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?
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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
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.