do we convey this to them? And so that's where you were doing that diagrams of like, “Hey, this is how we want the chairs at this point, and then we're gonna change to this. And then then it's gonna be like this…” Because it was… it was an event.

Torres: It was.

Thomas: It was a whole production.

Torres: And we had to like, move chairs in and move chairs out. And because it was just one big room, and we did everything in that room from just having it way open for all the dancing to having the ceremony with chairs in there and everything had to sort of be coordinated. And we were very clear from, I think, very near the beginning that we wanted to be just present for the wedding. And so we didn't want to be the person sort of like worried about directing things and moving things around and making sure things went right. So I think we sort of made it... I think it was a great decision to “Okay, we're gonna organize everything, we're gonna explain it to our team as clearly as possible and then we're gonna just let go.” And if it happens, it happens. And if it doesn't, and something goes totally different, then that's just the way it's gonna be because we just want to be present for it.

Thinking back now, I’m not even sure where we got that sage wisdom to let go of the details on the wedding day but it turned out to be great advice. Join us again next time to hear how the big day went. I really hope you can make it back because I’m excited to tell you how it all unfolded and, as I mentioned, the bumps that came up along the way.

If you’d like to know more about Creation Spirituality, check out matthewfox.org. For a sneak peek into the Negativa section of our wedding, see Tria Wen’s Washington Post article. Find links in the show notes.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on YouTube, IG and X at shamepinata. Reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

P.S. You can get up to 2 months of free podcasting service with Libsyn. Check out the show notes for your promo code to get started podcasting today.

S4 E3 There Must Be Something Wrong (Sheryl Paul) [Remastered]

March 31, 2023

Episode Summary

Today we revisit one of our most popular episodes, an early interview with Sheryl Paul, author of "The Conscious Bride". Sheryl's work allows us to reflect on how the pain, grief, discomfort, and vulnerability that can arise throughout the wedding process can actually be doorways into joy if we are willing to let them in.

Episode Resources

→ Sheryl Paul: https://conscious-transitions.com/

→ The Conscious Bride: https://conscious-transitions.com/books/

→ Shelter in Place Podcast: https://shelterinplacepodcast.org/

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Paul: I'm always interested in what's not being talked about what people are experiencing, but are trying to stuff away, trying to sequester, trying to sweep into the corner under the rug... when all that does is create shame and all that does is create anxiety.

Sheryl Paul has a unique ability to see the invisible, to see what has been silenced. Her book "The Conscious Bride" has been helping couples prepare for marriage for 20 years - and prepare in a very specific way. Her work helps couples create room for all of the emotions that come with transition, not just the picture perfect ones. Funny thing is, that allows for even more joy. Join me for a conversation with Sheryl Paul.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. When I got engaged six years ago, a good friend of mine gave me a book called "The Conscious Bride". Now, I'm not a reader, as my husband will tell you, but I devoured this book. I loved it because it touched on the shadow, the stuff we don't talk about, the stuff that gets in our way when we want to feel one way but actually feel a myriad of other ways all at the same time. It named the shadow that hovers over the wedding: the attachment, the fear, the uncertainty, the hidden power-struggles and the grief that lies beneath them, and that a big part of stepping into a new life is letting go of the old one - and not just for the couple. The Conscious Bride gave me permission to feel all the ways, and it helped me create room for everyone else to feel all the ways too, so ultimately, we could all process the transition without getting into weird fights about random things. I was so happy to have a chance to speak with Sheryl Paul.

Thomas: So what led you to write this book?

Paul: So, I was in a master's program around that time. I was at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it has a very strong Jungian focus. And I had always been interested in rites of passages and I had a deep sense that there was a lot that was not being talked about around the wedding. And I started to interview women and I did a lot of interviews, especially when it came time to write the book, which came from my master's thesis. So it started out as as a thesis and then evolve into a book. And I started to see that there was a big gap in the cultural conversation around around transitions in general. All transitions are bypassed and overlooked, but particularly the wedding and then in particular, how much focus there is on the joy and the perfection and everything has to be blissful and ecstatic from the moment of the proposal into the first year of the wedding, and there was just no conversation happening about the shadow, about the death experience, about what women (and men) are actually experiencing quite a bit of a time. And, you know, the more I researched and the more I looked and the more I spoke, the more it became quite clear to me that just that again, that there was a real gap in the conversation around this pivotal rite of passage, one of our few ceremonies that we still invoke in the culture. And yet it's done in such a way where we really gloss over the element of a transition, of the reality that when you are in transition, you are in a death experience, you are in a liminal zone, you are between identities, you are letting go, you are grieving. And we only expect people to feel joyful. It creates a lot of anxiety and it creates even more chaos than there naturally would be around an event like this. Because I'm feeling sad, because I have a sense of loss, because I feel like a part of me is dying, because I'm not over-the-moon ecstatic... something must be wrong with me, or with my partner, or with the decision to get married - something's wrong. And it's an incredibly deep sigh of relief to the soul to know that nothing is wrong. In fact, the more you let those difficult feelings in, the more you will open to the joy; that the pain and the grief and the discomfort and vulnerability are the doorways into the joy, into what we are expected to see all and into what we hope to feel. And what I started to say earlier was that that the wedding more than any other transition, I think, has (probably being pregnant becoming a mother comes close) carries a very strong cultural expectation of unilateral joy and it is supported in a big way by the wedding industry that sells perfection and sells joy. So it's a it's very big money behind selling us the bill of goods by selling us this message that you are supposed to be joyful and the way to do that is to create a perfect event.

Thomas: How do you work with someone if they're just starting to realize that they don't have to only feel joyful?

Paul: So, I tell them to read my book. And, you know, it's really the first part it's about re educating people to understand all of the normal and necessary feelings that accompany this transition. And once they understand that everything they're feeling is normal and necessary, they can start to let it in and and feel it, feel the grief, feel the loss, feel the vulnerability, feel the loneliness. These are all normal feelings that accompany transitions. So once we give ourselves permission to feel without that overlay of "because I'm feeling this it means there's something wrong" everything changes from there. We don't then have to misassign meaning to the feelings and to think, "Because I'm feeling sad, it means I'm making mistake." No, it has nothing to do with that. You're feeling sad because you are in a rite of passage. You're feeling sad because you are in the death experience, letting go of this identity, this primary identity as single person, as daughter, and shifting into an entirely new stage of life, a new identity. And there is no way to go through that without feeling grief.

Thomas: You spend a good portion of the book talking about how the bride is separating from the father/father figure and the mother/mother figure and the friends. Can you say more about that process?

Paul: Yes, so it can go a few different ways. If the bride is very close to her father, that's one set of emotions and experiences where there is tends to be a lot of grief, a lot of crying, really good, medicinal, necessary crying to make that separation process... and to make it more effective to make it more complete to make it more conscious. Again, in the naming, to say, I am separating from my dad, I am no longer going to be... Yes, I'm his daughter, but not in the same way, not as my primary identity. That my new partner is going to be number one and I'm transferring allegiance. So, that's one example of one way that it can go if if someone's very close to their father. If somebody doesn't have a close relationship with their father or there is no father figure in their life, that's a different kind of grief of the loss of not having had that or never having had that. The same as somebody has passed away. If somebody who's getting married and their mother's no longer alive. You know, that's, that's one way that grief can come through, as opposed to a mother who is very much alive and very much involved. And then there's a separation. There's… there's a loosening of cords that is required.

Thomas: I'm curious as you're speaking how this applies, I'm sure it's very different, but how it applies to folks who were older when they get married, or maybe a second marriage.

Paul: It can be different, it can be similar. It depends. It depends on a lot of factors. But regardless of the age, especially if it's a first marriage and you're getting married at 40, you're still letting go of a massive identity. And in some ways, it's even more of a letting go because of all of those years that you spent as a non-married person. And so there's a lot of grieving, a lot of shedding of the independence, the separateness, all of the control that you have when you are a non-married person, that every inch of your life is your own: your home, your space, how you spend your time, how you organize your weekend, it's all yours. And so that is its own massive death experience for somebody who marries later, you know, and who has had that many more years than someone who's 22 if you're 42, that's a lot of years of being the sole architect of your life.

Thomas: So you work with people around transitions, all kinds of transitions now, and I'm curious if ceremony plays a part in that with them.

Paul: I'm a big fan of ceremony. Because my work is largely over the internet. I'm not the one doing the ceremony with them. I would love to be that person, but I'm not. But I always encourage people to create ceremony and create rituals. And so, you know, if it's somebody getting married... and I've had a lot more men come my way, by the way, since I wrote The Conscious Bride. And I'm thinking of some right now who are in one of my small coaching groups. And he's getting married on Saturday, and I won't, I won't share the specifics, but it's... because it's his story. But it's really beautiful to witness men in their transitional process and the rituals that they come up with because I encourage people to find their own rituals that are meaningful to them. Ways to acknowledge the end of you know, in his sake, his bachelorhood that that time in his life is over. And so he has been sharing these incredibly potent rituals that have come to him for ways of recognizing that that time in his life is over. And what ritual does is, as you know, is it, it concretizes, it makes it and embodies what's happening, so that it brings it out of just that realm of talking about it and it sends it into a realm that we can't see with our five senses, but very much exists and yet calls on the five senses to help transmute the experience into another form. And so rituals help us cross over that sometimes very scary divide that just looks like a big, cavernous, empty space, crossing from one identity to a new identity, from one stage of life to the next. And without the rituals we are... we're pretty lost and so, you know, again, as I, as I said earlier, the wedding is one of the few ceremonies that we have, which comes with ritual. A lot of people tend to minimize or diminish the ceremonial aspect because they're so focused on the party and the reception, you know, that's where all of the energy goes. When really, it's the ceremony that has so much power to carry us over the divide between one stage and the next.

Thomas: And that's something I'm trying to encourage and put seeds out in the world for as well, that people take that the ritual, the ceremony of the marriage, the wedding and they, they feel free to do it their way so that it's powerful and is as powerful and meaningful for the couple as possible.

Paul: Yes, yes! And I think we are at this extraordinary time in our world where we have freedom to do that, where we are breaking out of the traditions that have gone stale and revitalizing them with personal meaning of what is meaningful for you. And there may be long-standing time-honored traditions that are still meaningful. And I'm by no means one to throw everything out that we've come from, because many of those rituals are gorgeous and meaningful - but only if they're meaningful for the individual, right? Only if they land in a place where something inside of you says yes, right? That helps me, that bolsters me, that comforts me. Right? So, you know, whether it's at a Jewish wedding standing under the Chuppah, you know, it's just this beautiful symbol of, of our new home and and this, you know, long standing tradition... if that's meaningful to somebody great. If it's not, then it really.. it's not going to do anything for you on a spiritual level.

