18: Closing Ceremony - closing the loop before beginning again

I’m sharing from inside a deeply intimate season of marriage, repair, disruption, and truth-telling.

After twenty years together and eighteen years married, I recently held a closing ceremony to honor, grieve, and release the first chapter of our marriage... To give it dignity and close the loop before anything new could begin.

EXPLORE

• Why this season of marriage has felt like a spiral, not a straight line
• How social media relationship advice and even individual therapy can miss the full relational picture
• What a closing ceremony is, why it matters, and how it helps close the loop
• The difference between a ritual and a ceremony
• How I created a real-life closing ceremony 
• What I included on the altar and why symbolism matters
• Inspiration from our ceremony to create your own version
• What you may need to honor, grieve, release, or bless before beginning again

This is an episode about discernment, closure, devotion, repair, and the sacred threshold between what was and what may become.

You do not have to burn it down to let it evolve.

You can honor it.
You can thank it.
You can grieve it.
You can close the loop.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

In this episode, I'm bringing another layer of rawness. I'm trying to speak to you from inside the thing. I can't say, here's what happened, here's what I learned, here's what will work, because I'm not there. The season of my marriage has been a spiral. It has not been linear at all. And most of my life has been a spiral anyway. So in some ways, I'm really used to the spiral. I know it really well. And I know that healing, becoming rarely ever happens in a straight line. I know that grief, love, rage, tenderness, and even repair can all be in the room at the same time. The highs have been higher than I could have ever known a relationship could feel, our relationship could feel, and the lows have been lower than I have ever felt in my life. And what I know right now is that our culture is not very good at honoring endings. We are very good at cutting off. We are very good at ghosting, and we are extremely well organized and applaud when someone says, I'm done, and we're super good at saying, I'm done, and then trying to move on before our heart and body has caught up to the mind's quick decisions. We are very good at rebranding pain as freedom. We are very good at making independence look like healing, and that's what I want to talk about before we get into the closing ceremony, because there has to be context of why you would do a closing ceremony, what the purpose would be, how it will benefit you and others. But we got to do some unpacking before that. Something I've realized, especially being in a marriage crisis, is that so much of the relationship advice I see on like social media, because you know, my algorithm now is like 99% relationship advice mixed in with like cool dances and funny jokes. The relationship advice I see is independent-minded and also mostly directed to singles, those who are actively dating, not married, not separated, not in long-term relationships. Single life and married life require different support and advice. What I'm seeing is centered on the individual person being comfortable, being happy, being seen, heard, held all the time. And I believe you should be seen. I believe you should be heard. I believe you should be held, and I believe your body should feel safe in your life and in your relationships. I also think we are missing something really important because we have collectively acknowledged that ultra independence is part of the problem in our society as a whole. We are not built to live as disconnected islands. We are relational beings. We are formed in relationship, wounded in relationship, and so often healed in relationship. And I don't mean that in a romanticized way, I mean it in a very earthly way. Your nervous system is affected by the people around you. Your home affects you. Your marriage affects you. Your children are affected by the health of the family system. The family is an ecosystem, and yes, sometimes the most loving thing is to leave. So I do want to be clear. I am not talking about situations where there is abuse, coercion, danger, manipulation, active addiction without accountability, or no real room for repair. I'm not emphasizing anyone to stay where their body, mind, children, or spirit are being harmed. So therapy has been a huge part of my life. I believe in it. I believe in having spaces where you can be heard, witnessed, supported, and helped to understand yourself. And I also believe using therapy in conjunction with other modalities is essential. And also, I think we need to be really honest that individual therapy can sometimes become a precursor to divorce. Not because one-to-one therapy is bad, but because of the framework. Individual therapy is focused on the person in front of the therapist, their pain, their happiness, their obstacles, their story, their nervous system, their unmet needs, their boundaries, their healing. And again, it can all be very, very good. But if someone is in an individual therapy session talking about their marriage or partnership and their spouse is not there, the therapist is only getting one side of the relationship, one nervous system, one past history, one version, one wound, one memory, one interpretation. And if that person is in a negative cycle with their partner, they may only be describing their spouse through the lens of pain. What he did, what she said, how they