Coming from a background in dressmaking, I spent a decade building custom wedding gowns from heirloom textiles for my label Ship to Shore. In American culture the wedding is one of the only rites of passage where costume assumes prominent focus. I built my own wedding gown in 2012, crossing a threshold into a life lived in union. Very soon after our son was born, my partner was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died within the year.
I have found that moving through these thresholds at such close proximity has given me some perspective around the importance of ceremony for these undeniably human experiences. Giving birth so near to experiencing death revealed to me their similarities - at its very essence being born in is just like being born out. The receiving blanket is built with the same stuff as the death shroud. (we are all the stuff of stars, after all).I believe that taking the time and care to build ceremony around each of these experiences is a key to emotionally integrating the inescapable reality of change.