I shared with Sheryl that before my wedding, I created a self-commitment ceremony for myself. And in that ceremony I presenced all of my Ancestral grandmothers with the acknowledgement of how important marriage might have been for them, how much of a survival tool. I did this because women’s standing in society has evolved so much even since my mother's generation, but yet we are still connected to our Ancestral legacy and felt like a really important thing to me.

Paul: That's incredibly beautiful that you did that and so powerful and it's probably the number one fear that comes up for women that I'm working with in their pre-wedding time in their engagement, is the fear of what does marriage mean? And does it mean that I am beholden to this person now and I lose all sense of self and I become boring and frumpy and... This is the legacy. This is what we've been handed, right? This is what it has meant for thousands and thousands of years is that for women, marriage has meant really the death of self: I exist, to take care of the man and to take care of the children and that's it. And so there's this very deep ancestral legacy that we have to consciously break with and recognize that we are so lucky and we are so blessed to be on this new threshold, that we get to redefine what marriage means for us. And we only can really know that after we've taken the leap, because on the other side, on the first side, on the engagement side, it just all looks and sounds so scary to most women. And you know, that's why I have so many exercises in The Conscious Bride, more-so I think in The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner, on what does it mean to be a wife? What does that mean to you? What does the word wife connote? When you think of wife, what is the connotation for you? And it's very rare that someone's going to say, "Oh, I see this rad, sexy woman, you know, like, doing like, the dance on the rooftops." Like, no, that's not usually what we think of when we hear the word wife. But it could be. More and more we are redefining that. And we are seeing that. And so I tell people, but look out into the world today and find those those models of marriage where you see a woman who is doing her life fully, you know, and yes, maybe she's also a mother and she's, you know, loves being married and she's fully committed to her path and and making her offerings, and doing her work in the world. Right? Separate from wife and mother. So, yeah, I love, I love that I love what you share. I love what you did. I think that is not only powerful, but essential on that ceremonial ritual level to recognize what we've come from.

Thomas: I'm just so happy and honored to have the chance to talk to you after, after all this time of really, really, really appreciating your book and your wisdom.

Paul: Yeah, thank you, Colleen.

It means a great deal to me to have the opportunity to share Sheryl's wisdom with you. I hope that you are able to use it or pass it along to a friend. Here's one final bit of wisdom, a quote from The Conscious Bride. "A marriage is a rite of passage no matter when it occurs, and the woman must still pass through the phases of her transformation. She must die, she must sit in the unknown, and then she will be reborn."

Sheryl Paul is the author of The Conscious Bride and The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner. Her website contains a plethora of resources for addressing life transitions. Learn more about Sheryl and her work at https://conscious-transitions.com. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S3 E1 The Mother Son Dance (Jeanne & Astro)

February 3, 2022

Episode Summary

She saw him as a free spirit who was never going to get married. She didn't know how to let go of him because maybe there would never be a wedding and a dance. How one mother and son completely transformed their relationship with a ceremony in the middle of a lake.

Episode Resources

→ HealStory Podcast: https://www.healstory.com

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Astro: I've personally never heard of, of a mother and son, or even a father and a son, one-on-one ritual to mend and heal any unconscious issues that they may have had. I just hadn't heard of it. I think it's awesome.

So much of life is based on expectations. We anticipate our traditions to be there. The Father Daughter or Mother Son dance at the wedding can be a way of saying I love you and I’m moving on now. But what happens when there’s no wedding?

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.

It’s season 3 already - I’m not even sure how that happened. I’m so happy to have you with us as we continue exploring the wide variety of rituals and ceremonies we can build to address life’s challenges. My hope is that as you navigate what life brings you, you might consider using ritual as a tool to honor yourself for something, or release something you no longer need, or honor in a relationship that’s changed and grown over time. Today we will be exploring this last one: what it can look like to honor a relationship that’s changed and grown over time.

I’m going to invite you into a conversation I had with my friend Astro and his mom Jeanne about a ritual they created together. It started when Astro noticed that his mom seemed to be getting a little triggered whenever he had a serious relationship. There seemed to be some feelings coming up that felt a little codependent or enmeshed. Now, Astro and his mom are really close, so he was able to just go to Jeanne and talk with her about what he was noticing and together they realized that Jeanne might be grieving the loss of her son as she watched him interacting as a grown man with a partner. I invite you to listen in on their story, the delightful way they relate, and how they intuitively turned to ritual to work through the tensions he’d noticed. One quick note - Astro’s given name is Patrick, and you’ll hear Jeanne refer to him by that name throughout the interview.

Colleen: Give me a sense of what your relationships like between the two of you.

Jeanne: [LAUGHS]

Astro: Hmmm.

Jeanne: I think it's fantastic.

Astro: Yeah, it's pretty good.

Jeanne: But I’ll let you speak for yourself.

Astro: You go first, then I'll go.

Jeanne: Well, I'm aware that… what do I need to say? He's just been a fantastic young man to journey with since he was an infant.

Astro: I’m not so young anymore…

Jeanne: Huh?

Astro: I’m not so young anymore.

Jeanne: Well, no, you're not young anymore, but you're full of wisdom and it's just delightful to see how you are operating in life and… So… I happen to be a spiritual director and have done counseling and psychotherapy stuff and all that. So it's not, it's not what do I need to say? So I could go with the flow a lot easier, maybe than some parents.

Colleen: Got it.

Jeanne: …and that my job was simply to know that he's a gift to the universe and my job was to unwrap him.

Colleen: That's beautiful.

Astro: Yes, that’s nicely said.

Jeanne: And so… then there was some times I found out that my wrapping was too tight.

Astro: We kind of realized that in kind of rehashing the story, that we had probably the same outcomes, but we had come to the ritual from different places which is really interesting, but that'll come up later.

Colleen: And what was going on in your relationship at the time that you had the ritual that led you to the ritual?

Astro: So I was at school at Naropa Institute at the University of Creation Spirituality and I was kind of learning initiation and working in ritual and the value of that for rites of passage. And I had just started to like, kind of recognize some dynamics that I'd never seen before, in the dynamic of our story, in our life, in our you know... So when my partner was interacting with my mom and I, there were just some things I was noticing that I hadn't seen in my mom before. So then I just kind of brought up my mom and I was like, “You know, is there something going on?” And she, you know, to her credit, like, it took a little time because these things are kind of unconscious motivations. But it came up and I think she recognized that - this is my memory of it at that time - was that she recognized that there was some stuff and through the work that I had done, ritual work, I was like, “Well, hey, let's dive in and let's figure something out just to address that stuff.”

Jeanne: And then, of course, I think I was… I was unconscious. I mean, I wasn't aware. So his bringing that up, made me… enabled me to look at it, and realizing that he's a free spirit, he's a seven in the Enneagram and they're… they don't usually make commitments. And so I figured that he'd probably have many partners, his life and maybe not a long-term committed. But I also was aware of that if there is something that's still tying an umbilical cord of me to Patrick and not setting him free, that perhaps a ritual would be helpful in my letting go, what I wasn't fully conscious of.

Astro: What I would, what I was noticing those unconscious things, and I think mom kind of just said it a little bit was just this idea of needing to let go and that's just that's, I think, a natural rite of passage in the story of parents and kids. And that happens through different stages throughout the life and one of those stages is when they are of an age where they, if they so choose to have a kind of a partner and then leave and create a family and life of their own. And I think, because Mom saw me as such a free spirit and world traveler and this kind of person that maybe wasn't going to have a traditional rite of passage, which she would be more used to in her tradition… and she grew up with, you know, much more traditional religious ceremony, AKA marriage, right? So since I probably wasn't going to get married, I think she was feeling a loss of the opportunity to have clarity of my transition from this family into my own. Does that make sense?

Jeanne: Yes. Because as I say to him, one of the transitions are the ritual is at a wedding festivity, where oftentimes the bride dances with the father, and there's a letting go… it's a… it's letting go of that bond in celebration of a new relationship. So it's… I didn't realize how meaningful it is for mothers to dance with their sons, because there again is the closeness, the journey, and letting go. So I didn't see that that was going to happen and didn't necessarily constantly have a sense of we that needed to be replaced or or held. It was really, if there is still ties, what is the traditional way in which those ties are released?

Astro: Right. Yeah. To summarize, as you stated, we had both recognized there was a need for letting go.

Jeanne: Yeah.

Colleen: Right. Right. And I think it's amazing that you both had the consciousness… and that you're both on the same page with that. You're both open to that.

Astro: Yeah, it took some time. But yeah, we got there.

[MUSIC]

So they knew what the problem was and they chose to come up with something fun to deal with it. How cool is that, especially between a mother and son? I didn’t hear any pointing fingers or blaming. When I hear this story, I see two people coming together to walk around a problem as a team. And I see two people who have seen the power and adaptability of ceremony to move them through an event.

Colleen: So, take me through the planning process when you're planning the ritual.

Astro: So we live on this beautiful lake and this is… this is already kind of a ceremonial place for us like… it's very spiritual and profound place for our family. We've been… our family's been here for a couple generations, at least Mom's side. So…

Jeanne: Oh, on the lake? Yeah. I'd started out in a basket as a baby on Seneca Lake and went other places and came back.

Astro: Seneca Lake in the state of New York, in the finger lakes. It’s a really special place.

Jeanne: It is.

Astro: So we knew this would be the ritual spot, the lake. And it was like a beautiful summer time and we just hopped in a small fishing boat and we went out to the middle of the lake.

Jeanne: And Patrick had been a tennis player so he had a lot of trophies and I was trying to figure out where to put these trophies. So when he talked about it'd be nice if we had some object or something to release, I thought - ha, ha!

Astro: That’s so funny because I feel like I I had the same idea at that same time. She thinks it was her idea to do that.

[TALKING OVER EACH OTHER]

Jeanne: But it was your idea. Anyways, it was a mutual idea. Here’s the synchronicity between the two of us.

Astro: It was mutual, whoever was there first.

Jeanne: So we went through… we went through the trophies deciding which ones were…

Astro: …the ugliest.

Jeanne: Right. The ugliest or didn’t have… necessarily have the…

Astro: …we found like two second place ones or something like that.

