What If It Was Never Worth It? 👰🏼‍♀️

I wasn't just holding onto a wedding dress.

I was holding onto decisions I made to keep the peace.

Every once in a while, a story grabs you by the throat and says: tell me.

This one starts with a wedding dress… but it’s really about all the times I abandoned myself to follow the script. The one that says, “Be agreeable. Keep the peace. Do what you’re supposed to do.”

I never wanted a traditional wedding. But he did. So somewhere between Pinterest boards and peacekeeping I said yes. Yes to the thrifted plates. Yes to the Amazon knockoff designer dress that ended up costing more than it should have. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

The wedding was absolutely beautiful. The culmination of years of planning, hours of collecting mis-matched thrifted plates & bridesmaid dresses, the perfect florals, surrounded by loved ones. It was honestly a fairy tale...

At least on the outside.

The moment it ended, I felt the weight. The ache. That quiet feeling that I never actually wanted it.

The dress has sat in my closet for the past eight years. Not because I loved it, but because it needed to be justified. That’s the thing about obligation… it gets heavy.

I thought the dress was just fabric. I didn’t realize it was grief stitched into silk. And it wasn’t the only thing I was still carrying…

And what came next helped me understand it all.