failed, how they shut down, how they disappointed them, how they abandoned them, how they hurt them. But they may not be describing what they did or what they didn't do, were that person withheld or pushed or collapsed, controlled, maybe they punished, avoided, they made repair harder. Were they also protecting themselves instead of reaching for truth? Because in a wound, we usually tell the story from the place that hurts. That is human, but it is not the whole story. A marriage is not one person's pain, it is an interplay. It is a living system between two people, and when we only look at one person, we can miss the dance. We can miss the pattern. We can miss how one person's pursuit creates the other person's withdrawal, how one person's silence creates the other person's protest, how one person's fear of disappointing creates distance, how one person's fear of abandonment creates pressure, how two people can be hurting each other while both are trying to protect themselves. And this is where I think we have to be very discerning, because sometimes a therapist, in an effort to validate the client, may label the spouse narcissist, avoidant, emotionally unavailable, toxic, manipulative, immature, unsafe. And sometimes those words may be accurate, and sometimes a label can help someone finally name a pattern that has been harming them. So I'm not dismissing that at all, but sometimes a label becomes a box. And once your spouse or partner is in that box, you stop seeing nuance. You stop seeing growth. You stop seeing their humanity. You stop seeing the younger part of them. You stop seeing the places where they are trying even imperfectly. You stop seeing the possibility of repair. And now the person you married is no longer a whole person in your mind. They're a diagnosis, they're a pattern, they're a threat, they're a label. And I think we have to be so careful with this, because labels can give language, but labels can also become walls. And if you are in therapy while your marriage is in crisis, I would gently invite you to ask better questions. Not just why did they do this to me, but what is my part in the cycle? Not just are they capable of loving me, but how do I receive love? How do I reject love or test love or make love prove itself? Not just what boundaries do I need to set, but what repair am I willing to participate in? And not just how do I protect myself from them, but is there a safe and honest way for us to face the pattern together? Because the goal cannot only be individual comfort, not if what you are tending is a marriage or a really long term relationship. The goal has to include truth, it has to include accountability, and the goal has to include the relationship as its own living, breathing thing. And sometimes that means individual therapy. It might also mean couples therapy. And it might also be both. Sometimes that means a therapist who understands systems, family dynamics, attachment, rupture, repair, and the reality that two good people can create a very painful pattern together. And again, if there is abuse, coercion, danger, or no accountability, that is totally different. Safety matters first. But in the relationships where repair may still be possible, be careful who helps you narrate your marriage. Be careful who helps you name your spouse. Use your discernment when every session leaves you more certain that they are the whole problem. Because maybe they are part of the problem, maybe they are even a big part of the problem. But if you are married, there is also a dynamic. There is a field, there is a cycle, there is a dance. And if the marriage is going to become something new, the cycle has to be seen, not just the other person. So again, this is where discernment matters. Not everything that validates you is leading you towards truth. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is leading you back to yourself. And sometimes it may be helping you build a cleaner case against the other person. So what I'm learning is this, you have to siphon through the noise. And now we'll get into the closing ceremony. A closing ceremony is not a bypass. It does not replace accountability or therapy. It does not replace repair or an apology. It does not replace boundaries, and it doesn't replace emotional, physical, legal, or financial safety. It is here to give the soul a threshold. That is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the many relationships where there is pain, rupture, avoidance, confusion, betrayal, distance, resentment, disconnection, and still there may be room for truth. There may be room for repair. There may be room for a different kind of conversation than the one you've been having in your own head. Because sometimes we think there is no room for anything different than the story we told in our head because we've made up the entire outline framework alone, in our own mind. We have built the case, we have defended ourselves, we have explained their motives, we have decided what they meant. We have decided what they are capable of, we have decided what is over, and we may not have actually faced them heart to heart, body to body, truth to truth. And this is where relationship advice online can become very thin, because a lot of advice is not speaking to the complexity of a long term relationship. It is not speaking to a marriage where there are children involved. It is not speaking to shared meals, shared restaurants, shared adventures, shared friends, family, shared holidays, shared grief, beds and shared walls. It's not speaking to what happens when