Jeanne: Right. We kept the first place and the ones that really stood out and then decided, okay, these really are just going to take up dust and so, but they are something that was part of my watching him and his being in that sport. And so we decided I'm not sure how many… we…probably at least three…

Astro: We took four…

Jeanne: …three or four we took out with us in the boat. And then we decided, “Well we're in the boat, how would we work this? Well how about we pick one up and then we talk about starting early on in life.” And I don't remember what we said, but it was segments of our life and celebrate…

Astro: I think it was pretty much you doing it like you just kind of took it and you held it and you were present with it and just sort of spoke to like my like… being like a baby and a toddler and what that was like for you and you know…

Jeanne: Yeah. Probably so.

Astro: And I remember like, some… lot of tears like there was emotion. And I felt like I was kind of holding space.

Jeanne: I didn't remember the tears, it was so long ago there. But I thought, you know, it was great to be letting go and letting the memories be cherished and off into the waters. So…

Astro: I'm sure we started with some intentional prayer and breathing.

Jeanne: I don't know about the breathing at that point.

Astro: Well, something centering.

Jeanne: But we were… Sure.

Astro: It was totally calm, like, the lake’s pretty big. It's almost two miles across. We live… we were literally in the middle of the lake. Like we took a time… a while to get out there in a small fishing boat and so we were intentional and…

Jeanne: It was a sacred moment.

Astro: …and it's like 600 feet deep at that point…

Jeanne: …so we knew they'd never come back. [LAUGHS]

Astro: [LAUGHS] Yeah, unless they floated! But we got the heavier ones, like the ones with the marble base. Not like the wooden ones…

[LAUGHING]

Astro: That’d be funny.

Colleen: Yeah, I always wonder what that means when I make an offering and it comes back. I’m always like, “Hmmm…”

Astro: Yeah, there’s a whole nother meaning. Oh, maybe you're not supposed to let go of me. Maybe we’re supposed to be enmeshed the rest of our lives.

Jeanne: There's a lot of stuff in this lake… people buried… put their ashes in there…

Astro: Yeah, we've had friends who’ve put their ashes…

Jeanne: …ashes in the lake. I mean, had a ceremonial ritual with him in the boat. So… and that was before. Yeah, that was before this… our having the ritual. So that wasn't the first time we'd gone out of the boat to recall life and to celebrate life, and to let it go.

Colleen: And yet, this was a different, this was a different kind of letting go. This is letting go of a “past life”, of somebody who's still alive who's transitioning and letting go of the past relationship. It was kind of a rebirthing of your relationship.

Astro: Totally, totally. And I think that's kind of what it felt like to me is she's announcing,...she's like, to me it's like she's saying, you know, “This trophy is Patrick as a toddler” and letting it go. It's like kind of like a death. And the same thing with like, whatever the next trophy represented and like the adolescence, and letting go of that. And, you know, so that was kind of like a death and a rebirth. When all that was let go, it was definitely a rebirth it felt like and, and you know what we can get into and what to me it felt like a genuine shift, a genuine transformation in our relationship.

Jeanne: Which was nice to have that occur. And you know, asking to be sharing this with you then we did a little talking to recall just what did we recall? This was about 18-20 years ago. And so it had for me, I was surprised that it had such an impact on Patrick.

Colleen: I'm curious what felt different to you after the ceremony, Astro.

Astro: I mean, one of my main motivations, as I said before, was to, like have a pretty copacetic relationship in the family with my partner at the time. And I don't know, I just noticed, a like, sort of this kind of sharpness that I had discovered, like I thought I'd seen in mom when my partner came in, or just certain situations arose that were bringing up this unconscious sort of triggers that were gone, like completely gone. Like she was at ease and I didn't see any of that, that sharpness. That edge had seemed to, like dissipate. It was almost like we had like a sort of, like an unspoken contract, like a secret contract that like, between us that that energy was just dissolved. And it was completely dealt with and didn't exist anymore. And it… to a big extent, and I think our relationship became less around the dependencies and co-dependencies around childrens and parents and it became more about peers and spiritual friends and coworkers on planet Earth. And I think, we're we never lose the fact that we're mother and son, but it became… it was just another phase in us being more, you know, mutual in our lives together as opposed to the dynamic of like, “This is your identity and this is my identity and this is how we relate.” And now there seemed to be much more freedom,and openness and respect. Like I don't know, a lot of people who live live with their parents as regular as I have since I came back, like I do a lot of world traveling. Those years, I wasn't living at home, and then the last few years, I spent a lot of time with my family, with my parents, and we get along like, like gangbusters, we're like friends. You know, some people can't live can't spend more than three days with their parents, you know, without all these codependent dynamics like blowing up in their face. And we literally like… we enjoy each other's company, we have fun together, you know.

Jeanne: Right.

Colleen: I haven't heard of it either. And the whole first season of the podcast was focused on weddings because I thought it was something that people would be very familiar with the concept of a wedding and talked a lot about how to do a wedding on your own terms and make your own, make it very unique to what you need as a couple, or as more than a couple of it's more than two people that are that are uniting. There was a big theme about unconscious, you know, things coming up mothers of the bride and the groom, you know, “freaking out”, you know, or “bridezillas” or whatever… And all of that, because of not taking the time to, or not having space in our teaching and our learning to allow space for the feelings which are being changed… you know, the reaction to the change of the relationship.

Astro: Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's huge. Well, and this is kind of a spin off of that, I think, the marriage theme.

Jeanne: My seeing it not happening, because he’s a free spirit and if there was ever a ceremony, it'd be quite different, not knowing it. So just realizing that gee that's not going to probably happen. And how…

Astro: So this was our dance.

Jeanne: This is our dance. This is our dance.

Astro: Letting go.

Jeanne: I’ve had my dance. You can do whatever you want. [LAUGHS]

Colleen: Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much for telling that story.

Jeanne: I have no idea how you’re going to put this together in a podcast.

Astro: Oh, she’s a professional.

Jeanne: She’s a professional. Thank you, Colleen.

And thank you for joining us today for this beautiful story. I love it because it’s a clear and simple example of noticing a disconnect within a relationship, acknowledging it, and finding a way to come together again. How much easier could life be if we could openly acknowledge when we’re not feeling comfortable about something? If we could say things like, “I’m noticing I’m a little sad that you’re getting married,” or “I’m kind of freaked out you’re having a baby because I’m afraid I’ll never see you again. How can we work with this? How can we stay connected?” It’s all about taking care of ourselves, being human, and asking for what we need. Then, finding a fun ceremony to build together!

Jeanne Judson is a world traveler with a Masters in Education. She's an elder, spiritual director, Enneagram instructor, Reiki Master and lover of life. Astro is a conscious activist producing music and media to promote healthy evolution personally, socially, and environmentally. After returning from the protests at Standing Rock he started co-producing a podcast called HealStory aimed at ancestral healing through personal storytelling. You can learn more at www.healstory.com or listen wherever you get your podcasts. And if you would like to support his work you can do so at www.patreon.com/healstory.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. You can follow us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata. You can reach us through the contact page at our website, shamepinata.com. And you can subscribe to the podcast on Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite player. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S2 E5 The UnBaby Shower (Tristy Taylor)

May 7, 2021

Episode Summary

When Reverend Tristy Taylor and her husband decided to stop trying to have a baby, she honored that loss with a special ceremony. During her time sitting shiva, "grief first" was her mantra. Then a dream inspired her to create a celebration of her decision to not become a mother.

Episode Resources

→ Tristy Taylor: https://www.createwithspirit.com

→ Tristy's Blog Post on The UnBaby Shower: https://revtristy.blogspot.com/2012/03/un-baby-showers-ritual-crafting.html

→ Video Tour of Grief Ritual Art Journal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=xnojPZci5Lg

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Taylor: Yeah, it's a major life transition for women that's not acknowledged, you know, or talked about really.

Thomas: It's just like a failing, or a loss, or a...

Taylor: A giving up.

Thomas: Yeah, exactly.

On our journey through life, we will come upon moments that invite us to reinvent ourselves. Big changes can do this like moving away from home, getting married, starting a family or choosing not to start a family. How can we slow down in these moments and really honor what’s changing, really honor how we’re changing? This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.

Today we’re going to go deep. Are you ready? We’re going to dive into one of those moments that’s really a rite of passage, an initiation, a change. One of those moments that ceremony is perfect for because it invites us to use all of our creativity and all of our heart. And what’s more, it invites us to use ceremony for what ceremony does best, to create the container to hold the strong emotions that come up with big changes. Tristy Taylor joins us today to share the story of her unbaby shower, a three-part ceremony she designed when she and her husband decided to stop trying to conceive. She took her time. She followed the threads of what was changing in her and she ended up creating a beautiful ceremony that both honored her grief and was also a celebration.

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I think... It does start with the journey my husband and I were on to make a baby together. And after trying the usual routes and discovering that nothing was happening, we entered the world of fertility treatments, medical intervention and started down that road, which included some pretty powerful hormone therapy that was... quite a journey to be on that. Basically, all my emotions were at 11 all the time. [LAUGHS] So like, you know, small inconveniences became like fiery, mountainous, rage-fueled tirades. [LAUGHS] And eventually did end up having a pregnancy, but then that pregnancy was... the pregnancy ended up being ectopic. So the fertilized egg and embedded in my fallopian tube. And, you know, we didn't know that and I ended up going to the emergency room one night with just intensive abdominal pain and they took one look at me and said, "You're bleeding internally, and we need to open you up immediately." And then that's when they discovered that... that my tube had ruptured... my fallopian tube had ruptured. And after that experience, we kept trying but it started to... all signs started to point to this was gonna be painful and challenging and not really get us where we wanted to be. And my husband and I talked for a long time about what that choice meant to be child-free. And he kind of took it in stride and sort of said, "Well,I'm gonna use that energy to do other things." And he, like started his own business and, you know, spent a lot of time away from me and away from home kind of diving into almost a little bit avoidant perhaps of his own feelings. But building this business that he'd always wanted to create and felt free to create now that we weren't trying to create a family and all the sort of pressures that might have come with being a parent. It kind of freed him up. And kind of the opposite happened to me where I just felt like my life had been pressed pause... like the pause button had been pressed on my life and I didn't know what happened next. And being someone who really tries to show up to what's happening in my life, regardless whether or not I understand it, I realized that I needed to honor this loss. So... and to really allow some space and time to feel the grief of the loss of being a mother and and even this particular pregnancy loss with the ectopic pregnancy. And being an interfaith minister, I read a lot about all sorts of rituals and I had recently read a really beautiful piece about the modern day of sitting shiva for someone who had passed away from the Jewish tradition. And, knowing that shiva means seven, seven days and I really like felt the like ritual power behind that. I mean, it's a ritual... but that seven days like I really felt how... to devote seven straight days to my grief where grief came first and nothing else had precedence over my sitting inside of my grief... My whole body just resonated with that. I just was like, Yes, that's what we're gonna do! And that's what I did. And I didn't, really... Other than my husband, I didn't talk to anybody. I ended up doing a lot of crafting, which felt really good. I ended up making these kind of heartfelt... heart-shaped sachets with like lavender and different herbs in them... calm... these sort of calming craft/sewing kind of stuff that would that was very focused, but I was also kind of putting my grief into these pieces that I was making. And yeah, it was... it was very powerful time and spent a lot of time in nature and just cried a lot. And didn't think about the future or what my life would look like, I just really tried to focus on the moment, which is challenging, you know. Our Western culture really pushes us to get over our grief as soon as possible and not to dwell and like... all of that stuff... When really, I think the more we can show up for our grief, the more can beautifully move through us. And we can truly let it go. We have to feel it first.

