Redwood epiphanies + spontaneous healing
Self Made officiates a wedding 💍
Announcements:
I’M TWO DAYS LATE with my Tuesday essay. Thank you in advance for your forgiveness. Rest was all I could muster these past coupla days <3 Friday’s post will land on Saturday.
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It rained the whole wedding.
After a(nother) year of statewide drought emergency and incessant burning, it felt like a cosmic joke that the forecast was all suns on the days leading up to and after the wedding date, with just one angry looking raincloud smack dab in the center. And rain it did indeed—light showers that quickly turned into a full downpour started right as the guests arrived—gorgeous, cold, saturating rain, the greatest blessing of all, however inconvenient.
I couldn’t help myself; that Alanis Morrissette song kept looping through my head (you know the one). I waited until the last possible moment to put on my outfit. I practiced reading through the ceremony at least a dozen times. I handed out hastily-bought umbrellas, and ran around conveying messages from the bride, and went on an errand for the couple in town, and made sure the right person had the rings in her pocket for when the time came. Oh, and I felt very wise and responsible when the friend performing the reading had forgotten to print the poem and I pulled a crisp copy from my Official Binder, because apparently I am a capable person who remembers details and can take care of important things.
*
These four years since I quit alcohol have been full of so many gifts. I often talk with the people I work with about how recovery is equal parts practical and mysterious—how the transformation happens both from the actual tangible work we put in, but also from something far more ineffable. I am grateful to still be close to this mystery, four years in. That I can still be surprised by life, that this practice can still presence me to the wonder of being a human, alive on this planet, at precisely this moment (yes, even with all the pain and chaos inherent), with all of my people.
Last weekend’s wonder was of course the wedding, and getting to be the person who said the words that bound my dear friends to each other. The mystery, the thing that I’m still figuring out how to describe in words, was the way this experience rearranged a piece of my inner puzzle. I had multiple out-of-body moments over the weekend, as if I were a fly on the wall watching myself perform my responsibilities with grace and calm. Like, who is that? Like, how does she know what to do? Like, did they make a mistake?
I would have never hung my shingle out as a person who officiates weddings. I would never have announced this as something I wanted to do; indeed it wasn’t something that had ever crossed my mind. But then, my friends asked me. And I stepped forward.
The out-of-body part came from witnessing myself in a moment of becoming. These past four years have been extraordinarily terrible and beautiful, everything I ever asked for. I am down in the dirt humbled by how different my life looks, and even more, how different I feel.
Here’s a thing: by the time I quit drinking, I wasn’t even all that messy. I was doing life fine enough, from anyone’s outside perspective. And, I wasn’t really *in* myself. I didn’t know who I was. I was still a shapeshifter, a bystander, a pernicious people pleaser. I wouldn’t have had the capacity to step forward for someone else, because I could barely stand up for my own life.
I know that I’ve changed so much in the past four years. And, to be entrusted with holding this important moment for two of the people I love most, to be seen as trustworthy, and to be brought close into their love and their intimate circle, well, it was the most incredible validation. This weekend I got to fulfill on a dream that I didn’t know I had: that I might be a person that people trust with their Big Life Moments.
I would not have had this experience, this inner re-wiring, had my friends not recognized something in me that I hadn’t even recognized in myself. The epiphany: what else am I not recognizing? What other limitations might I cast aside?
*
Turns out I didn’t have to wait long for Epiphany #2.
As you know, I’ve been struggling along with a certain Sad Eyed lover throughout this time in Pandemia. He’s handsome! my brain clamors. We have ridiculous chemistry! It’s…A PANDEMIC, and no small thing to have someone’s shoulder to rest my head on a few times per week! And, I’ve known almost since our red-flag laden first date that he was not a good match for me.
And yet.
Do you know what it’s like when you know something on an intellectual level, but then you continue to behave in ways contrary to that knowing? Do you know how damn demoralizing it is to disappoint yourself in this way, over and over, for a very long time?
I have a feeling that if you are into this newsletter, you, uh, might know a thing or two about this.
Last Saturday morning, I drove three and a half hours North. I hung west off the 101 onto Highway 128. The last fifteen miles of this road, before it dumps into Mendocino, is all redwoods. I turned around a corner and was thrust into the grandest cathedral imaginable. I turned off the podcast and lowered the windows. I breathed the air. I felt the frenzied, city girl vibe drop a few degrees. I landed into myself.
Have you been around redwoods? In their presence, and in the presence of a gorgeous love between friends that I’ve witnessed grow and evolve and deepen over these past few years, well, another piece of the puzzle shifted. See, it’s hard to make excuses for one’s bullshit around redwoods. It’s hard to make excuses for one’s bullshit around love. I don’t know how else to say it: I finally got right with myself.
It was not unlike finally quitting drinking: seemingly overnight, but truly after years and years of struggling along, I was finally done. I went from understanding it to believing it—that blood, skin and bone believing. My entire body relaxed. I was free, relief washing over me like rain.
This is the next layer of the SELF MADE onion. So much work to do, still, always! I’ll make the redwoods my teachers. I’ll root down, replenish. I’ll rest a while longer.
From the archives ~ this time last year:
SELF MADE is a newsletter for fellow 🌺late bloomers🌺 with a focus on recovery, creativity and community. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, coach, and recovery advocate in San Francisco, CA.
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"It’s hard to make excuses for one’s bullshit around redwoods." Indeed.