Beginnings
“Me We” - Muhammad Ali
This is my last post in August 2022. As I reflect on this first full month of business at Brava, I am grateful and also a bit gobsmacked by how much can unfold in one month. The time has flown and it has also felt like a decade. It’s actually fun to live in this space of fast and slow - or at least that’s what I keep telling myself!
August is also a month notable for the highest number of births in the US and one of the two times a year when divorce filings peak (March is the other). We also find ourselves in full “back to school” mode. If there was one word to sum up August, it would have to be “Beginnings” - a time that requires holding space for both joy and sadness. Ah, that liminal space we all love.
These themes of beginnings and endings (itself a new beginning) are on my mind, especially around marriage and divorce. My husband and I will celebrate our eighteenth wedding anniversary in October. I also just passed the exam for the Certified Divorce Financial Analyst designation, so it’s no wonder marriage and divorce are infused in my consciousness at the moment.
There are two writings that I love to share with people who are soon to be or recently married. One is the poem above by Muhammad Ali. Ali offered this poem off the cuff in June 1975 during a commencement speech he delivered at Harvard. On that day someone from the audience yelled, “give us a poem!” and Muhammad Ali responded, “Me We”. Now, he wasn’t speaking about marriage, but I cannot think of any two-word phrase that more brilliantly captures marriage. It is both aspirational and cautionary. You are you, and you are also something else. I learned this the hard way.
A few months after my husband and I got married, I bought a large cabinet for our guest bathroom. We needed it, it fit, so I bought it. Great, right? Um, no. Holy moly, did we fight about this. Mind you, we didn’t fight about the cabinet - we fought about the unilateral decision-making I employed. It was my introduction to the concept of “We”. I was no longer merely “Me” as I moved through the world - I was now “Me We”, and this required a new appreciation for my partner and our relationship. I guess we are both pretty good at learning lessons - here we are, almost two decades later.
The other writing I share is the last paragraph from the Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, that legalized same-sex marriage in 2015. The majority opinion was written by Justice Kennedy, who ended the decision with this act of grace:
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
I believe that we can all agree that the spirit conveyed in the words about marriage speak to what we all wish for in any union: love, belonging and a higher purpose.
Even so, things don’t always work out. I will not claim to be a relationship expert - it’s still a work in progress for me, in all candor. What I do know, though, is that nobody makes good decisions from a place of pain. Ending a relationship is painful and traumatic, even in the best of circumstances. Yet again, the path requires finding ways to make good decisions while creating space for and honoring emotions and trauma.
Me We. Love, belonging and purpose. My wish for you in this season of beginnings is that you find your “Me We” in whatever form you choose. Be well, my friends.
Kelly