During the time of sitting shiva with her grief, Tristy had a dream. In the dream, she was out in the snow looking into a kind of hut, a hut that felt very ancient. Inside the hut women dressed in animal skins were gathered around a very, very pregnant woman, putting oils on her and celebrating her. There was a fire in the hut but Tristy was outside in the cold and she knew through the knowledge that comes in dreams that she was not allowed into the ritual because she was not fertile and she would be bad energy for the pregnant space.

Taylor: And I woke up crying, and hurt very hurt by the dream. And I also know from doing dream work all my life that no dream ever comes to hurt us and be like, "Look at you, you know, you're stuck, Haha!" You know... Our dreams always come for health and wholeness. And so I really sat with the dream. I drew pictures from the dream... I felt into it. And and the gift that came out of the dream, cause I do think all nightmares have a gift. The gift that came out of the dream was this idea for an unbaby shower. Because it didn't feel fair to me that I should be left out in the cold. And this transition that I was making is just as valuable as the transition of becoming a mother, the transition to not be a mother. And so I connected with two very good friends who are great ritual-makers and we started to piece together this whole ceremonial ritual around having this unbaby shower. And it started with the grief. It started with doing a grief ritual with these two women and really having their support and being in nature together, and making food together. And then that transitioned into this more celebratory shower-space where about 18 women came to my house and painted my body with body paints and gave me blessings. And it was so interesting because it was raining at the beginning of the shower ("the shower"). So we all had to like jam into my little, you know, 700 square-foot house. And then by the afternoon the sun had come up and then I was all like covered in body paint and we just went outside and we're just running around and it was so joyful. There was so much joy. And the way I kind of completed the ritual was making this dedication to being a creator, being a spiritual guide, being... offering my gifts to the world. If I wasn't going to be mothering a new life, then I would be holding this spiritual, creative space for others. And it always makes me think of that Dolly Parton quote, because she also couldn't have children. She tried and she couldn't have them and she just said, "Well, God just decided that I'm gonna be mom to everybody kids." You know, like, I just love that. And I love being, you know, an auntie to my friends', kids. And that feels really like a powerful and important role as as my auntie's were to me as a kid. So that's how that all came about.

Thomas: I love... I love that. I love... I love the way that you love ritual, and you lean into it and into your dreams. And I love your stories, because I love to hear you listening. The layers at which you listen inspire me. And remind me what you discovered about your grandmother and your great grandmother.

Taylor: Yeah. So my, my ruptured tubal pregnancy where I had to have emergency surgery was on March 3. And my... my mother told me that her mother, my grandmother, was born on March 3. And I remembered that her mother, my great-grandmother, died giving birth to her. So my great grandmother died on March 3 giving birth. And I had this emergency surgery that saved my life and I would have died through trying to become a mother. So there was this fascinating karmic Ancestral wound being healed, I believe. I didn't die, I survived. And I really do... from the ancestral work that I've done in my life, I've had visceral experiences. Because time is not linear in that world, like time is a spiral. It's past. It's present. It's future all at once. And so the healing that I did on that day and continue to do ripples back to my Ancestors. You know, and that's my female line. It's my mother's mother's mother, you know, that... all of that is relevant to my experience, you know. And of course, none of that was planned, it's just how it unfolded. It's one of those kind of magic, unexplainable moments, you know, where we've kind of put the pieces together afterwards. And it's like, oh, that seems significant! [LAUGHS]

Thomas: I've always loved the physiological connection that we have to our grandmothers, because... I always have trouble saying it... I... the egg that became me in my mother's ovary... that...

Taylor: ...Was in your grandmother.

Thomas: ...was in my grandmother's body - yes!

Taylor: Isn't that amazing?

Thomas: It's so crazy!

Taylor: Yeah. Incredible. And the work they've done about how, like, the stress and trauma of our grandmothers are in those eggs within eggs, like we're literally physically inheriting that trauma. You know, which is, you know, powerful healing work that we all can do as women.

Thomas: Mm hmm. Absolutely.

Tristy's story inspired me so deeply because of the depth of her commitment to the process. Letting the grief ritual come to her, sitting shiva for the 7 days, then creating the unbaby shower to return to her society as a woman who will not be having children. Listening to her story reminded me of my own journey on the road to motherhood and my ultimate decision not to go there.

Thomas: I so appreciate hearing the story of the baby shower because I went through my own process of figuring out... of having a moment in time in my life when I needed to decide which way am I going to go - towards somebody who might want to have a baby or stay with somebody I really like a lot who's very clear they don't want a baby. And I was at the age where I had to pick. And it was a little hard, you know, because I had... You know, I felt like I was losing a lot. But then when I sat with it, and sort of took apart all the pieces of being a mom, I realized that I only wanted certain pieces that were definitely not... didn't equate with having a child or trying to have a child... it just was like, not my thing, even though I felt so much pressure to be a woman in that way. And a lot of, like, legitimate grief and loss when I when I walked away from it, which isn't something I ever thought I would feel but it was there. It was like, wow, okay, to go through these feelings. And my partner was, really, really there for me. And I sought out community, I put an ad on Craigslist for women who had chosen not to have a child who wanted to chat with me about it and I had like four or five women have conversations with me.

Taylor: Oh, I love that!

Thomas: You know, there's nowhere to go to find those women. So I found a few and that really helped me feel like okay, I'm not alone. And then I asked my mom, you know, what do you think? And she said, "You never wanted kids, even when you were a little." And I was like, "Oh, okay, that helps. Thanks." [LAUGHS] Because you know, figure there was some wisdom there that she might be able to give me, plus she never pressured me to have kids, which was immensely helpful on the journey to decide, you know, what was right for me. So I... I know a little bit about I didn't go through the journey of trying, but I went through the journey of deciding, you know, deciding to walk away. Actually, I just had a flash... My parents loved antiques and they had this antique cradle. And my mom lived in Italy before I was born and she kept beer in it and she said the Italian neighbor would always come in and... I guess he'd bring her beer... I don't know... he would come in the house and he would say, "Where is the baby?" And she'd be like, "It's the beer goes in the cradle." Because at that point in her life, she didn't think she was going have a baby because they had tried and tried and tried and tried and given up and then they had beer in the cradle.

Taylor: And then you're all, "Surprise!" [LAUGHS]

Thomas: Yeah. Hi. Move the beer, there's a baby now.

Taylor: That's amazing!

Thomas: Oh, thank you so much for sharing this story with me and with us. And I look forward to sharing out your blog posts with which has the some of the images from your journal and you have the video walkthrough of your journal that you kept during that time.

Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad to share it with you and anyone who resonates or is inspired to create their own ritual. And, you know, I mentioned the blog post, that part of it was inspired by a woman who had a ritual around starting menopause and what that meant to her so I really, I really love to encourage others to think about those major life transitions, like even like leaving a job and starting a new one or moving to another state, which I'm about to do, like, I've been thinking about, like, "Oh, I'm gonna be letting go of California, you know, and what does that mean, to me is born in San Francisco, and, you know, born and raised here. So I think there's lots of space for ritual in our lives if we make it. Yeah. If we have that conversation, we listen and respond.

Tristy Taylor is an Interfaith Minister and Ritualist, providing support and companionship to those that live on the fringes beyond traditional religion. She firmly believes that ALL people deserve to have rituals and ceremonies that honor life’s transitions, regardless of their spiritual beliefs. She has had major personal life experiences around grief and death and is comfortable supporting others during these very human experiences. You can find out more about her work at www.createwithspirit.com.

You can hear a longer version of this same interview where Tristy shares more about what her time sitting shiva looked like on the KPFA Women's Magazine Archives. Look for the link in the show notes. Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S1 E10 My Self Marriage Story

July 3, 2020

Episode Summary

What if you could find the most amazing partner in the world, someone who loves you unconditionally, who respects you, admires you, and has your back through thick and thin? What if that person was you?

Episode Resources:

→ Tria Wen: https://triawen.com/

Episodes by Topic

→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage

→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings

→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss

→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times

Support the Show

→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata

→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp

About the Show

Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

Listen If

→ You’re feeling stuck

→ You’re going through a tough time

→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it

Love Shame Piñata?
Subscribe on iTunes | Follow on Spotify
Follow on Instagram | Connect on Facebook
Join us for a Ceremony | Follow on Podchaser

Full Transcript

Thomas: It's the transition of me from little girl who wants to get married and wants to be the bride in the big white wedding dress to me as the grown woman who stands in her power, who knows who she is, who knows that she's complete with or without a partner, and is connected most deeply with the sacred inside of herself.

What if I told you that you could find the most amazing partner in the world, someone who loves you unconditionally, who respects you, admires you, and has your back through thick and thin. A person who really understands you and gets it. In fact, a person that knows you so well, being with them is just like being home. Where could you find this person? Just look in the mirror. This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today we're going to switch things up a little bit. My good friend Tria Chang is going to interview me about a ceremony from my life, a ceremony I held about 5 years ago in which I married myself. If self-marriage is new to you, I invite you to give it a listen.

Chang: So hello, Colleen.

Thomas: Hi Tria.

