At this year's Fully Expressed Summer Solstice ceremony, something happened that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
One of the women in our circle brought her bra to the fire.
At first glance, it may seem insignificant. Maybe even funny.
But what happened next was anything but.
She placed it into the flames as an offering.
A declaration.
A choice.
A ceremony.
And as the fire consumed it, something inside of her shifted.
Because the bra wasn't really about the bra.
It had become a symbol.
A symbol of restriction.
Of expectations.
Of all the ways she had been taught to hold herself, contain herself, and shape herself into something acceptable.
It represented the invisible rules she had inherited from society and the ones she had unknowingly accepted as her own.
Who she should be.
How she should present herself.
What was appropriate.
What was allowed.
What was expected.
As she watched it burn, she wasn't simply burning an article of clothing.
She was unsubscribing.
Unsubscribing from the belief that she needed to continue carrying the weight of those expectations.
Unsubscribing from the ways she had made herself smaller.
Unsubscribing from the restrictions that no longer belonged to her.
There are moments in ceremony when something symbolic becomes deeply real.
This was one of those moments.
Because our nervous systems understand symbols.
Our bodies understand ritual.
And sometimes a single act can communicate something to our entire being that words never could.
I am done carrying this.
I no longer consent to this story.
I choose something different now.
And as the bra burned, there was another energy present in the circle.
Power.
Not power over anyone.
Not rebellion for the sake of rebellion.
But the quiet, embodied power that comes when we choose ourselves.
The power that says:
I know who I am.
I know what no longer belongs to me.
And I trust myself enough to let it go.
In that moment, she wasn't just releasing restriction.
She was standing in her sovereignty.
She was reclaiming her right to define herself rather than be defined by inherited expectations, cultural conditioning, or old agreements that no longer fit.
There was something deeply lionhearted about it.
A willingness to be seen in her truth.
A willingness to take up space.
A willingness to trust that she could hold the freedom that would come from letting go.
Because sometimes standing in our power doesn't look loud or performative.
Sometimes it looks like sitting by a fire and making a sacred decision:
I will no longer make myself smaller.
I will no longer carry what isn't mine.
I will no longer abandon myself to belong.
I choose me.
And in choosing herself, she experienced something that can only be described as freedom.
A lightness.
A softening.
A return to herself.
This is one of the things I love most about ceremony.
Sometimes transformation doesn't happen because we think our way into a new reality.
Sometimes it happens because we embody a choice so fully that our entire system recognizes that a threshold has been crossed.
The Summer Solstice is a time of illumination.
A time when what has been hidden becomes visible.
A time to ask:
What am I still carrying that no longer belongs to me?
What expectations, identities, beliefs, or restrictions have I outgrown?
What parts of myself are ready to be fully expressed?
And what might become possible if I allowed myself to put those things into the fire?
Because freedom is not always found in adding more.
Sometimes it is found in releasing what was never ours to carry in the first place.
Sometimes it is found in choosing ourselves.
And sometimes…
it looks like a bra in a fire.