We can create new rituals. 

🔉 Listen: My Self Marriage Story

When my partner and I decided to get married, I realize that I needed to make an official commitment to myself first. This served two purposes: to make my relationship with self primary (to keep me balanced) and to use that balance to show up fully as part of “us”.

At that time, my spiritual practice was a daily chakra meditation. To take the first steps toward the self-commitment ceremony, I began working with eight strong, powerful women, each of whom acted as a chakra guide for me. For example, my 1st chakra guide (embodiment, survival) helped me map my finances and celebrate being alive. My heart chakra guide helped me create a video journal of my fear-based thoughts as they arose. My 8th chakra guide (astral body) helped me work with my dreams.

After six months of working with these women, we gathered in circle together to say goodbye to some old, outworn beliefs I held about marriage. They supported me in taking my vows to myself, blessed my ring, witnessed my transformation and celebrated with me.

We can reinvent traditional rituals.

🔉 Listen: The Techno Comic Wedding

Inspired by Reverend Matthew Fox and The Cosmic Mass team, my partner and I created the very first Techno Cosmic Wedding. It was held at the historic community center in our town and attended by a wonderful group of friends and family.

The Techno Cosmic Wedding followed the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality:

Via Positiva - joy, awe, and wonder
Via Negativa - grief, darkness, and letting go
Via Creativa - celebrating the creation of the universe
Via Transformativa – vows, rings, commitment

Read about the dancing and the crying in this Washington Post article by the wonderful Tria Chang.

Ritual can help us get unstuck.

🔉 Listen: The Shame Piñata Story

Sometimes we need to move on but we resist. Because safety. Because comfort. Because habit.

After 14 years at a job I had outgrown, I felt stuck and unable to move forward. What’s more, I felt a deep sense of shame that I hadn’t listened to my own internal call to change things up and had instead become sad and depressed. I felt shame that I wasn’t showing up for my community like I wanted to be. Shame that I had let myself down. Shame that I couldn’t seem to find the right next work environment.

I was lucky enough to come upon a tool called shame exposure, the idea that sharing our shame in a safe space helps to reduce its power.

So for my birthday, I created a shame exposure/visioning ritual.

In preparation for the ritual, I journaled on several pieces of work-related clothing with a ball point pen, one issue of shame per garment. I wrote out all of my feelings, all of my heartbreak, all of my loss, everything I felt horrible about. I also pasted the most potent words from my toxic self talk on a piñata.

During the ceremony, I read aloud what I had written on each item before putting it on. Soon I was weighted down by the many heavy feelings. It felt awful. I walked over to the piñata, but I had zero motivation to liberate myself. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me.

Instead, I waited. Holding the broomstick, I just stood still and waited. Then, softly, I began to hear a voice inside me saying, “No!” It grew louder and louder, moving from my feet up my body and, finally, into my arms.

When the piñata lay in shreds, each of my friends smashed their own piñata, liberating themself from their own current bit of shame. Then we danced to a personalized version of Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off.

With the muck out of the way, we visioned my perfect next work environment - and we had such wonderful ideas! At that time, I had been looking for a new job for a year with no luck. The first month after the ritual I was offered two positions I actually had difficulty choosing between.

This ritual would not have worked if it hadn't been the right time for me to expose the shame. I had to be ready. I was ready, and the ceremony helped me shift my life.

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Paige Bradley’s amazing sculpture “Expansion” was the focal-point for this ritual. Read the fascinating and inspiring story of how the sculpture came into being.