I'm getting married

Happy Sunday, Soothers. It's true, what the subject line says: I'm engaged! 

I shared this message with my private community, and I thought it might resonate here, too (typos and lowercase typing and all!).

hi friends, i also wanted to share the lovely news that last week AJ and I got engaged! (if you listened to my tarot forecast for the week ahead in the membership i share a fuller story, obviously it involves 8 great blue herons)

Thank you for your kind wishes. no reason why now, other than we felt ready. no surprise pregnancy or anything :) no wedding plans yet... will probably be pretty small, but i can already see how it's easy to let outside influences and the wedding industrial complex spin it out of control! no ring, never wanted one. hope to do the deed in the next 6-12 months!

also i wanted to just address something i've experienced when somebody i resonate with or connect with online announces a big life change - sometimes i feel shame or grief! i might have connected with them because they were somebody who was single, childless, whatever, and when they change their life status that i resonated with, even if i'm happy for them, i can feel a little bit of wistfulness too. things are always changing! sometimes i felt left behind or like i wasn't doing enough too. in case you feel that, just wanted to note that i have felt that, too, and give you a big hug. we're all on our own paths, and also all of our feelings are valid.

and also finally to send encouragement, around whatever is going on in your life. romantic relationships were always really hard for me for like the past, i don't know, feels like forever. 15-18 years, really. it felt like a thing that "clicked" for other people that i just couldn't get, no matter how hard i efforted or scrambled. i had a lot of shame around it, for being single, unmarried, unpartnered, childless. it's not that i have now "won" or "succeeded" in something because i'm getting engaged, more just that i feel at a place of peace, self-worth and self-acceptance in romantic relationships and so this feels like a next right step for us now. it just as easily could have not - i think we'd be happy being partnered but not married forever too - but it was a decision we decided to make for our own reasons.

if dating or connecting (maybe it's friendship or other relationships) have felt hard for you too, just know i see you and so do many others in this community. marriage is weird - i have complicated feelings about engaging in a state-approved patriarchal structure, lol - and also there are just so many ways to be a human in this world. some of us are a-romantic or asexual. some of us are polyamorous. some of us are quite happy being single. some of us are happily married, some of us are not happily married, some of us are divorced. some of us date or find friends and connections quite easily, and some of us really don't.

but we're all just humans trying to find our own acceptance and worth in this messy world that doesn't seem to want us to have either, and i hope all of us can just keep walking the path of accepting and honoring our own desires and needs and wants, no matter what they are! and that we can support each other in doing that in this sweet and thoughtful community.

Thank you in advance for what i know will be warm wishes of support!

And many thanks to you readers as well. If you're an OG reader you know I've been through the dating/romantic ringer — soul-crushing breakup in my mid-20s, failed engagement in my early 30s, tons and tons of shame I tried to solve by dating and engaging in questionable relationships with anybody who would glance my way. 

I taught a lot of what I learned that finally healed low self worth and let me be in successful relation to another person romantically (and a lot of other people - family members, friends, work folks) in my course, Intentional Dating.

To celebrate, I'm marking it off 44% (my current age) for the rest of June. Check it out and enroll here. You can read more and stuff like testimonials here. That link should take you right to the discount but you can also use SOOTHER44 at checkout to get the discount.

If you are ready to address low self-worth and shame in relationships, it might be for you.

Thanks for being here. It feels lovely to celebrate life milestones - of all sorts - in a warm and welcoming and thoughtful community. Engagement and marriage are just one possible milestone to celebrate, and certainly not the most important though our society may treat it as such. We also have graduations, career achievements, the time your nephew called you "his favorite aunt," the first time we wrote and published something publicly, first homes bought, first times we set boundaries with family, divorces are often to be celebrated and marked, the first time we met with a financial advisor, the first time we traveled alone - so much. 

So much to celebrate in a lifetime. I feel lucky to have been able to share a variety of life and my own personal milestones, amongst this one, with you for the past several years.

Whatever you're celebrating lately, or whatever challenge you're experiencing, I hope you never forget your essential worth and humanity.

You are an utter miracle in human form. 

Keep going until you remember that.