I had to pull over on I-94 recently because I couldn’t stop crying.
Happy tears, let’s be clear. I had just delivered my last wedding of 2022 and that’s always an emotional time. Sometimes when I think about the breadth, depth, and importance of this work, I get completely overwhelmed. The trust and support I receive from my clients is a gift that far outweighs the reward of getting to create art for a living. I literally can’t imagine a more beautiful reciprocal relationship — gratitude is not a big enough word. But what y’all do for me is so, so much deeper than that.
In my organizing, I see the absolute worst in humanity. Every day I see footage of unfathomable acts of police brutality (including police violence I’ve witnessed firsthand that put my loved ones on a ventilator). I read research, datasets, and stories on unbelievably inhumane prison conditions and the ugliest ways we treat others in service of “justice”. Every day I see new legislation threaten the health, well-being, and thriving of my trans siblings. I see videos of mothers carrying the bodies of their martyred children down the streets of countries ravaged by imperialism and settler colonialism. Every day I witness atrocities beyond comprehension.
Yet on the weekends, I hold hands and dance, I wipe tears and witness love and joy no one would believe. Every day for weeks after, I boot up my computer and see your smiling faces. My greatest goal is to make my couples feel deeply seen – possibly in ways they’ve never seen themselves – and in doing so, they see me, too. Sure, seeing the absolute worst and the absolute best in humanity might be emotional whiplash. But it makes me very certain of some truths:
Y’all don’t understand. You do so much more than giving my life purpose. You do so much more than giving my work meaning and fulfillment. You are the living, breathing, dancing, crying proof that there is beauty in this world. You’re the proof that no matter what this world shows to the contrary, humans are amazing, remarkable, and worth every ounce of love and fight. You give the world purpose. You prove that we’re so much more than the worst of us – our ugliest atrocities, our greatest harms, our most corrupt leaders. Your love and the way you show up in the world FAR outweighs the cruelty of this world and promises endless possibility and I see it. Your love is a testament to what matters. Because of this, witnessing your love, families, cultures, vulnerability, uniqueness, strength and self-assuredness is how I am unequivocally certain that I do something that matters in this life.
And if god were to smite my goofy ass in my sleep tonight, I would die without a single shred of doubt that living my life in service of such incredible human beings was to have lived the greatest life imaginable.
