Four years ago 🌿❤ about marriage: all I wanted was to find my own way toward love and marriage.

Every thing I tried on, didn't fit. All those culturally imposed ideas about what love and marriage is: how it's supposed to look, how we're thought to act, the tight gendered roles we're taught to play, what we're meant to sacrifice, what we're told to hide... none of it sat right with me.

For years I let that uneasy path send me to a dark and bitter place. I could never see that version of marriage as a future for myself. I wholly (and vehemently) rejected it. I wanted rapture, I wanted union, I wanted partnership, but I really wanted the freedom to find my own voice within a marriage. I had not seen that model within my own life so I had no idea how to achieve it.

Most of us are equipped with dysfunctional relationships. They're put on our path to teach us and to grow us the fuck up. We learn to open ourselves. To work together. To set boundaries. To take care of one another. But mostly: to love ourselves MORE. And giving ourselves what we need when faced with all that we have to be for our partners is really difficult territory to navigate.

After my dad died, I was forced to let my mind untwist. To give a little breathing room to love. In those days I saw that our shared pain and love could recover and heal heartbreak. I took a backseat and let my heart lead the way.

And then, I had a dream of an unstructured marriage. Just a little seed sprout when it started, but it grew inside me for years. It was a dream where we could both be who we needed to be without being bound to expectation.

I saw a simple ceremony in the forests of Oahu. Just a little lei exchange. Two souls, among their aumakua and ancestors, honoring what they've built, committing to what will continue and will fall away. @brandon.of.bjerke
chose his own way of doing things: handmade rings, ceremony at Sandy's, two of us sitting at the ocean, balanced by the setting moon and the rising sun, making simple promises.

So to you: thank you for helping me find love in all areas of my life and for giving me the space over these 15 and a half years to find myself/prioritize myself/love myself😍