Chang: It's so nice to talk to you about your ceremony because it is the reason that we met in the first place or not, actually the reason we met with Shame Piñata, but I think what made me feel really connected to you was hearing about your own ritual and how you have created something that I think a lot of people could take into their own lives. So I'm excited to talk to you about that today. And as we mentioned, there's a lot going on in the world right now and it's... it can be hard to be centered and present. So if you don't mind, I thought we could do a little exercise to start off before I start asking you questions and that is just to kind of put yourself in the place of your self-commitment ceremony. And I'm going to ask you questions in the present tense as if we're there. And if you don't mind answering the questions in the present tense as well just to like, help bring us there and I might go ahead and close my eyes while we do this, just so I can really be there with you. So, it's the day yourself commitment ceremony. And you wake up in the morning. How are you feeling?

Thomas: Nervous about the details coming together because there's a lot of details and really excited that the day is finally here.

Chang: And what time of the day did the ceremony begin?

Thomas: It begins... I think... I forget... I think it begins around noon or two in the afternoon.

Chang: Okay, perfect. So let's put ourselves in that space in the afternoon. And how are you opening the ceremony? What do you hear and who is there? What do you see?

Thomas: Well, it takes a while for us to get ready and it takes a while for everybody to arrive. And we have I think we have 13 women in person attending... we have 13 women in person attending and we have three additional women attend on Skype. They think it's cute and fun that I'm wearing a big old wedding dress that I got to Goodwill. It doesn't fit me and it's pinned closed in the back because it's way too big.

Chang: And how do you open the ceremony?

Thomas: I brought in an officiant so that I wouldn't have to officiate it myself. So how we open it is that she does a welcome and an introduction. She introduces everybody, everybody to themselves and to each other. And then she leads us in a meditation, a short meditation just to arrive. And then I chose to cast a circle because that's the tradition that I come from to create sacred space, to open it into a ceremonial space. And then we invited in Spirit and we began doing... I think we had one reading in the beginning... oh, yes, a friend of mine read the Charge of the Goddess and then we went into check-ins...

The ceremony began with casting the circle, calling the directions and inviting in Spirit and then moved into readings, check-in and a circle dance. After the circle dance, we went into a performance art piece that I created especially for the ceremony, which was kind of the heart of the ritual. It symbolized my transition from the little girl who wanted the fairytale wedding to the grown woman standing in her power. The performance art piece was comprised of many elements woven together, visual, auditory and movement. But at its heart, it was basically me taking off the froofy wedding dress and stepping into a more earthy, Goddess dress while a modern rendition of Woodie Guthrie's 1944 song "Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?" playing in the background. The lyrics of that song are:
Who's gonna shoe your pretty little foot?
Who's gonna glove your hand?
Who's gonna kiss your red ruby lips?
Who's gonna be your man?
Tria asked me about the significance of that song in the context of a self-commitment ceremony.

Thomas: For me, I chose to do the self-commitment ceremony when I was just about to get married to a person... to a man. And I had always wanted to do a self-commitment ceremony and had done some small things, but it felt really important to me before marrying somebody else to marry myself first, because I've had a tendency to give myself away and to sort of run roughshod over myself and not pay attention to what I needed, but to become what I thought I was supposed to be for somebody else... which maybe sounds like a good idea, but really, ultimately, it ends up with me being kind of a shell person for that other person and not somebody they can really rely on and trust in, because I'm not being authentic to myself. So I took the opportunity of using the self-commitment ceremony as a time to shed a little bit more of that because I knew that I could say, "Oh, I'm going to be my full self, I'm going to marry you, I'm going to be my full self." But yet there was going to be some residue of the old ways and the old beliefs in me. So the performance art piece was a chance to enact taking off the dress, setting it aside, honoring it, and just being like, yeah, and I'm me. And this is who I'm connecting with and this is who I'm going to walk out of the ceremony being so that I can walk into the next ceremony as that person.

Chang: Yes, that really resonates with me. Yeah.

Thomas: And having it witnessed was extremely powerful.

Chang: That's beautiful. Yeah, that resonates with me and I think so many other people, and perhaps women especially feel a great sense of loss during a relationship or a marriage especially. And I think that's so powerful to commit to yourself before doing that.

So, my particular self-marriage ceremony was focused heavily on the concept of the Chakras, which are energy centers in the body. As you’ll hear in the next section of the interview, the chakras are important to me, so I wove them into my ceremony. For reference, if you’re not already familiar with them, the chakras run in a line near the spine beginning with the 1st chakra at the base of the spine and extending up to the 7th chakra at the crown of the head, with a few additional chakras above that. Each chakra is correlated to a particular energy such as safety, love or intuition.

Chang: What was the importance of the chakras in your ceremony and how did you represent each?

Thomas: My spiritual practice at that time was slowly going through each chakra. So, I had a daily meditation practice where I was working on whichever one. I started with the first chakra and I worked through them all. And I worked through them... I spend about three months on each or longer... So I would... every morning I would have a meditation where I would just sit with like the concept of the first chakra, say, and I would just sort of notice if I could feel it in my body, and I would just sort of sense into it. And I had lots of different things that I did around staying focused on the chakra. So I was... basically over a long period of time, I was learning myself deeply at each level, and each chakra level. So I thought a rainbow in the ring would be perfectly aligned to my spiritual practice and it would bring me home to me, which is what I wanted the ring to ultimately do is when I look at it, "Oh yeah, that's me. I got this." And the ring I ended up with does have rainbow sapphires in it and I wrote several vows for each chakra that I took in the ceremony, but I have sort of one master vow for each chakra. And it's a very nice meditation. When I look at the ring, I can actually just go through and I can look at the red stone and say the first chakra vow, and look at the orange stone and say, the second chakra vow and I can just do them really quickly... and I just remember boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. "Okay, those are my eight ways that I am me now," and then I can go back to what I'm doing.

Chang: Wonderful. And can you tell me a little bit about how you represented that in your ceremony?

Thomas: Mostly through the ring and through the vows. And as prep work for the ceremony, once I finished my... I was calling it a self-guided tour of my chakras, which took about two years... once I was finished, once I had finished that process, that was about the time I was beginning to plan the self-commitment ceremony and I reached out and found one woman each in my life, who could be a guide at the level of the chakra. So for example, I thought, "Who's my most grounded friend who's just grounded, it's effortless. She's just there," "Who's my friend who's just in her heart It's, you know, it's simple for her. That's just how she, how she is." And so I found these eight women, and I asked them each to meet with me twice, once just to have a conversation about like, "Wow, you really are amazing at this level and I want to get amazing at that level and how do you do it? And you know, what does it feel like to you and here's my issues... and help me..." You know, and, and so, the first meeting gave us a chance to talk and plan a little they gave me like an assignment. So my first chakra goddess had me map out some things about being grounded and finances and safety and I did some writing on that and some graphing and we came back and we visited it together. My third chakra goddess, which is all about being bold and brave, she sent me to a Bikram yoga class, which was really intense. And my heart chakra Goddess talked a lot about fears, the way our fears come up and get in our way. So I started doing a video journal for her about whenever I noticed fears were really getting in my way during the day, I was moving into noticing those a lot more clearly. So, each woman met with me twice and helped me kind of deepen into myself at that level. And then each one of those women attended the ceremony either in person or on Skype and they were the ones who asked me, you know, "Do you take yourself with this? Do you this? Do you do that?" with my vows. And I said, "Yes, I this, I that," with my vows. So my first chakra goddess let me take my first chakra vows and then put a red ribbon around my neck... and... around my shoulders. And my second chakra goddess, same thing... second chakra vows. And it was interesting that it turned out that the upper chakra vow goddesses were on Skype - those were all on Skype and the eighth chakra one, the highest one, she was on a video. She didn't even show up on Skype. So it's kind of got more ethereal as you went up, which is funny.

Chang: That's great. I also love hearing how you incorporated the women into your life in the process leading up to it because it sounds like it was so fortifying for you and also probably felt really nice for them to feel recognized for that quality that you saw in them. Are you standing in front of everyone for the vows or maybe just take me through where you are in the room and how you were feeling at each vow.

Thomas: I was standing with sort of the women in sort of… I'm sorry, I am standing in a... against the wall with the altar behind me and the sort of a horseshoe shape of women in front of me. And the officiant calls each chakra one by one and then each chakra goddess comes up to have me take the vows and the chakra goddesses are wearing stoles that I made for them in the color that they're representing of the chakra, and I made them on my grandmother's sewing machine while I was visiting my mom, which was really nice. And so there's somebody in each of the colors and the goddesses who couldn't be there for the ceremony, I mailed them their stoles, so they were on Skype wearing their stoles. And the officiant... I was just looking at the pictures this morning of the stoles and the officiant had a white stole that had rainbow... it had a little piece of the fabric from each of the other stoles so had like rainbows on either side on her stole. And yeah, one by one the chakra goddesses came up and they said, "Do you promise to this or that" and then I responded and then they had a cord that they put over my shoulders to signify that I had taken the vows. And my friend who was the first darker goddess did the physical filling in for the people who were on Skype who couldn't physically put a cord around my neck.

Chang: Wonderful. So by the end of the vow piece of the ceremony, you have all these cords to symbolize the vows that you've taken on.

Thomas: Yes.

After I took my vows, the ring was passed around for all of the women to bless. It was in a little pouch and I hadn't seen it yet. When it came to me, the officiant removed it from the pouch and handed it to me. I shared with Tria the words I said as I put it on my finger.

Thomas: I said, "As a sign of love and respect for myself, I give myself this ring. I wear it as a reminder of my enoughness. In flowing times and in moments of stillness, in fullness and an emptiness, in fear and in courage with all that I am and all that I will become, and so it is." And then I put the ring on.

Chang: That's lovely. Did you write that?

Thomas: I think I did. Yeah, I think so.

Chang: So you're putting the ring on? What shifts in you or what do you feel?

Thomas: Just just crazy gratitude to be manifesting it because it's something I've been wanting to do for a very long time. And I just feel really excited and happy to have the ring on and that everything went really well and that I'm finally at this moment. And then she says to me, "With a sense of abundant joy that you have found your way to this moment. I now pronounce you married to yourself."

Chang: And then did everyone cheer?

Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there was a lot of cheering and I was jumping around and we're super happy, just super happy. I think the next thing we do is we have some sharing, and there's another poem, and then we have just, you know, the closing and releasing of the directions and opening of a circle and then we had rainbow cupcakes.

Chang: Delicious. Do you feel like years later that you pick the right vows?

Thomas: Yes I do. I do. I really love my vows still. I have them on my wall and I recite them when I look at my ring and they're very much... I probably had too many for each chakra really, but I tried to narrow it down and there were just so many aspects of each chakra that felt important. So I think in the end, they were perfect.

