Sitting outside the theater where my son is having his final dress rehearsals before his big “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Jr.” musical debut this weekend. It’s quite hot outside, but I’ve set myself up with a comfortable, shady fortress here in the back seat of my SUV. The shades keep the blazing New Mexico sun at bay and the open windows allow what little breeze there is to cool me off just enough to make it bearable. With that and my favorite writing music in my ears—in a mostly futile attempt to drown out the city sounds around me—I realize I have created the perfect little mobile sanctuary to comfortably do my own work even while I support my son’s passion projects.
Which brings me to this week’s “Marrying Myself” which, I realize, is all about creating sanctuaries. As I mentioned in last week’s post, one of the creators I’m most enjoying right now is Kyra Faison-Gardner and her “Women at the Edge of the Woods” offerings. I recently joined her “Room at the Edge of the Woods” where five women over 50 gather in a supportive online community space to work on intentionally designing life’s next chapter. At first, I was hestitant to join her program because it came just as I was launching “Marrying Myself, ” a project all about shifting my focus to center my own wisdom first, while putting a pause on other people’s offers and input. But this shift towards saying “yes” to myself was not about arbitrarily saying “no” to everyone else. “Marrying Myself” is about getting clear on what still sparks joy for me and deliberately choosing that, without apology. The moment I discovered Kyra’s Substack, I knew I wanted to work with her. Her writings and voice memos felt like little sanctuaries in the middle of the day reminding me of what I am trying to do with this new project, and why. So, I signed up for her paid program and, in short order, was reminded of the truth of my personal mantra:
A few days after I signed up for Kyra’s “Room at the Edge of the Woods,” I got a package in the mail. Yes, like snail mail, mail! (How did she know that I love getting mail?) Inside the package there were colored pencils, a blank journal (I mean, how did she know that colorful writing instruments and journals are my love language?) and Kyra’s little spiral-bound workbook, “Sanctuary Within: Designing a Life That Feels Like Home.”
As I make my way through the exercises in that little workbook, and stretch my sanctuary-building muscles in Kyra’s safe gathering space beside other sovereign women doing the same, I’m overjoyed to realize this is the perfect way to support my marrying myself. It was never about checking out and pushing the whole world away so that I could fall in love with myself and be all alone. Quite the contrary. I am a people person. I am an extroverted extrovert. But I am also an empath with an expertise in people-pleasing, so learning how to allow myself to center my own wisdom first, especially in community with others, is one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to do. To create what I am envisioning, I needed to surround myself with women who can hold space for me as I stretch my muscles, without needing me to prove my worth somehow or to have to earn their support by over-caretaking anyone or by trying to be everything to everyone. In other words, I needed a community sanctuary where I could safely practice stepping back into the public arena.
The thing is, I am already great at creating sanctuaries, which is why it took me by surprise to realize how much I needed what Kyra’s community had to offer. Ever since I was a kid, I have been creating my own private sanctuaries: in tiny attic crawl spaces, in the backs of closets, under beds, in our backyard apple tree treehouse, or perched in the pommarosa tree in front of Abuela’s house in Puerto Rico. I have always given myself the gift of a quiet space to think, to write and to do the self-work I knew I needed to do in order to become my favorite vision of myself, no matter how chaotic the circumstances around me might have been. As I grew up and my world expanded, I then learned how to maintain my sense of self in relationships, even with the constant presence and pressures of a partner. The sanctuaries changed shape, by necessity—the treehouse and attic crawl spaces were replaced by late-night baths, early morning walks through the forest, quiet writing time on a beach or just an extra fifteen minutes in my car after work—but ultimately they served the same purpose: to create a quiet space where I could be alone with my thoughts and express those clearly to myself (usually on paper or through voice memos). In some of my more tumultuous relationships, those sanctuaries were life savers for me. In my almost 30-year marriage, those sanctuaries continue to help me be the kind of quality partner my beloved deserves.
More than two decades ago, when I became a mom, I learned quickly that creating a personal sanctuary wherever we went was not only non-negotiable for me, but also a tremendous gift to give my children. By demonstrating daily that Mommy needed her own personal space, or at least my own personal time, I helped them learn to prioritize and express their own needs as they navigated their personal relationships. Claiming time and space isn’t easy to do, especially when you’re living in a dorm or barracks or sharing an apartment in college, but throughout their lives they have seen it done successfully in equally challenging environments. As a full-time liveaboard family, Mommy modeled this by setting up a tiny writing space in the forward crew cabin, under the solar panels off the back deck or simply declaring the helm area a mommy-only zone before 8:00am.
