Ashes, Ashes We All Fall Down 🕯️
The thought came like a whisper and echoed in my mind:
“What if you just burned it?”
My wedding dress. The one I didn’t even want.
The one I held onto for eight years, trying to make the story feel like it meant something.
“No way! Burning it felt extreme. Not to mention wasteful, dramatic, and definitely NOT what you’re supposed to do.
But clarity doesn’t always make sense. It just keeps calling until you listen.
So I did.
In a beautiful ceremony on the beach, which wasn’t as cathartic, feral, or primal as I’d expected it to be, it was more of a quiet unraveling. A long goodbye to the girl who thought love meant saying yes.
Slow emotions moved through me as I walked beneath the moonlight on the shoreline, I danced around the fire with soft tears streaming down my cheeks. I ripped my dress and piece by piece presenting it to the fire, eventually I took the dress off and held it like you might a loved one, highlights from that fairytale life flooded me.
I stared at the moon until the tears were no longer streaming and I placed her over the fire and watched until there was nothing left.
I spoke to the fire for a while afterwards, watching the moon, listening to the tides roll in and out, then left before I really wanted to because the mosquitoes were relentless. Rituals don’t always go as planned.
I burned the part of me that said yes before she was ready. The story that said keeping the peace was more important than staying true. I burned the fantasy of "worth it."
I walked home that night softer, lighter, itchy as hell from the mosquito bites, but softly more whole. Something closed and something else opened.
You have your own version of the wedding dress. Something you're keeping because it's familiar, an identity that no longer fits, a life that looks good on paper but has never really felt like yours.
You don't have to burn it. But you get to start listening.
I don’t always burn wedding dresses under full moons, but I do stay asking the questions. This story isn’t a one-off. It’s a doorway into the kind of work I do and create with women who are ready to stop dressing themselves in someone else's dream and start living in truth, pleasure, and full-boy clarity
If this story stirred something in you, I share more like this on my Grow As We Go Podcast and on Instagram. I would love to have you listen & follow along for more expansion & liberation (ooo that’s sooo Tantric), and share with me what these reflections bring up for you in your life.
And if you’re feeling the pull towards your own reclamation & ritual, my 1:1 mentorship is open... Come closer, babe. You don’t have to do it alone. Learn more HERE.