you look around your home and realize there are memories steeped into everything, not just the pictures of the artwork, not just the crafts your children made or the furniture you bought together, but the intention of the home, the conversations you had in that home, the future you imagine there. And then suddenly one of you may be in a whole new place without those reminders, and one of you may still be in the home you created together, knowing what it all meant. That's where I am. I am in my home, knowing what it all meant, the meals, the memories, the purchases, the investments, the little things, the sacred things, and the ordinary things that become sacred when they are threatened. And what I am learning so far, and I say so far because this is far from over, is that you have to use your discernment, you have to siphon through the noise, you have to be careful about advice that only protects your individual comfort, but does not ask you to become more whole, because peace is possible inside disruption. It is effortful, it is not passive, it's not cute, and it's not aesthetic. It is one of nature's challenges, and we are a challenge seeking culture, let me tell you. We do tough mutters, run marathons, climb mountains, bungee jump, skydive. We want to feel alive. And then in our emotional lives, we often avoid the challenge that is right in front of us, the challenge of telling the truth, the challenge of staying present, the challenge of feeling grief without making it someone else's fault, the challenge of repair, the challenge of being loved when you feel unlovable, the challenge of trusting someone else with your heart, the challenge of admitting I don't know how to do this, but I want to learn. And when we don't meet that challenge consciously, we often chase relief in other ways. Anxiety highs, escaping, shopping, cutting, retreats in so-called healing groups, drugs, alcohol, affairs, dramatic exits, dangerous choices, anything that gives us a temporary release from the pressure inside. And I know that in my own body. I've shared with you before that I used to pull out my eyelashes. That was my body trying to release something I didn't yet know how to name, a temporary relief, a way out. But then reality comes back, and with it comes shame, embarrassment, guilt, and more pain. So I'm interested in the deeper work, not the performance of healing, the actual fucking work. And there is very little truth telling about how much effort a long-term relationship or marriage can take. We all know the cultural story that many marriages do not make it, that many people are marrying later or not marrying at all, and many couples are not having children or are deeply questioning what family even means and if it provides value anymore. And I don't want to reduce all of that to one clean statistic because it is more nuanced than that, but I do think there is something happening collectively to our humanity, especially here in the US. There is a loss of faith in long term devotion, there is a loss of faith in stain, there is a loss of faith in the idea that love can mature through rupture, not just exist when everything feels good. And I understand why. Because stain has been misused. Marriage has been misused. Duty has been misused. Women especially have been asked to stay in dynamics that harmed them, silenced them, exhausted them, and called it love. So again, this is not about staying at all costs. This is about telling the truth before you abandon the whole thing. This is about asking, is there actually no repair here? Or have I never been taught what repair could look like? For some couples, marriage may not feel like this. Some couples know they are on the same team. They don't avoid hard conversations, they don't avoid feelings. They know they are here to work with each other, not against each other. And for others, relationship is the curriculum. This is our school. Marriage is the mirror. Partnership becomes the place where the spiritual growth actually happens. Can I trust someone else? Can I let myself be loved? Can I be forgiven? Can I forgive? Can I speak what is true without attacking? Can I hear what is true without collapsing? Can I stay in the room? Can I become more honest, not just more protected? So recently, on our eighteenth wedding anniversary and twenty years of being together, I held a closing ceremony for the first twenty years of our relationship. The intention of the ceremony was to honor, respect, name, and grieve, and release the last twenty years of us, not to erase it or pretend it didn't matter, and not to burn it down, but to actually give it dignity, to say this existed, this mattered, this shaped us. This gave us our children. This gave us too many memories to name. This gave us pain. It gave us beauty. This gave us lots of lessons, and it brought us here. And now something has to close. Because if something is not consciously closed, the mind will keep looping back, trying to finish it. The body will keep asking, are we still there? The heart will keep asking, what did that mean? The nervous system will keep looking to return to old, familiar patterns and for a conclusion. And in marriage, I think we often try to begin again without closing the version that came before. Couples renew their vows all the time. They recommit, they go on a trip, they have a good weekend, they have amazing sex, they have a beautiful conversation, they say, okay, we're starting fresh, but there may be a gaping wound that has not been tended. There may still be grief that has not been named. There may still