Last year I gave myself the ultimate gift of what self love means for me – a ceremony of vows and agreements, a wedding if you will, to celebrate the love I have for me.
Prompted by a wedding I was photographing to witness new love, celebrating my own wedding anniversary of ten years and feeling a bit swirly in my own identity aside from being a wife and mother, I decided to commit to loving myself madly and deeply for the rest of this life by way of similar ceremony.
For me it was a way to honor my true self in the same way I honor those I also have commitments to in my life: namely my husband and my children.
So in November of 2011 I drove up the California coast to Cambria for a solo weekend to create and celebrate my own commitment ceremony to myself
What I discovered with this ceremony, as with any ceremony, is that it became much more than words that were said. Planning out a ceremony of agreements to myself, much in the same way I did with the wedding to my husband, made it very real and powerful.
I feel these sacred commitments to myself deeply and I witness myself able to show up for my life in ways that I struggled with before. I knew afterward that there was no going back to old habits and negative ways of thinking.
The vows I made to myself are ones that I truly honor and ones I will celebrate each year on my anniversary which I plan to celebrate each year on the California coast.
When I shared with my sister circle that I was creating this self love ceremony of agreements, one sent me this David Whyte poem. I read it to the sea at my agreements ceremony and it pretty much sums up self love for me.
All the true vows
All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.
There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.
Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.
Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.
Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen
nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.
Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you
and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,
that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.
I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.
Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years
in my own voice,
before it was too late
to turn my face again.
Wedding Guests
Where my ceremony took place – Moonstone Beach
Me after my ceremony, madly in love