Origins

Those of you who know me well will likely agree that a) I have a lot of ideas and b) sometimes I get an idea that takes me over. And when this happens, my curiosity becomes insatiable. I just HAVE to follow it through, just to see what happens. I alternate between being embarrassed about this tendency and being proud of it.

When my girls were younger, I hosted "Coming of Age" retreats for them, with the help and collaboration of my family. That process felt quite similar to the process of organizing this party, in that I got the idea, and I just HAD to live it out. My inner drive and voice about it was so strong. Notice I said STRONG ... yes, strong, but not necessarily clear. It took many others to help me clarify this thing and to bring it to life. It's like I just get the rough outline, but I need others to help me fill in the details. In the case of this party coming up, I have a list of literally more than 40 people who have helped fill in the details. I am not exaggerating. And the party hasn't even happened yet, so it will probably be more before the thing happens. It's embarrassing to essentially say to people "Hi, I have this idea, but it's only really half of an idea. I am going to live it out, no matter what, but I need you to help me figure out exactly what we're going to live out. So can you give me some guesses about what this idea actually looks like in three dimensions?" But that's pretty much what I do.

Here's how this started:

A few months ago, I was falling asleep, and I got this idea for a party I wanted to have. I saw aerial silks, and jugglers, and tarot card readings. But I didn't see quite how it fit in with the flow of my life, and so I just let it come and flourish in my minds eye for a little while, told one friend about it, and then, just let it pass, like so many of my other ideas, like a firework on a summer evening. But then, a few months later (August 2014, I think) it showed up again, in the context of this other idea, which is that I want to change my last name, in order to ritualize the ending of my marriage and the beginning of the next chapter of my life. As I contemplated a process for choosing a name, and embarked upon that process in earnest, enlisting the opinions and thoughts of my family and friends, I realized that there are a few things about changing one's name that are interesting. First of all, it's an intentional choice, it's an act of agency. One's name doesn't get changed by accident. People call us what we ask them to call us. So the name we use in the world, it's symbolic of the agreements we have with the people around us. Every time we meet a new person, we tell them our name. Our name is what people use to identify us, and it ends up being a way that we identify ourselves. The ending of my marriage was a big challenge for the way I identify myself, because I "saw" myself as a "successfully" married person. So when Carl and I decided to split up two years ago, I got to see how attached I was to that part of my identity. I didn't realize how much I correlated my "ability" to be successful in the world with my "ability" to stay married. 

When I realized that changing my name is actually a very interdependent process, I connected it to the vision for this party, which is complex, layered, and interdependent. And somewhere in the murky waters of my imagination, this idea was born as a force in my life.

This whole thing is scary for me. But I am committed to stepping towards the unknown of this, because perhaps this is an opportunity for intimacy with the divine. That, my friends, is the spirit with which I have approached this endeavor. I am beyond-words grateful for your partnership on this adventure.