be a past version of the marriage trying to survive inside the new one. And this is why a closing ceremony can be so powerful before you are in a refresh or restart of your current relationship. A closing ceremony honors the past, it respects it, it names it for what it was, it grieves what could not become, and it releases what cannot come forward. And then starting anew can actually be fresh. There is a death, not necessarily a death of the relationship, but a death of the version that brought you here. And death is sacred. It is the other spectrum of birth. And so if you are coming to a place in life where there is a sense of newness in your own walk in life, that is a symbol of rebirth. And so there has to be an acknowledgement of the death that is not coming forward and what brought you here to the now. Death deserves witness, it deserves words. Beauty, a candle, and death deserves soup afterward, because that's what we had after our closing ceremony was a delicious bowl of soup. So let me back up and I want to name the difference at about ceremony versus ritual. A ritual is usually a repeated practice, like lighting a candle every morning after you wake up, making tea before journaling, saying a prayer before bed, touching the doorway before you enter a room, putting your hand on your womb before you speak. A ritual anchors you through repetition? A ceremony is different. A ceremony marks a threshold. It says we were there and now we are here. Something is changing. Something is ending, something is beginning. Something needs to be witnessed and named. A ceremony gives form to the invisible, and a closing ceremony gives form to an ending that the body and mind may otherwise keep circling around. There is no one way to do it, you really can't mess it up. The power is in your intention, the honesty, the beauty, the presence, and the willingness to tell the truth. And this is so important. No one else has to participate for it to matter. Your partner does not have to agree. Your ex does not have to show up, your family does not have to understand. You do not need permission to mark a threshold in your own life. A ceremony can be shared, yes, and when it is shared with someone willing, that can be deeply healing, and it can also be private. It can be between you and God and goddess, you and your body, you and the land, you and the version of yourself you are finally ready to release. For our ceremony, I created an altar, and I want to talk about what an altar is because I think when you're doing spiritual and emotional work, there needs to be an anchoring point. An altar is a visual anchor. It is a place where the invisible becomes visible. Because when you're in emotional and spiritual work, the mind can wander, the heart can be pulled in different directions, the nervous system can get overwhelmed, and so an altar gives the work a place to land. It represents past, present, and future. What happened, what is happening, and what you are calling in. And when we are trying to become someone new or become a new version of a marriage, or even become a new version of ourselves after something has ended, we often need symbols because the new thing may not be familiar yet. It may not even have a name. It may not be modeled in our family, it may not be habitual in our body. It may not be reflected by the people around us. So we need symbols like colors, words, candles, pictures, objects, flowers, stones, crystals, anything that you want to bring meaning to what you are doing. Something that the body can see and say, This is where we are going. And for our altar, the colors were red and white, red for romance, deep love, commitment, and devotion. White for purity, freshness, and a new beginning. I also put pictures of us through the years dating, early marriage, our life with children, only one picture of the four of us because this ceremony was really about our marriage, our relationship, but of course our children are part of the sacred fruit of our marriage. And we also have a frame TV where I uploaded pictures to have on there too, because even in the messy, painful, disrupted season, we have had beautiful moments. We have had highs, we have had moments that I am so grateful we captured, and I think that matters because when you are in crisis, it is easy to make the whole story dark. But the whole story is rarely one thing. There has been pain and there has been beauty, there has been rupture, there has been tenderness, there has been confusion, and there has been love. So the pictures really mattered to me. And I also included two little vases, two red roses in one vase, two white roses in another vase, and a candle by each. We began the ceremony by lighting the candle on the red side, the side representing the romance, the marriage, the first twenty years. And then later, about three quarters of the way through, that candle was blown out. We acknowledged the closing of that version of us. Then we lit the candle by the white roses, symbolizing a fresh start, a new us, however us unfolds. And I also placed our wedding rings on the altar too, and I walked our property and picked up four stones representing the four of us. Me, him, our son, our daughter, the family. And then lastly, I sprinkled rose petals all around the altar. It was simple, it was beautiful, it was deeply meaningful. And I will be posting on Instagram a reel inside my stories if you'd like to check out what I created to give you inspiration for when you're called to close out an old version and welcome something new into your life. And before the