I am writing to you 1 month and 5 days into my marriage… 
So for sure, I still have a lot to learn!
But (as promised in my last love letter), these are my musings on marriage and relationship so far – and the 4 ways I have found most helpful navigating the journey.
The month has been full of adventures:
A mini-moon to Lisbon / work (exploring birth & death) in Stockton / my flagship show The Rainbow Butterfly being performed in Bournemouth / a week creating a new show A Jellyfish Lovesong / powerful coaching calls for my clients on Goddxx Path & Goddxx Glow / plus the opening of my new group coaching programme Embodied Alchemy.
But in amongst that, there have also been blissful domestic moments in my marriage – aligning our lives, sharing food and great conversation, walks in the local forest… and a trip to Ikea – an initiation all of its own!
Yesterday, lying in the sauna, I finished reading ‘Committed’ by Elizabeth Gilbert, and learnt about shocking (and unsurprising) times when the state, religion, and families dictated what marriage should be. But reflecting on my experience of what has worked so far…
I muse that marriage is:
1. Knowing what our beliefs and illusions are…
2: Choice…
3: Staying in no sense no matter what society tells us it should be and making up how WE would love it
4: Sovereignty and whole-heartedness for those involved…
And here is why:
1: Know your beliefs and illusions:
I had believed I wouldn’t marry.
Partly because when my last long-term relationship broke down 7 years ago, I put my heart in a box on a shelf, and decided I was unloveable (as explained on my Enneagram Course).
Partly because I thought probably I was ‘too old & it was too late’.
Partly because that story I was telling myself led to 7 fantastic years of self-discovery and adventure and heart-opening as I explored my own identity and my freedom…
But when Ahmad dropped to one knee and proposed, I dropped into my heart to listen to my answer…
and found that my whole heart said yes – in fact, the whole journey relating with him has been surprisingly full of yeses…
Since the day we said yes to one another, I learnt that marriage is about being a team having each other’s back (much like relating), and holding ourselves whole (much like the premise of creating)…
Holding myself whole has been a daily practice – it’s been an art of spotting where my illusions of what I can or can’t have, or am or am not worthy of are creeping into my thoughts, feelings and behaviours and instead of identifying with them, choosing the higher over the lower…
2: Choice
A friend said,
‘Divorce comes out of a series of arguments and pointing blame, where each argument more hurt and pain than the last causes the couple to eventually decide they cannot come back from the damage caused’…
Whilst we haven’t really argued, I can see how easy it might be to ascend (or descend?) into this, particularly when I know and understand all of the vulnerabilities behind one human heart saying yes to another…
And yet, it feels beautiful that of all the things I have journeyed, experiences I have had, and lives I have lived, it is true to choose this soul to connect my heart to, to shape my future with, and to see and be seen in all our wonderful and unique facets… and every day since saying yes, I have continued to check in and make that choice…
I recognise the tenderness of this relationship and that it takes a level of conscious choice (and maturity) every day to come with love, vulnerability and heart to our space.
3: Be in no sense and make it up
On the 8th of June, we held our Nikah ceremony with a very small party and a very inspiring open-hearted Imam in Ahmad’s family home.
We haven’t married, ‘legally’ yet (we will at some point), so ours is not technically recognised by law, but spiritually and by family / friends (which feels huge and so very true to do it our way!)
Later that evening, we held another ceremony privately (using inner tuition/innocence) which included feet washing and bowing down to our greatness… it was beautiful ❤️
And this feels at the heart of how our marriage continues to unfold – Marriage is what we as a couple make it up to be: we get to decide… and the more we can stay in the innocence and discovery of that, outside of what society/religion/family tells us (but inside of our boundaries and sovereignty), the more beautifully it can unfold itself with easeful abundance and balance.
In an early chapter of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, she said that there is a ‘marriage benefit imbalance’, meaning women generally lose out in the exchange of vows, while men ‘win big’… and this was one of my fears that came out more as the wedding approached.
Looking at marriage throughout time and across the globe, marriage historically has also been an entrapment. There was a time when ‘couverture’ was a legal doctrine of marriage in the UK, meaning the women became ‘covered’ by and ‘merged’ with their husbands: losing their own identity and autonomy (not that they necessarily had much autonomy anyway in those times) and independent existence…
Whilst couverture no longer exists, this validated the reason for my fears of; ‘what if I lose myself to his needs and wants and end up resenting my partner because I didn’t follow my path… or worse still (as an Enneagram number 4)… what if I become mediocre by losing myself!?’
But as I drop into innocence (a part of my daily Journal to JOY practice), I remember and come back home to my sovereign self (over and over again), and the truth that, no matter what society may dictate or have dictated in the past, as two sovereign beings in no sense – we get to make up what and how we navigate our marriage.
4: Sovereignty and whole hearted-ness
When I read that enslaved people in the 1800s were not allowed to legally marry because their oppressors thought that;
‘marriage would cultivate too much emotional freedom, freedom of thinking and secrecy that would result in revolt’
I also began to consider marriage as a revolution of sorts… a micro to the macro of how I want to live my life and show up in the world: of how we can choose to show up/lead in the world:
Vulnerable
Heart-full & light as a feather
Saying yes to life
Even if we don’t know how it will unfold tomorrow, we can choose it today, to be our whole selves, to communicate consensually, and to find the solutions that are of service to all of our greatness.
I choose that, rather than marriage being something we must conform to (or be covered by), it can be something that fills our hearts with love, with expansive possibility and intrigue as we rediscover ourselves and each other every single day…