I’ve never liked brides’ magazines and all the sentimental advertising fluff that seems to accompany American weddings. I was an iconoclast even as a bride myself 43 years ago. However, this column arrives on the heels of my daughter’s wedding and so I am “re-specting,” that is, “re-viewing” what may lie hidden beneath the frills, fancies, and high finances.
For one, weddings are one of the few times that the feminine is allowed to flourish and be acknowledged. There she is, the bride in white with all eyes upon her. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung may say that the bride connects to something larger than herself, the symbolic archetype of the purity of the divine feminine. Perhaps then, the bride in her luminosity carries for those present to witness, all that the feminine archetype brings to the world—compassion, nurture, the carrier of new life, receptivity, care. Remember that when I say this I refer only to how the bride carries the archetype for the community in that moment. In her everyday life, she may carry that along with much more. Or perhaps in her everyday life she eschews any connection to the feminine archetype at all.
The crux of the matter is that when we look deeply into the meaning of the wedding itself, it is an honoring of the feminine that must withstand the joys and hardships of married life and the bringing into the world new life.
As my husband and I walked our daughter to the chapel’s threshold, I watched her footing as well as mine. I will always remember a broken stone step—mind the gap, I say to myself. My daughter with sure footing reached the threshold steady and solid to walk down the aisle in solitude to her joyous groom. I hope for them a way to marry the best qualities of both the masculine and the feminine archetypes that dwell in all of us.
Meanwhile, we who witness weddings can remember how with every change there is a loss. Even when the change is magnificent, we need to let go of the past. When I say to people, “In every wedding, there is a funeral; in every funeral, there is a wedding,” they usually gape at me puzzled.
Let me try to explain. There will, I think, at every wedding, be sadness at what has ended, a letting go of what has been to make way for what will be. Surely, there is a twinge of grief to this that we need to honor. There is also the awareness, if we are not in denial, that marital bliss contains struggles and obstacles, as well as rapturous moments.
I actually find it easier to ponder the funeral in the wedding than I do the notion of wedding in the funeral. Certainly, the wedding aspect is not readily comprehended when in the throes of grief. However, eventually, even in our grief we need to find new meaning in life, and a new relationship with the loved ones who have died. And that is the wedding! There is a Jewish proverb that says: When the heart grieves what it has lost, the soul rejoices in what it has found. This proverb seems to be apropos to both weddings and funerals. May we rejoice. That’s hardly sentimental fluff.
* Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments at MindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted to www.drgajdos.com.
Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.