Chang: And just to go back a little bit, we talked about the importance of the chakras and then I heard you mentioning your grandmothers and mothers and friends and it sounds like it was all women that were part of the ceremony. Is that right?

Thomas: That's right.

Chang: And what was the significance of that for you?

Thomas: Well, it feels to me that there's a thing about being a woman where we're expected to, I suppose if we're straight, we're expected to give up our, you know, our autonomy to a man and to marriage at a certain point in our lives. And that if we don't do that, it means that we couldn't get it together or we failed, or, you know, we didn't do it right or whatever. And I did a lot of thinking and feeling into how much the institution of marriage was a survival tool for women. And for me, it really wasn't so much because my partner and I were happy together, we didn't need to get married, I would have been fine... I could be fine as a woman in this society without a partner because things have evolved so much for women. But, I mean, in my mom's era, you know, it would have been a lot different and my grandmother's, way different. And so, looking back through my ancestry, it just feels like so many women maybe relied on it as a survival tool. And that felt very heavy to me. So with this ceremony, as with a lot of things that I do, I kind of dedicated my work to shift an old paradigm in me to go back as possible, right, through time to heal my Ancestors, to help heal my line. So, so that, you know, as I liberate myself from these old beliefs that are limiting, it helps to liberate them. So that was a big part for me... and in fact, when I started in the very beginning of the performance art piece, during the musical beginning, before the lyrics started, I had a picture come up on the screen because there was a visual piece to it as well, each one of my grandmother's, and I think there were about maybe 13 or 14 of them that I have pictures of who were on there who showed up one after another. And while I was sitting there watching that during the beginning of the performance art piece, I just felt the power of each... it was like... because we were in ritual space... and it was just like... Boom, there's that grandmother. Boom, there's that grandmother. Boom... and it was like they were showing up. They were walking in the door. They were coming into the space.

Chang: Wow. really powerful. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, that there's even more depth and power in that answer than I was expecting. So thank you for sharing that. How are you feeling after the ceremony compared to before?

Thomas: I felt so different inside me. I felt like a lot more grounded in myself and who I was and a lot more sure of myself and just like something really important and momentous that happened in me and I shifted, I just felt like I shifted, a different person.

Chang: Thank you so much for sharing all of that with me. And I'm sure the listeners will love hearing about self-commitment ceremonies through your eyes because it's certainly something that I never really considered or thought about before meeting you. So I'm grateful for the introduction through you.

I hope that after hearing this story, you feel inspired to create something for yourself. I chose to go pretty much all out, but there are many ways to do self marriage, even down to simply choosing a special ring that you know is YOUR ring. If you create your own ceremony, let us know. We’re available at shamepinata.com.

Tria Chang is a writer based in San Francisco whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the NYT Now app, and Narratively. When not writing, she co-runs Make America Dinner Again, and has spoken on NPR, BBC, and at SXSW to discuss and model how to build understanding across political lines. She is working on her first book. Learn more at http://triachang.com/

Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to review it on Apple Podcasts. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S1 E4 I Want to Have a Ceremony with You (Betsy Weiss)

March 13, 2020

Episode Summary

What happens when our values and choices don't match the expectations of our family? When we grow into different people than those who are closest to us? How can we still keep them close and nurture those important relationships while also finding ways to be true to ourselves? Today we will meet Betsy and Brandon who wanted to do their commitment a bit differently than their families expected. Join me to learn how they did it, and kept their families close.

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Full Transcript

Weiss: You know, both of our families are actually religious, Christian, and have a different sense of, you know, that you should get married if you're in this committed relationship but we don't feel that way. And so there's sort of this tension, but reality in life of while we feel differently, but that's okay.

What happens when our values and choices don't match the expectations of our family? When we grow into different people than those who are closest to us? How can we still keep them close and nurture those important relationships while also finding ways to be true to ourselves? Today we will meet Betsy and Brandon who wanted to do their commitment a bit differently than their families expected. Join me to learn how they did it, and kept their families close.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. I'm going to share a very special story with you today. Or, rather, our guest is. Betsy Weiss knew she didn't want to get married. She became clear on that shortly after college, in her early 20's. She had very clear and thought-out reasons for making this decision. When she met someone and started a relationship that meant a lot to her, that didn't change. In fact it never changed. What did change is that her mom got sick, and then better, and then sick again. And Betsy was faced with the thought of losing her mother without having had the chance to mark the importance of her relationship with her mother there. She wanted to share the love she and her partner had with her mom. She also wanted to honor her mom for being the cornerstone of the family she had always been. So Betsy and her partner planned a ceremony, a non-wedding. They called it a celebration of life and family.

Weiss: I guess my story actually really starts like how I grew up. I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian family, school, church where I was taught that you shouldn't have sex until you're married, that you, as a woman, will serve your husband that he'll be the head of the household. And, you know, a lot of my friends that I knew when were was young got married when they were 21-22. And I always knew... I was always an independent person, I always know that I was going to wait till I was 26. That was like my, well, I'm not gonna get married at 22 or 23 but I'm gonna wait until I'm a little bit older. Because that felt important to me and that was when my mama got married. She was actually 27. And then when I was in college, I really changed my perspective, my mindset, and actually left the faith that I had grown up in. And it felt like there's a lot of toxic things, especially some of the things I was taught as a woman about my self-worth about like that I was told that I was causing men to sin and I was a problem because I was a female and an attractive person. And so I decided after college kind of in my early 20s, I wasn't really interested in getting married anymore, that I might want to have a connection to someone, but that I never wanted to be... to feel like I had to serve someone else like I was lesser. I didn't want to feel like a religion had power over me in that way and didn't feel like I needed the government's approval either. I also really didn't like the sense of property that used to be attached, and in some ways, maybe still is attached to women and marriage. And so I sort of felt like, you know, that's just not something I want. But then I met someone. I met someone named Brandon and we became really close. It was the first really healthy relationship I'd had. When I was in college actually, my mom had gotten sick. She had stage one breast cancer but had gotten better. And then a couple years later, it came back a stage four breast cancer and she had really good results through chemo, but in a moment when she was actually doing a lot better, I was in the car with Brandon, we were on the way to see his family. And I was sitting there and thinking, I want to have a ceremony with you. I want to do something with my mom, before she dies, like if something were to happen. And at the time, we're thinking she had 10-20 years. We thought, you know, she was recovering really well. But I just said, like, I want to do this. I want to recognize our relationship with my mom. And he said, yeah, okay.

Betsy and Brandon didn't really talk about it again for months, maybe up to a year. But in the summer of 2014, Betsy went home to help her mom because she was going through chemo again.

Weiss: And actually the day I got home, she told me that she had just learned from her doctor that they didn't think that chemo was really going to work anymore, and she probably had about six months left in her life. And so in that moment, and as like a week or two went by, I called Brandon and said, I want to do something. I want to like have a ceremony with my mom. And, you know, he needed to think about it. Because what did that mean to him? What did that mean to our relationship? We'd been together for two years, which wasn't actually that long. I actually was 27, which is funny that that's sort of the age I had put in my mind when I was a kid that I wanted to get married. So as we started to think well, okay, this isn't going to be wedding or marriage, what is it going to be?

This is the part of the story where we get to learn about the magic of Betsy's mom, Carol. Despite having cancer, Carol found unique and creative ways to stay connected to joy and she brought those around her with her on that journey.

Weiss: We actually took, or I took lessons from my mom, who every time she had chemotherapy, she would throw a party. So she did this so that she could encourage herself and encourage people she saw in the hospital. She had told me that she would go in and it just seemed so depressing and sad and everyone was down because chemo is hard. And, you know, and a lot of people are facing the end of their life there. But she thought, well, I don't want to be depressed and sad, I want to have fun and enjoy, and have this joy. Her name's Carol and that like singing songs of joy sort of like what she would do with her whole life. So she would have theme parties. She had a twins party because we love the baseball team Twins because we're from Minnesota. We had like a caterpillar theme, she would have a fourth of July theme and she would always make a little candy goodie basket. The caterpillar one I think she had like, made a line of little cupcakes that looked like a caterpillar. And the hospital would start to know like, oh Carol is going to come in today! And everyone would stop by and see these decorations and themes in the little chemo room. And you know, they would laugh and have this kind of party. And people will come in all dressed up for whatever the theme was, and you know, it'd be a really special thing to go to win a Carol's chemo parties. And so I wanted to, you know, to keep that going that my mother was dying but, but instead of mourning together, why don't we celebrate and have this party together of life and love that we've had? So we decided to call this ceremony a celebration of love and family.

The celebration of love and family took about a month to plan. As Betsy and Brandon began telling other people about it, it became clear that not everyone understood where they were going with the idea.

Weiss: Especially my aunts all were like, "Well, but so are you getting married? Or are you engaged? Like, I don't understand." We're like, "No, we're not. We're just going to have a party and we want you to be there. And we're going to talk about how we love each other. And we're going to celebrate our families."

I love this part of the story because we begin to see how the members of Betsy's family, while they didn't necessarily understand the vision for the ceremony, or understand why Betsy and Brandon were not getting married, were still supportive and loving.

