Peace is Romantic!
I got married at 23.
Want to know something crazy? I knew I was going to marry my husband before I ever even spoke to him. I saw him walking across our college campus and shortly after told my roommates, “I’m going to marry that boy.” Ask them, I swear!
Jump to a month or so later. It was November of 2014. Nik and I barely knew each other, but we ended up going camping with a group of friends for the weekend. Everyone went to sleep that first night, and the two of us stayed awake with our heads poking out of the tent, talking for hours while staring up at the stars. Ever since then, he’s been my north star.
We’ve been together now for twelve years, married for eight. Today is our wedding anniversary. We’ve been together since we were 19, and got married at 23. We have grown up together. Twelve years of growing, evolving, learning, shifting, choosing, and loving each other through every version we’ve met along the way.
One of the things we’ve always shared is a love for adventure and curiosity in this life. So much so that in the fall of 2023, we made the decision to sell most of our belongings and move abroad to Amsterdam. We had no idea what we were in for, but it became one of the best decisions we ever made. I never quite know how to explain our first year there other than to say it was pure magic and really hard at the exact same time. I often refer to it as my early-life crisis. Adventurous, charming, magical, and also deeply challenging.
I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on that chapter of our lives, and I wanted to write this because I know I’m not the only person who has experienced this. And whether or not you relate, I think so many of us can understand the feeling of questioning something good simply because it asked us to let our guard down.
That first year in Amsterdam, we both went through a lot of change and growth. For me personally, I had spent so many years detached from myself, and the moment I was placed in a setting where everything familiar had been stripped away, I was forced to face the things I had been running from for a long time.
That season became a process of unraveling a very dysregulated nervous system. One that had been built on a baseline of chaos. One that was always prepared for something to go wrong. For someone to let me down.
In the midst of all of that, I started to really wrestle with the concept of safety. I had spent most of my life making decisions that would keep me safe. Decisions that would hopefully lead me towards a different life than the one I was raised in. I started to wonder if I had played my life too safe, and it really made me start to panic.
As I began to unpack and process everything, I realized I was slowly creating distance from one of the best parts of me. My absolute lighthouse. My husband, Nik.
Nik is one of the safest people I know. He is exactly where my soul feels like it’s home. In fact, he’s the one I was processing all of this with! I came to realize this actually had nothing to do with Nik, and everything to do with what I needed to heal and grow from. And what I slowly began to understand is that when your body is used to chaos, safety doesn’t always feel like the peaceful feeling that it should. Sometimes it feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
I began to learn that it’s our bodies just trying to protect us from old wiring. That as I came back into my body after years of dissociating, the fear & chaos I felt was my body subconsciously trying to resort back to those older patterns. I learned that the pull towards chaos was a nervous system chasing its default wiring.
So I started rewiring it. I started noticing the moments when I wanted to create distance instead of connection. I started paying attention to the stories I was telling myself. Most of them I realized were not true.
Over that next year, I began to re-wire the idea that safe is good. That I shouldn’t fear the concept of safety. That love should feel safe. That you should choose the love that lets your body exhale. That love should be vulnerable and patient and caring and calm.
That you should marry the one that allows you to become the best version of yourself. To choose the kind of love that you can sit beside in hospital rooms and visa appointments. The kind that remembers your favorite coffee and how you like the bed made. Love should feel like a passionate blend of consistency, patience, laughter, adventure, charm, and ease.
Thank God for healing. Thank God for knowing what I wanted at 23. Thank God for my NT. My anchor. The most grounded, calm, supportive, fun, patient, human I’ve ever met in my life.
I know I’m not alone in this, and I hope this brings a bit of comfort to the girls who may have or have had similar experiences. The girls who knew chaos as their comfort zones. The ones who are learning to accept a love they may not have been modeled. For the girls who are learning to let their guard down even when it feels a little scary. Life is wild, and my hope in starting “Folded Napkins” is to make women realize they aren’t alone. We’re really all in it together.
A few prompts for your own reflection:
What kind of love allows you to exhale?
Who in your life allows you to feel like your truest self?
What version of love really excites you? What makes you feel the most “you”?
Have you ever questioned something good only to realize it was just unfamiliar?
What would you tell your younger self about love?
I know you’re reading this Nik…because there’s nobody that supports me bigger than you do.
Thanks for teaching me that there’s nothing greater than a love that feels steady and safe. You’ve never once asked me to be anything other than myself. You’ve always been right there digging and evolving and searching right beside me. You’re the purest form of love and support and humor and fun and brilliance, and I’m so happy I married you that one sunny Saturday in June, 8 years ago.
You’re my north star foreverrrrrr ily.
this was so beautiful. happy anniversary!!! I resonated with so much of this - thank you for sharing! I met my fiancé when we were both 17, we're going to celebrate 7 years together in September, and then we're getting married in October! Meeting your partner young is such a gift x
Love! Happy happy 8 years! 🕊️🤍