ceremony, I had created prompts for both of us to answer independently. And I asked him to write everything out, not just think about it, write it, get it out. Because writing does something different. Writing slows the mind down, writing takes the looping thoughts and gives them somewhere to go. Writing lets you see what you are actually saying to yourself. It gives you shape to the story. And sometimes before you are ready to face another person, you have to face the page. You have to tell the truth somewhere. And that does not mean the page replaces the conversation. And it does not mean writing something makes it automatically true. Sometimes what comes out on the page is the wound speaking. It's a younger version of the self, the inner child. And sometimes it's fear. Sometimes it's a story that needs to be witnessed before it can soften. So I really love writing as a practice, and I also hold it carefully. It can help organize what is inside of you. It can help release pressure. It can help see your own patterns. But for deep relational repair, eventually, if it is safe and appropriate, the truth has to leave the page and enter the relationship. So the prompts were organized around three movements: honor, grief, release, honoring the past, grieving what was lost, what hurt, what did not become, and releasing what could not come forward into whatever comes next. And here I'm going to give you a bunch of prompts to consider if you're on your way to creating your own closing ceremony. So here we go. What do I want to honor about this chapter? What did this relationship, season, home, or version of myself give me? What memories do I want to bless, even if the ending is painful? What am I grieving? What did I hope would happen that did not happen? What did I need then that I know now how to name? What am I no longer willing to carry? What story am I ready to release? What version of myself is complete? What do I want to bring forward? What do I want to leave behind? What blessing can I offer to the past, even if I am still hurting? And I want to emphasize you can do this alone. You do not need your partner or your ex or anyone else to be with you or even agree with you in this. I was extremely fortunate and eternally grateful that he was willing to do this with me. But I was going to do it either way, because I needed closure for myself. I needed to close a loop inside of me. I needed to honor what was and prepare my own body and heart for whatever was next in our relationship, in our marriage, in our family, in my life. And after the ceremony, there was a real sense of release and exhaustion. Not bad exhaustion, but that deep emotional tiredness that comes after telling the truth. So we had soup. And I really mean this. After spiritual work and emotional work, it is so important to eat something warm and nourishing, not a cold salad, not dry food, not something that the body has to work hard to digest, something warm. Soup, stew, lentils, broth, something that feels like it is entering the cells. I made vegetarian soup for us, and it felt like medicine, warm in the body, warm in the heart, exactly what was needed after an intense ceremony. And while we were still sitting there eating, we continued to share, not in a forced way, just in that softened, open way that can happen after something sacred has been named. And he said something that was so meaningful to me. He named that we did this on our anniversary, and that that date had been hard for him too. That thinking about our anniversary coming up in the middle of our dysfunction, our disruption, our unknown, that it had been something he was worrying about too. That felt so meaningful to me to hear. And somehow it worked out this way, because you know, this is how the universe works, this is how energy works. The stage opened. The day was open, our children were cared for, we weren't rushed, we had space, we could seep into the work we had just done together, and I keep thinking about that, how sometimes we are waiting for life to tell us what something means. But sometimes we have to create the meaning. We have to mark the moment. We have to say that mattered. That version is complete. We have to say thank you. I release you, and we have to say, I do not yet know what comes next, but I know I cannot drag the unconscious past into it, and this is where I want to leave you. Not with a perfect answer here. No formula, no five steps to save your marriage or five signs you should leave, but with an invitation of four questions to consider. Where in your life is something complete but not yet fully closed? Where are you trying to begin again while still carrying the old version? Where is your mind looping because your body has not been given a threshold to step over and into? Where do you need to honor, grieve, and release? And feel free to replay those questions because these four questions are great anytime in your life. It can be on such a spectrum outside of an intimate relationship. It can be in so many different aspects of your life. So maybe it is in a relationship. Maybe it's a home. Maybe it's a version of motherhood that you've been carrying. Maybe it's a friendship. Maybe it's a career. Maybe it's a version of yourself who survived, but cannot lead the next chapter. You do not have to burn it down to let it end. You can honor it, you can think it, you can grieve it. You can close the loop. And then when you begin again, you are not beginning from denial or avoidance. You are beginning from truth. And truth is a much sturdier threshold to step forward through.