Weiss: So we did need to figure out sort of what the day would look like. And we decided that we wanted to have sort of this simple ceremony in a park close to my house called Trefoil Park by the Red River in Fargo. This really beautiful spot that we put a canopy up and my immediate family, my dad and mom and brother and then Brandon's family, his parents and his brother and sister-in-law came and we just told them to prepare some words if they wanted to share about how they love our families. And we were going to share about our love for each other too. We hired a photographer, which is something I'm so grateful for it because now as I look back, and remember my mother, I have these really wonderful pictures from our celebration. You know, Brandon spoke words to me and I spoke to him and there's a lot of tears and laughter and, and one of the things I really remember that I said, that's been with me and helped me stay strong as I know and my mom is gone, like you Brandon will be what helps hold me together. You know, she was like my best friend. We were really, really close. And when she did pass that was really true and, and saying those words and having that moment together, I think did bring us closer in a way I didn't expect. To me, it was when I was planning the party, although it was about Brandon and I's relationship, I was doing it for my mom and to share with her. But in doing the ceremony, and the celebration, I did feel much closer to Brandon. And I think it did kind of solidify our relationship in a way that surprised me. And then after we all spoke and shared words of love with each other, we went to my favorite Mexican restaurant called Mango's and ate with my extended family. So my cousins and aunts and uncles were there. And then we... although you know, it wasn't really anything that felt like we needed to follow tradition, I do really, really love wedding dances and my family loves wedding dances, and we all love to have a good time. So we had bought a hall, a space, and we invited extended friends family to that area. So we had about 60-70 people all come together and we had little, you know, desserts and d'oeuvres. And in the planning phase it was funny that one of my aunts was just like... it was so hard for her not to plan a wedding and so she was like, "Okay, well, we need centerpieces. So I'm going to create these centerpieces and we need a theme." And they kept trying to ask me these questions. And I was... at the time I was trying to help my mother who was really sick and I'm like, "I don't care. I don't want a wedding. Please don't make it like a wedding. But if you want to make a centerpiece..." Like, it actually was really thoughtful at the same time that they were... Although they didn't understand maybe what we were doing, they wanted to be a part of it and and share. And so we had these really lovely, sort of like beachy-themed centerpieces on the tables. That was really fun. And then we danced. My mom was in her wheelchair, so we kind of wheeled her around and she even stood up a little bit with her oxygen tank and had a dance with my dad. And there's these lovely pictures of her dancing with my dad and Brandon and myself. And it was a beautiful night that so many people got to share with us. And then it was actually two weeks later that my mom passed away. And so, I think, you know, she actually also got really excited planning the party just like she had for her chemo parties. And I think it really gave her some of the energy to make it a little bit longer in life. And then when she, after the party, I think she... She shared with us, she just was done. She was done with the chemotherapy that made her feel really terrible. She was tired. And although she wanted to live longer, it was like, you know, I'm okay with letting go. Which was a lot harder for the rest of us, but something beautiful I get to... we got to share and be a part of with her. So that's really that's the story of what the celebration was, how it connected, and sort of the story of losing my mother, you know, it's all wrapped up in and tied in together too.

Thomas: Yeah. Oh, that's... that's such a beautiful story, just so much love and so much acceptance of the situation, all the different parts of the situation all together and allowing everybody to be who they are including the aunts who need to make centerpieces because it's a wedding in their mind and that's what you do.

Weiss: Well, and that was... it was interesting. It wasn't just them too. A lot of people when we talked to them that were older and we'd say something about how we weren't getting married. You know, some of them I think were happy we were doing something but also a bit concerned because a lot of people they were like, "Oh, well, aren't you gonna get married?" and don't understand when we say like, "No, we did. We did what we wanted to do. We had our ceremony like, that was it. That was great. We threw the party." But you know, it also was a moment even when people didn't understand or had a different sense of what relationships should be, they still came together with us and celebrated and had a wonderful time.

Thomas: I love what you shared about it being... it sounded kind of tiered in my head that you had different people at different parts of the ceremony. So you had like, you brought them in where you wanted them.

Weiss: Yeah. So we wanted... and actually Brandon was more concerned and protective of having some intimate moments. I was a little more like "Let's invite everybody!" And he was like, "Well, I don't know if I want that..." Like, he didn't want it to become a wedding. He wanted it to be something different. And I was a little less concerned about... I knew for myself, it wasn't gonna be. Like, well, we weren't getting married. So, you know, that wasn't as much a concern. But for him it was important that people know like, no, this isn't a wedding, it's different. So like he didn't want every... everyone in our lives to come to celebrate us. And I think some of that protected the intimate moment that we got to have as two families coming together to celebrate us, like Brandon and I wanting to be together and also sharing appreciate this wonderful legacy and cornerstone of family that my mother had been. And they're actually... Right after the ceremony and a little bit as we processed, both of us had some moments of regret that we didn't share it with more people, not the ceremony, the moment of celebration, with... The intimate moment in the park, I think we're really glad that was just our immediate family. But knowing afterwards that it would be my mother's last couple weeks, and that the ceremony became even more meaningful than we had initially thought. You know, we did regret a bit that we hadn't just invited everyone. We had friends from Philadelphia saying, "We want to come, we want to come to Fargo!" And I saying like, "No, like, we... it might be too much" or, you know, "No, this isn't our wedding, you don't need to come." But afterwards, we thought, you know, it would have been great to celebrate with them. It was a really meaningful moment, though, you know. We in some ways, didn't know what we were creating. But the one thing that we've talked about is, well, you know, we did it differently before. So if we want to, again, like we can throw another party and just celebrate something different in life. It doesn't have to be the fact that we're like committing to be together in my be you know if we have a baby or we might adopt, and maybe like, we'll have a really big party with family then. And that can be a time when people come together in our lives that are important. And we can have a dance because we love to have dances! And just do it do it differently because who says it has to be just weddings when people get together and celebrate and dance and have time together?

Thomas: Absolutely. That is what the whole show is about that I'm doing so...

Weiss: Great!

Thomas: That's perfect.

Weiss: Well, I'll be listening! And I'll be like yeah! I'm gonna do... I'm gonna steal all the ideas.

Thomas: And I was also curious what rite of passage do you wish you'd had?

Weiss: It's interesting, I think with women there's so much tied up in our sexuality actually. But I think like women there's this sense of like purity, right? And that this is their rite of passage is like, are they still pure? And then, you know, they were this like white gown to show that they've never had any sexual experiences, and then they can finally, with their father's permission, have sex, you know. And so a rite of passage that I wish I'd had was like teaching me healthy sexuality when I was young, instead of... Like, I had a purity ring and I was told that I needed to... I couldn't even like, kiss someone until I was married. Those things really were unhealthy I think. And I just wish that people would have said, "You're a person. A part of who you are is this sexuality. You can experience that. It's nothing to be ashamed of." And that we could have like, celebrated our humanity kind of maybe, you know, in my early teens, not in a hyper-sexualized way, but in something that recognizes like, "It's okay for you to like other women. It's okay for you to feel sexual thoughts. It's okay for you to not." You know, like those things are okay. And I would love if there was some magical rite of passage that we could do for for young men and women to say like, "It's okay for you to become a sexual being." Like that's a good thing.

Thomas: I love that. That is not traditional ritual that I know of. But should be!

Weiss: Yeah, what we had was, you know, a lot of the keep your purity. Here's your purity ring. And, you know, the best women are the virginal, same kind of women.

Thomas: Right. Right. Goodness.

I am so grateful to radio fairy godmother Anne Hoffman for introducing me to Betsy and to Betsy for sharing her story with us. I especially love the clarity that Betsy and Brandon brought to the ceremony, their love for Carol, their respect for the family members who didn't quite get it in the moment, and their commitment to honoring their desire to not get married. Ceremonies can be whatever we want them to be. They are a way to honor ourselves, our relationships and our growth. We can use them to mark transition, release old ties, start off on new paths, and affirm our commitments. Family and society will expect us to do predictable things, but we can surprise them if we want to!

Betsy Weiss carries on her mother's audacity for life, sharing it as Carol would have wanted her to. You can read how she processes grief and life at the website thethingssheleftme.com.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to share it with a friend. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.

S1 E2 San Francisco as My Witness (Betty Ray)

February 14, 2020

Episode Summary

Betty Ray walked to the top of Bernal Hill at the turn of the millennium. She brought three things with her: a candle, her checkbook, and a ring.

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→ Betty Ray: https://www.bettyray.net/

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Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.

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Full Transcript

Ray: Did that make sense? Should I say it again? Okay, I think that when a ritual is designed well, it is designed to make space for the soul to flourish and to show up.

Betty Ray uses design thinking to help individuals and communities create meaningful rites of passage to navigate transitions. She’s a recent graduate of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, part of Columbia University. She’s currently developing a program called Human Nature Academy to work with adolescent rites of passage. Join me for a conversation with Betty Ray.

This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life Transitions. We are going to tackle two ideas today. The first is to explore the benefits of ritual - what it does and how it can be useful to us. We will reflect on some of the ways our Ancestors used ceremony and look at the benefits ritual can bring us today.

The second thing we will touch on is a certain kind of ceremony you may not have heard about before. As you know, this season on Shame Piñata we are focusing on weddings and commitment ceremonies. There have been an increasing number of people over the past decade who have decided to commit to themselves instead of, in the absence of, or alongside the presence of a partner. It's called self-commitment or self marriage and it’s gaining popularity.

So let's dive in. In our first episode, we talked about the power of ritual to create a container for the strong emotions that come with transition. Getting married, losing a loved one, the birth of a child, the end of a relationship... these are all times when our way forward changes, the future in front of us is totally new, where the sidewalk ends, as poet Shel Silverstein said.

Who we were won't work anymore, we must become someone new: we must become the husband, the mother, the single person... The ceremonies that we turn to at these times help mark the beginning of these transitions, but they can be limited. Weddings, for example, can focus so heavily on joy that they block out any feelings of grief or loss which are a normal and healthy part of any transition. And funerals can feel stilted and solemn, laying expectations that grief is only appropriately expressed in tears, when in fact healthy grief shows up in a wide variety of ways.

We can work with the traditional rituals as we have inherited them, making them deeper, richer, and more personalized for our own needs. We are 100% capable of this, because ritual is an inherent part of being human. Here's Betty Ray.

Ray: So I feel like ritual is one of those things that has been in human experience since we were... since we were putting pigment on cave walls. I mean, ritual has been part of the way that humans have oriented ourselves. I mean, I think the earliest rituals were really a response to a chaotic world, and to uncertainty and unpredictability. And rituals gave people a sense of regularity and structure and they served to bind the community together, that we would all come together at the harvest, or we would come together to sow the seeds in the crops or the hunt or... you know, as young people came of age. There was a way for communities to reaffirm their strengths and their bonds and it was a way to sort of stay connected to the larger world in a way that felt safe. Because, you know, obviously when you don't know why the sun is you know, when the moon goes in front of the sun and, like, it's going dark, and you don't know why that's happening, that's pretty scary! So, you know, having stories and narratives and mythologies and rituals to kind of keep communities bonded together was a way to keep them safe and obviously propagate. Rituals have been going on forever. So we have, you know, there's been a lot of study about rituals and research about the role of them and you know... And that one thing that I think is so interesting is that we know from all the research that rituals have been, like, literally from every country, in every culture, and every society since the beginning. Like we just do it, it's human, it's in our DNA. I don't know if it's in our DNA, that's not a scientific quote, but I mean, they are really powerful and people do them and, and why? Why is that? Why do people do that? I mean, that's, you know, that's exactly your question. But I think it's, I do think it's about helping us feel safe and connected with one another. Rituals offer people a structure amid chaos. And whether that’s back in the day when we didn’t know if a mountain lion was going to come over the hill, or today when all of our systems are falling apart, you know, that when we have a sense of familiar... The mark of a ritual is that it is rigid, it’s familiar. You do the thing as it’s always been done and you do it with an intention to devote yourself to that practice so that devotional angle... that devotional element of, like, I am surrendering myself to do this thing that is bigger than me - is healthy for people, to have a sense of right relationship with things that are larger than us. I think that when we have a ritual that is designed to help us grieve something, or help us celebrate life, or help us with more life transitions - and this gets us a little bit into rights of passage - but those rituals are really... there’s an element of them in which ego death is facilitated. We are no longer in control. It is not our thing we’re pushing through, it is a larger thing. That, you know, when you’re going to a ritual space, you are suddenly in a place that is less driven by, you know, sort of cognitive, intellectualized approach and it becomes more of a soul practice. And I am really interested in the soul practice because I think the soul the healthy element of rituals to my mind as a nurtures the soul. And we are desperate in our 21st-century hyper-mediated, hyper technology-focused, environmental crisis place, we need this more than anything in my view.

