Aug 15, 2009

Why let convention define your life?


Just like a snowflake, you are one-of-a-kind. You are the only one to intimately know your life, to know what is or isn’t important to you on your journey.

Convention in the West says that outside of faith communities, the only parts of life important enough to mark ceremonially are weddings and funerals. But really, why let convention define your life?

I recently co-created a ceremony for a woman who had spent many years thoroughly working through quite painful family of origin issues. In so doing, she had to sort out what did and didn’t happen for her as a child and young adult, heal the wounds that she carried, accept gifts she was given, learn what she did and did not need from then in her life now, grow into new distinctions and abilities.

This journey is one that we all must take on in order to become mature adults, no matter what our childhoods looked like.

For this woman, as she neared the end of this process, she said she could really feel like a major chapter of her life was coming to a close. For her, this degree of completion, this sense of major accomplishment and change required her to mark her arrival in the land of individuated adulthood in ceremony.

I worked with this client to prepare for a ceremony that included a variety of ritual activities designed to mark what we came to realize was an adult baptism and to enable her loved ones to support and nourish her at this time in her life.

Once through the ceremony, she said she could feel a really shift, as if the loose ends had all gotten tied up on that day and that she really felt like a different person. In fact, an acquaintance of hers even remarked to me that he wasn’t sure it was really her because she seemed so different!

So I encourage you to think outside the box and be the creator of your life, with you determining what counts as important in your experiences. Your inner life and what happens in it are at least as important as any outwardly-realized goal. It can be life-changing to give those inner experiences an expression out here in the physical world, honouring them and yourself in ceremony.

From my client:
“It means so much to me that you have created this ceremony for me and have shown such grace and skill in the process. You are truly a creator of beauty in the world.”
 
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