I Got Married!

I was not a girl who dreamed about her wedding day.

At five years old, my childhood friend and I negotiated a deal: she’d build a fort with me if I agreed to play her husband in a pretend wedding. I begrudgingly walked her down the aisle, probably thinking the kid equivalent of “these bitches be crazy.”

Marriage wasn’t something I grew up believing was a good thing. I was the counsellor to my parents’ turbulent marriage, emotional labour that left scars on my heart.

The first time I realised I wanted to marry Manu was during the first breathwork session of his I attended. It was pretty early in our relationship - too early, some would say, to be having insights like these. The feeling came through so strongly it moved me to (terrified) tears.

So instead of blurting it out to him, I texted my best friend to confess my identity-threatening sins. “This is going to sound insane,” I wrote, “but I had an intuition during breathwork that Manu was meant to be my husband.” She agreed that it did sound insane - hahaha.

But I do feel that I get it now - that mysterious “when you know, you know.”

In the month leading up to our wedding, I was terrified. My knowing was still steady, but my nervous system was shaking.

I had gone from a relationship dynamic where I was endlessly performing for love, to a relationship where it was given freely and unconditionally. And that was confronting as fuq.

Manu would express his love for me shamelessly, and I would feel shame. He would hold me the way I’ve held others all my life, and I would feel afraid. He would treat me as a priority, and I would feel unworthy.

Over our two and a half years together, I had slowly built the capacity to receive this kind of healthy love. But in the month before our wedding, every protector in my system reared its head. I was testing him every second day, disrupting the peace, fully aware of what I was doing but unable to stop. I was afraid of trusting someone this much.

When I reached out to my beloved friend Sarah in a moment of panic, she replied with a message that soothed me:

“I can't think of anyone more worthy of love and safety than YOU. You have shown incredible amounts of courage and strength in creating this for yourself. TAKE IT FUCK YEAH .”

And something in me surrendered.

I poured all that surrender, all that trembling trust, into the writing of my vows.

I haven’t attended many weddings in my life - they’re pretty rare in my communities - but I’d never been particularly inspired by vows before.

Being both a writer and a person who has spent the last decade studying the art of loving, I wanted mine to feel true. Not vulnerability hidden by humour or an overly practiced speech, but alive, something that reflected the practice of love, not just the fantasy of it. Something that would form our marriage manifesto.

We didn’t share our vows with each other before the ceremony. I wanted to meet him in that moment, word for word, heart to heart.

Neither of us had parents who role modelled the kind of relationship we wanted. We both found our way to this through study, practice, and hope - separately, and then together.

One of the things that drew us together was our shared belief that love is a daily practice. Not a static feeling, but a living thing that needs to be tended. Some people want companionship, connection, or freedom in a different form, and that’s completely valid, but we wanted something different.

We both believe that love, when done consciously, is one of the most transformative forces on earth. It’s not just about creating safety or passion between two people; it’s about allowing love to ripple outwards, healing old wounds, reshaping what we thought was possible.

We both want to bring our best to that practice, every single day.

One of my favourite parts of our ceremony was hearing his vows for the first time, and realising they were synonymous with my own.

Different words, same vision.

It felt like meeting him all over again. Not as lovers or partners, but as two humans choosing, again and again, to practice love as our art form.

For most of my life, I thought devotion was dangerous. I learned to see it as self-sacrifice. As something that made you small, invisible, or starving.

But I think my heart has always been wired for devotion. It’s my nature. I just didn’t know how to hold it safely.

In my twenties, I rebelled against it. I tried every shape of relationship imaginable. Searching, experimenting, building fortresses and knocking them down, testing where my tenderness could live without being consumed.

And now, I’ve found a resting place for that devotional heart to land.

Don’t get me wrong, the work continues. Almost two months after our wedding we’re in the trenches again, figuring our way through the latest challenges life has thrown at us. But there’s a quiet pride in the way we meet them, side by side, aware, sometimes messy, but intentional.

It took me a lot of work to get here. To be able to say I’m devoted, and know it doesn’t mean disappearing.

Now, devotion feels like strength.

Like presence.
Like love that can hold both the beauty and the challenge of being human.

What’s been alive in your heart this month? You’re welcome to comment to share. I love hearing from you!

If you’ve been feeling the pull to round out 2025 with some intentional support, I’m offering something a little different for the rest of the year.

I usually work with clients in longer programs, but as part of an evolution I’m exploring in my practice, I’m opening space for a handful of shorter-term or one-off sessions. Think of it as a way to reconnect with yourself, reflect, and enter 2026 with clarity and groundedness.

If that feels resonant, send me an email at hello@michellekasey.com and I’ll share the details.

And if you’d like a sense of the kinds of things I can support you with, you can read more here for individuals and here for couples.