on attending the marriage of my friend to herself and the pride and privilege of bearing witness to the awakening of women

what does it look like to create a community of unconditional safety for women? it starts by shamelessly taking up space for yourself

She made her grand entrance in a tuxedo and a top hat — her first of two costumes worn for her day long event. I missed the first half because of my daughter’s volleyball game that morning — but I was able to watch what I missed from a phone recording and gasped.

Chelsie Diane. Styling by Sophie Strauss, photo by Madeline Northway

The room was dark and quiet and then, suddenly, the booming base of Miley Cyrus — a woman who was critically dragged, publicly flogged, shamed, judged, spat at in public discourse rinse wash repeat — and then, Chelsie appeared, dancing her signature I AM HERE AND SO ARE YOU LET’S GO dance.

The song was Party in the USA, a song to get the party started, yes, but also an anthem — a pledge of allegiance to Chelsie’s freak flag. A statement that proclaimed unabashedly, we can be serious and silly and brilliant and stupid and fucked up and completely in our power all at once.

We can be as sober with truth as we are drunk on a will to FULLY LIVE, high on our own supply, puff puff give.

***

I have known Chelsie Diane for years from afar. We exchanged numbers and spent many months almost meeting each other for coffee but something always came up. I don’t remember why we finally met in person this past February — on Super Bowl Sunday of all days — a day neither of us realized was Super Bowl Sunday until the night before. Which felt auspicious in its own way.

It was instant, our love for each other. We had more in common than either one of us was prepared for — our matching necklaces (Medusa, obvs) worn as forcefields around our necks — the realization that our twin daughters were due the same week in the same month in the same year. (Mine just came five weeks early.)

We had both married young, becoming mothers at the same age, our stories differing only slightly until they came to a head at the same time, in the same year, with the same urgency. We had spent years asking ourselves identical questions from fraternal mouths. In short: we met and instantly saw each other.

Our lives had been moving on erratic yet parallel lines for years, inching their way closer to one another until there we suddenly were, side by side. We spent hours unraveling — matching our seams, acknowledging what needed mending and what we wouldn’t dare “fix.”

There are some people you meet who are instantly so familiar it feels comical. The first time Chelsie and I saw each other we laughed because that is how it felt. And then we cried when we hugged goodbye because HOW DID WE LIVE WITHOUT EACH OTHER FOR ALL OF THESE YEARS.

Thank god we don’t have to again, was the takeaway and there hasn’t been a day that’s passed since we haven’t talked.

And yet.

Until, this past weekend, I had never attended one of Chelsie’s classes.

Had never witnessed her as a teacher, leader, guide to her community. Watched from afar, but was never in a front row seat.

When you see a woman’s influence on a room full of other women — women who are able to see their own power within the mirrors of her validation, it has a palpable effect. When that woman is so unapologetically herself in a way that people might find uncomfortable if it wasn’t so fucking honest, it sets everyone around her free.

It’s the reason so many of us share memes of children dancing with wild abandon — of adults dancing without a drop off self-consciousness — of people who remind us that we don’t have to be so precious, so serious, so unwilling to celebrate the wild, the weird, the unconventional.

That reminder — that one can exist outside of societal expectations and THRIVE — is holy work. Especially when modeled to those who were told differently. Who ARE told differently. Who have been raised and taught and told again and again to sit down, stay quiet, close your mouth, your mind, your legs…

Chelsie teaches a class online called POEMS AND POWER where every other week, she teaches women — artists, activists, warriors, poets, queens — all of whom have been damaged by the patriarchal framing of their stories — culturally crucified, burned at the stake. She travels to the places where these women lived, died and found their voices and as I write this, is planning her next trip to England to teach Elizabeth I from her actual castle. She gives her students poetry prompts and then honors everything about the women she teaches — specifically the parts of them that have been stigmatized.

Her event — which she threw at The Biltmore this past weekend — sold out. Women flew to Los Angeles from all over the world to see her speak, read and remind them who the fuck they were/are/always have been.

Every woman received a journal and was given prompts throughout the event and at the end — after hearing Chelsie teach, read, monologue — after seeing musicians perform and dancers dance — she invited a handful of attendees to read their own work in front of the crowd.

Watching these women — stand up, shaky-handed at first and then, in the process of reading, spill over with pride, affected in me in such a profound way it took me minutes to notice that everyone around me was crying, too.

“I have never read in front of an audience before.”

“I chose to read a poem written by my dead aunt who never got a chance to share her work with the world but always wanted to. This is for her.”

So many women, that afternoon, spoke of their legacy of silence. Of their mother’s mother’s mothers and all of the truths they didn’t tell.

“This one’s for my daughters…”

“For my mother…”

“For you…”

“This one’s for me.”

Each woman who took to the microphone said some version of the same thing before they started reading: “I just need a moment to take this in. To acknowledge that I am here with you - that there is an audience waiting to hear my work. That you are listening.”

And then, one by one, each woman took a breath, and raised her voice.

I believe with MY WHOLE GODDAMN HEART that being validated for one’s truth is the most important thing women can do for one another. That there is no other way to collectively heal.

In that room, I imagined a world where all women felt the unconditional safety they did in that moment. Safety to speak about their bodies and their hearts and their experiences with love and loss, destruction and creation — without the inevitable criticism from the open comment section of real life. Without, “that’s so cringe” or “how dare you” or “how could you” or “you can’t say that” or “keep that to yourself, are you crazy?” or “let me tell you how to behave.”

The leadership that Chelsie modeled that afternoon wasn’t authoritative it was communal. It was generous and fun and SAFE in a way that can only be possible when the woman leading the charge does not feel threatened by other women’s power, but instead feels motivated, energized and turned on by it.

A matriarchy, baby.

And sitting in that room, I felt an overwhelming sense of pride not only for Chelsie but for myself. Because when you love someone — TRULY — their power feels like yours, too.

**

Chelsie had been comparing this event to her wedding since she first started planning it but it wasn’t until I saw her in The Crystal Ballroom in action that I understood what she meant. It wasn’t until I heard her speak, watched her dance, listen, cry and throw her arms around the women who bravely shared their work, that I was like OKAY YES, THIS IS A FUCKING WEDDING.

It’s a wedding of her to her but also of her to her PURPOSE. A vow she made to her ambition, her wildness, her refusal to be anyone but herself and a commitment to shepherding truth.

And in doing so, the same way traditional weddings give a certain kind of hope to its single attendees that one day they, too, might find their perfect match, she reminded every woman in that room that they too could commit wholly and unwaveringly to themselves.

Without compromise.

Without sacrifice.

Without shame.

And by that I mean she sent every woman home with their own bouquets of power.

Including me.

Cue: Mendelssohn.