“Love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings—all in the same relationship.”
-Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Dear reader,
Last Saturday, Joe and I married.
The most loving friends wrapped my granny’s rosary around my bouquet, which was assembled by my dad’s childhood friend. I wore my grandpa’s flannel to get ready - the one I chose from his closet, alongside my cousins, when he passed. We displayed the cross stitch my grandma made for us on an entry table. As I heard Nathan and Molly (two of my favorite humans on the planet) start playing the processional music, my bones dissolved. I nearly passed out.
People warned us that the day would happen so fast, but neither of us fully understood what that meant.
We didn’t understand that during the ceremony we so intentionally planned, we would completely disassociate so as not to break down into unseemly sobs. That we wouldn’t exactly access the feeling of joy, because adrenaline would snuff all else. That Sunday night, when we finally arrived home together, we would not laugh, but cry. Even positive stress is stress. To be in the same room as so many people we love, from all over the states? Tío Aaron singing La Bamba? All angles of our lives, colliding? It was blessed overwhelm. When my body at last came down from the adrenaline of it all, I couldn’t stop trembling.
Here is the portrait we need as husband and wife.
Not me dressed in a ballgown and him in a suit. Not me wearing more makeup than I did as the Cheshire Cat in my middle school production of Alice in Wonderland. But here. Tucked under a weighted blanket, eyes swollen, salt water oceaning out of our lids. Alone together. Feeling not what we should, but what we do.
People keep calling me Mrs. Hinojosa and it’s an identity crisis every time.
This new beginning is also an ending. Alongside the joy is also grief. “We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another.”
Saying goodbye to our long-distance families and friends heartwrecked us. We’re still zombie-like, reassembling the shambles, dreaming hopelessly of all our loved ones living on our street.
In Yoga Nidra, there is a practice of welcoming opposites.
In this practice, one can mentally rotate between emotional or physical experiences. Gratitude and sadness. Energy and depletion. Abundance and loss. Because we do not feel just one, but both, and all. Moving back and forth between these sensations, they might just start integrating. When they are no longer binaries at war within us, they bind together.
Today, Joe and I plan to create a ritual for ourselves with no audience, no cameras, and no anticipation.
How are you, reader? Is there anything you’ve been feeling lately that you think you shouldn’t be? I hope you feel it anyway.
With love,
A
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We’re All Rebels Here: Habitable Spaces’ Art & Agricultural Project in Kingsbury
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Delighted for you! What a lovely post!
Oh Anna, what a time in life! My husband (still in awe over that word in relation to me) and I had a very similar experience. The comedown, the return, the 'after'. Thinking of you as you pass through this portal. A beautiful piece to honor it 💙