Once we returned to landlocked New Mexico, I converted the back of my closet into Mommy’s little hideaway—a private sanctuary where I could find the peace and quiet I needed to not only write my conspiracy thrillers and sailing memoirs, but to also do the deep self-work that keeps me healthy mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
This week, as I pondered this “Marrying Myself” project, I realized that in the past year since we moved off the boat, my little nook has become a bit of a dumping ground for stuff. Also, as I looked around at the bookshelves, I discovered that I was surrounded by other people’s wisdom. If I am really going to center my own wisdom, the first thing I needed to do was to totally overhaul my little sanctuary. So, over the past week, I did just that and I’m thrilled with how it turned out. I plan to share video of that overhaul on this week’s livestream.
In case you’re new to this “Marrying Myself” project, here’s how it works. I write this weekly post to help me process whatever came up in my self-wisdom centering journey. I introduce these ideas in four categories modeled after the old bridal adage to include “Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.” Then, the following Monday at 9:00am Mountain Time (currently MDT), I host a livestream on Substack, YouTube and Facebook to flesh out the things I’ve touched on in the weekly post, with additional videos, photos and audio recordings. You can find those livestreams at these links:
Meanwhile, here are the things that made the cut this week:
As always, the “Something Old” category is split into two parts: “Old & Rotten” and “Old & Precious.” The something that’s old and rotten, which I will happily take out with this week’s trash is:
Cryptic communication.
Part of the process of creating the vision I have for the world to come is to be clear when communicating my needs, desires and boundaries. I was reminded of just how important that is from two different sources this week.
1. First, I read this Substack post:
It really made me think about the big and small ways that people manipulate each other in relationships, even with those we dearly love. I felt the author was incredibly brave to share her very personal journey towards growth and greater self-awareness in relationship with her adult children. But it was the comments section that really stayed with me. First, it reminded me that there are always different ways to look at the same story. And, it highlighted for me that clean communication is the foundation for keeping my own relationships healthy.
2. The second thing that hit this point home was reading an old journal I wrote in high school. Most of this journal’s contents are quite private and I won’t be sharing them with anyone, but it reminded me of what happens when communication isn’t honest, especially communication with ourselves. I will share a few relevant excerpts in Monday’s livestream.
The old thing that is really sparking joy for me this week is that bin full of journals that I mentioned last week. It turns out that it not only contained my precious (to me, at least) sticker collection, but it also held my personal journals from as far back as 1984.
As I’ve been unpacking that bin, I have peeked at a few pages here and there. Let me tell you, it is a treasure trove of what are at times cringe-worthy and at other times binge-worthy glimpses into earlier versions of myself. One, in particular that made me chuckle was what I wrote in December 1999, just before the turn of the millennium. I was a TV news reporter at KOAT-7 in Albuquerque at the time, and I wrote about some of the things people were worried about and wrestling with on the eve of “Y2K.” I’ll share that in Monday’s livestream too.
This week’s “Something New” is the aforementioned sanctuary overhaul. I can’t wait to show you all the results.
I already mentioned it above, but it is Kyra Faison-Garnder’s “Sanctuary Within” workbook which is helping me think mindfully about my own sacred space. I’ll also share a bit more about what I’ve learned so far in Monday’s livestream.
This blue journal from my final months of high school, just before I left home and started college.
Sadly, the journal is mostly empty but what I did write in it instantly whisked me back to what it felt like to be a 17-year-old young woman on the cusp of stepping into the independence I had been longing for. Some of what I wrote there made me blush. A lot of it made me sad. But overall, the journal felt like a letter to myself that reached across time to remind me of what I have overcome in my life and why this “Marrying Myself” project matters so much to me.
Again, I will dive into all of this a bit more in the livestream on Monday at 9:00am Mountain Time (MDT). I hope you will consider joining me then. If you do join me live on Substack, YouTube or Facebook, you can type questions or comments on those apps and I will see them live in the studio. I’ll do my best to respond to them in real time.
In the meantime, let me know what you are doing this week to marry yourself. Have you set up your own little sanctuary where you can focus on reconnecting with the deepest, wisest parts of yourself? I definitely recommend it. Let me know in the comments how you create your own sacred space.
Thank you all for sharing this journey with me.
See you Monday!
**Author’s Note: A friendly reminder that this article is the intellectual property of Rosa Linda Román. While I give permission to share quotes and snippets, please only do so with a link back to this original article. You do not have permission to copy and paste my work without proper attribution and a link back to this article. Join me in fighting systems of oppression by giving credit where credit is due. I thank you for your ethical support of creators like me and grateful whenever you share my work. You can do that easily by clicking this button:
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