Well, I am apparently developing an unexpected new niché. In addition to helping people get divorced, I now, have the honor of helping my friends select their wedding dress. I am proud to report that I am now two for two. Two women I love dearly. Two women who have had their share of heartbreaks and loss. Two women in very different stages of life. One on her second marriage and so very happy. The other getting ready for her first and, hopefully, only. (The divorce attorney in me will not let me say that more emphatically...sorry!)
And as odd as it is and as hard to reconcile for me, I actually love doing this with my friends...being with them to select the dress that they will literally walk into a new life in. It is kind of amazing. Watching these beautiful women try on different outwards manifestations of the love they feel in their hearts is kind of magical.
And in both cases, I watched both women light up when they donned the right dress. Each woman knew as soon as the dress was on that is was the right one. And so did the rest of us. It is amazing what kind of transformation happens when a beautiful woman places a gorgeous white gown on their person. For the moment, it is a fairy tale. They are the princess and their happily ever after underway.
How can I, an inveterate divorce attorney, one who sits ring side to love’s demise every single day...how can I love doing this so very much? It isn’t the dresses per se. And it isn’t the process. But there is something alchemical that happens immediately when the two are combined in a lovely wedding dress shop in San Luis Obispo.
I find myself wondering, actually wistfully thinking about how I, so long single and somewhat anti-marriage at least for me, how can I be so happy doing something that is so contrary to what I do do all day long every day?
And I know why I love it. It is the juxtaposition to my rational, logical, legal mind that is checked at the curb on beautiful fall days like today. I get a break from my usual, ordinary and skeptical heart. And for the time I am with them, I believe in love. I believe in marriage. I participate vicariously, anyway, in their joy and belief and commitment to happily ever after. And I realize that perhaps that is the greatest spiritual evolution I shall ever have in this life. The ability to participate in something that I myself do not feel able to participate in for myself. But I find such immense, particular, intense pleasure in being there for them, to photograph, document and add commentary to the transformation that is underway before me. I guess I too am transformed. And I believe in love and commitment and intimacy and marriage and all the things, if only for a little while. I believe for them always. But I believe for me too for the time I am there. Anything is possible. Anything can happen. Even for someone like me who stands so often outside of love’s warm embrace.
And on the drive home I return to the safety of singledom and grateful that I do not need a dress or a man or a wedding. I remain happy with my life just as it is, in this moment, nothing added or subtracted. But I would be a liar if I didn't own the part of me that longs for this type of surety, this kind of faith, to literally marry my life to another's. To release the stranglehold I have over my body, person, finances and life and believe there is another soul to be trusted with the care of it, the trust of it and the life of it.
You can either be safe in this life or you can love. It is not possible to do both. You cannot give your heart away and also remain safe. And I remain, unconvinced at this juncture of my life, of my ability to ever risk that again. I am not sure I even want to anymore, the temporary pleasure of fleeting love affairs feels so much safer, so much like a better option for me.
I do not see a white dress in my future. But I do see my own willingness to clear the channels, the blockages that remain in my mind and heart to open ever wider to the idea. And I know, with absolute certainty, that showing up for my girlfriends and helping them find the right dress to say I do to something I can only say I don't, pushes me a little further down the road to healing, to love, to care and towards growth.
I am blessed to still believe in love...and to show up and give my whole self, my entire personage to the quest for happilly ever after. I may never get there myself but I feel good and wonderful about helping others get there. By wedding dress shopping and leaving marriages that died a long time ago. Happiness comes in many forms, sometimes in the seal on a decree of divorce and sometimes, in a white gown that has promise, future, love and intimacy woven into every fiber. And on days like yesterday, I know that I too have those things woven into my fiber even if I cannot access them most of the time. I know they lie dormant, perhaps perpetually, but it is days like yesterday where I come full cirlce to becoming a true believer in the happily ever after...if only for others, and I feel the love deeply and fully and am blessed to share in the occasion.
Again...still.
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