Thomas: You gave me chills.

Ray: Good! I really think... I mean it’s so important, it is so important because the soul is smart. You know, the soul can really help us, the soul has a way for us to.... the soul knows a lot and it’s very wise. But Parker Palmer said once that was that the soul is like a wild animal. It isn’t something that you can be like, “Hey, soul, come on and party with us!” or like you know, “Come on, I’m going to make you come out!” It’s a wild animal and it’s fragile... Cultivating a place for the soul is an art and it needs certain kinds of tending. It needs to be welcomed and know it’s going to be okay and be able to express its wildness which means it’s not always going to be pretty. We live our day-to-day with so little awareness of the soul. We are so much about like get in the car and go to work, and I’ve got to figure out all the things I have to go to my day and I’ve got to write this and I’m going to talk to these people and we’re just in our heads and in our doing mode. And rituals provide a space for us to be in a more creative, deeper, messier-in-a-sense soul world where the soul is able to come out and be curious be aware. And we can listen to our souls with more clarity we can hear it more clearly because the ritual provides a buffer or a boundary between the sort of the crazy-of-every-day and increasing crazy-of-every-day. Rituals give us a quiet, centering practice that we can rely on to be nurturing to that soul part of ourselves.

Self-commitment can be defined in many ways. At its heart, it means committing to ourselves first, being our own chosen one. It's mainly a women's thing right now, but I'm hoping that will change. Women commit to themselves in many situations: after a breakup, if they are tired of putting their energy into looking for someone when they are about to get married. Ceremonies can be as simple as putting on a ring at a self-marriage workshop or as elaborate as planning a full wedding. Betty took the opportunity to design a self-commitment ceremony for herself about 20 years ago. As this episode will be airing on Valentine's Day, we thought this was a wonderful time to share her story.

Ray: Oh my gosh. Well, I wasn't planning on having a self-commitment ceremony actually. It was the end of the millennia. It was December 1999. And I had been involved with this conversation with this guy who I had had this like massive crush on for a long time. And I was really, like, we were supposed to go down to Mexico to a Mayan pyramid. We were gonna hang out down there and I was gonna conceive a baby. This is really embarrassing. And that was my grand plan. And anyway, he like at the last minute was like, "No, I don't want to do that,” but he didn't really tell me and I was embarrassed and I was like, and mostly I was just like, heartbroken and embarrassed and I felt really stupid. And so on New Year's Eve 1999, I had bought this ring that had the drama faces on it, you know, tragedy and the comedy. And I had this idea to go up to the top of Bernal Hill with my ring... and I brought my checkbook and a candle. And I, I kind of had an idea that I was just gonna... so I got up there I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all this stuff, but I knew I wanted the ring because I was... and that was part of the design. So I got up to the top of Bernal Hill and I wrote myself a check to myself and I wrote a check to him. And I lit the candle and I burned the check to him, and "I'm not going to spend any more time on you, dude." And the check to myself, I fold it and I put it like near my heart... I guess I was wearing... I put it in my bra, frankly. And then I took the ring and I made a statement. I made a statement as San Francisco was my witness as I was up on the top of Bernal Hill and it's kind of this cloudy, foggy you know gross San Francisco winter day. Kind of at the at the winding down of this millennia, you know, and so I had this sort of weight, this gravitas of the sense of this millennia is ending and I'm committing to myself for the new millennia to not get into drama with men anymore. And this was not the first time, this is clearly a little bit of a pattern. I don't know if that's clear, but it was totally a little bit of a pattern. So I took the ring and I put it on my left finger. And I said that I will now... I now am committed to myself and I'm marrying my own drama so that I don't need to marry it externally. I don't need to bring my drama... I don't need to create it externally and I certainly don't want to be engaged in a relationship with it anymore. I don't want to do that. That's done, adios. And so I, I finished and I blew out the candle and I went back home and I went out and I had an incredible New Year's Eve. And I was just like, I was in such gratitude like, let that guy go! And I just, you know, I could feel dancing... I was dancing and I just, you know, I danced him out... and you know, it was a way for me to reclaim my power. It was a way for me to reclaim my sense of agency about myself and to not be so, you know, not to outsource my sense of self and my sense of purpose and strength. And so it was a really, really important thing to do. And I'm so glad I did it! And I wore that ring forever, just about until I got married. Now I have a different one. Yeah, but anyway, so that was yeah, that was my self-commitment. So it wasn't really a conscious decision. It was more of a, like, I gotta heal, I feel stupid, and I'm humiliated, and I'm embarrassed and I need to take care of myself because I did something really dumb.

Thomas: I love that.

Ray: Yeah. It was fun. It was powerful.

Thomas: Wow. Wow, I love you're like, I took my checkbook. Like oooh, what's gonna happen with the checkbook? This is really interesting.

Ray: Well, it was, you know, it was a symbol of you know, back in the day, right, people had checkbooks we probably don't have that anymore. Do you have a checkbook? I don't even have a checkbook. Anyway. Well, you know we had... that it was a way for me to... it was a metaphor for my money, which is power. Like it's my... it was a metaphor for my, my life force, which I was... I just... I had really stupidly given up and just embarrassingly so because, I mean, I'm sure he was like, "Who is this crazy stalker woman that wants to go to a Mayan pyramid with me and have my baby?" I don't know. It's kind of funny, but I don't know if it's like the long term, like realistic most realistic, you know sane thing to do.

Thomas: What exposure had you had to the idea of self-commitment before your own ceremony?

Ray: I don't think I had any exposure to it. I would... Again, I had come to ritual through my mom and my mother and her use of ritual and I knew that having rituals could catalyze change. And I had done several other rituals over the course, since my rite-of-passage-one that were sort of self-related, but they weren't self-commitment - that was different. So I don't know. I mean, maybe it's... I think, I honestly think these ideas float around the ether, and that we pull them down when we need them.

Thomas: What are the benefits that you feel the ceremony brought to you short term and long term?

Ray: Well, the short term ones were that I just had the best New Year's Eve ever, you know. The long term benefits were that I had a catalyst to... an experience that helped me catalyze a change in my attitude towards myself and my relationships. That it was an intentional taking back of my power and releasing him so that I could be more, you know, healthy and you know, all the stuff that you want to be when you're not obsessed with someone. You know, I think the long term effects were very real and that I feel like when, you know, I would get kind of like, "Oh, I wonder what it's doing," or, you know, I would just take it back and be like, "Dude, you just had this thing. You wrote that check. You can't... you know, that thing's burned! He doesn't have that check anymore, you've got the check, and that's not going to him!” So there was a way in which the just the gestures and the actions... the ring, I would look down at it and I would see it, you know, and I would maybe, you know, another several years later, you know, there was kind of a beginning of another relationship and I could feel the drama alert. "Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no! Look at that ring, look at what you got on! No, no, no, run away!" Like it is not... So I think that part of it was the act but also the gestures, the ring, the checkbook, that that really concretized it for me so that, it helped... it was a tool that I would rely on as I kind of navigated through my, you know, some of these more treacherous waters which weren't as treacherous by that point. So the waters became less treacherous too because I was more like... my identity was less about, "Oh, you need this kind of man or, that kind of person, you need to be in a relationship." I was single, I was happily so. It was really... it helped support that single exploration for me. Very, very, very helpful.

Thomas: How does being married or committed to yourself mix with being married or committed to somebody else?

Ray: That's a great question. Being married and committed to myself makes me a way better committed partner in reality because being committed to myself, in the way in which I'm committed to myself, means I'm more authentically myself and I'm not... I don't hand over core parts of myself for my need for approval, or my need for someone to tell me what to do, or my need to be in control, whatever those needs are, like I'm a much more whole partner as a result. So I can bring elements of myself my sucky or more annoying sides as well as my, you know, loving and compassionate sides in with more authenticity and more integrity. So it actually made me a much better partner. Yeah, I see no conflict there at all. It makes you a better person. When you're committed to yourself, you're much better. You have much more reserves to give, you can give a lot more, you have much more resources to give. And that makes you a better partner. I actually had a version 2.0 of that ceremony. When I met him, the man, I met him for coffee a couple years ago. And after he... and he's a writer, and he's got you know, he's just a really interesting person and very, you know, all the things that I loved about him I got to see, you know, and it was really fun and I finally had my act together. And after he left, I made a conscious decision to go sit in the chair that he was sitting in and to like, take back the energy that I had given him long ago. So I did a deeper dive. So I think we can so I guess what I'm saying is that we can always revisit our older commitments ceremonies and our older earlier ceremonies. We can we can ceremony anything. I mean, it's, you don't want to one doesn't want to, but we can if we need to.

Betty's story speaks to the power of ritual to help us gather our full selves back up from the chaos of chasing other people, which sometimes - can happen even when we aren't meaning to do that! There are so many ways we can get lost in the idea of a partner completing us. It’s kind of the water we swim in if you think about it. And when we find someone, it’s easy to inadvertently toss our authentic dreams and goals out of the boat to make room for the daily events that come with being in a relationship. This can be especially true for women given the historical importance of marriage for the women in our lineages. Committing to ourself can be a way to ground back into who we are at our core - our core values, core beliefs, core essence. Those are gems to be nurtured and honored.

Betty Ray is a 2020 Mira Fellow where she is developing a program called Human Nature Academy. Before this, she spent the better part of 10 years working in senior leadership roles at the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Learn more about her work at bettyray.net.

Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please share it with a friend and leave a review on Apple podcasts. That is the very best way you can support this new baby show. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.