Mike and Lauren met by an accident that was no accident as far as the universe was concerned. Kris and Sabrina read each other’s minds and finish each other’s sentences.
Molly and Nick overcame what they perceived to be a mixed-faith marriage—they were two different kinds of Protestant. Matt and Suchitra, on the other hand, blended Hindu and Jewish traditions with rom-com references and gifts all around.
April and Pat first met as kids, when the minor gap in their ages yawned endlessly between them. Elaine and Stuart fell in love at college, broke up around graduation, and then found each other again after their marriages ended and their kids were grown. Ben and Leigh’s life together began with a hilarious knee-deep slog through snow—and ended only a short time later, due to cancer. Ben’s family became Leigh’s family, and neither was left entirely alone, but at the end there was no tidy bow, there was only grief.
These are true stories.
I know because I was their storytelling celebrant.
My job simultaneously does and does not reflect what you might read in the “Modern Love” section of the New York Times. Every set of clients I’ve worked with has a story that is theirs alone. They live out a drama or a symphony or rap song or a hard rock fable and it’s my job to put it to words. Finding their story is thrilling. Watching them recognize themselves in the mirror I’ve made is deeply satisfying.
A storytelling celebrant builds ceremony around the client’s larger story—the narrative that led to the life-changing moment before them. I talk to my clients about their childhoods, their lives now, their friends and family, and work and play. I encourage them to talk about their dreams for the future. And then I connect the dots to create a narrative that shows how the milestone event in their lives, whether a wedding, memorial, baby blessing, birthday or healing ceremony, fits their journey in life.
I tell the story in my own words, tempered by the client’s vocabulary and style so that if feels like their words. I tell it in readings and quotes that comment on a trajectory or state of being like theirs. And I tell it in rituals, which are ceremonies within the ceremony to enact the transition or commemoration underway. Ritual sounds occult, but it’s not. I look for and create rituals that are as specific as possible to my clients.
But the job doesn’t begin or end with telling stories, or it would just be another way to monetize writing skill and charisma. What makes it different is what makes it special, even sacred: I hold their lives in my hands.
In some ways, it’s not so unusual. We hand over our lives, or parts of them, on a daily basis to doctors, dentists, chefs and line cooks, Uber drivers, and random others who might or might not stop at red lights. But to me, it’s a big deal. People hand over their love lives to me provisionally and temporarily. After looking into my eyes or at my website, or both, they decide they can trust me enough to share details they’ve never told anyone.
I make the commitment to be worthy of that trust and then dive into their lives. I feel their love, or their loss—touch it, smell it, taste it, roll it around in my own heart until I understand it as something that had to happen, something the universe yearned for. And then I share their story in a way that contextualizes their lives for guests who have come to be witnesses and participants in the big moments at hand.
* * *
I didn’t know I was doing it, it but I was preparing to become a celebrant all my life. When I was a Catholic schoolgirl, I wanted nothing more than to be a saint—and more than a saint: a martyr. I wanted to live for others, to put their lives before my own, to live a life of devotion to what I conceived at the time to be God.
I planned to be a priest. But celibacy didn’t attract me. Nor did solitude. I did like the nearly all-black outfits, but I’d seen better. What attracted me to the idea of priesthood, though, was the call to stand in a sacred space, to hold the moment still and let meaning open up inside of it, or encourage meaning to express itself, or drag meaning out of its hiding place so that people who were starved for it could find some nourishment for what we call their souls.
Later, finding a hair shirt hard to come by, I softened my stance upon learning that the Catholic Church wouldn't let women become priests (as if the crucifer isn’t phallic enough for all of us). I went into a good long funk. What followed was a more delicious rebellion against all organizations and then another dream for touching the singular moment. I focused on the dream of working as an actor.
Acting had been a parallel dream anyway. Like Walt Whitman and most kids, I contained multitudes and I saw the world contained multitudes too. Most of the occupations I knew of came from TV. So I considered the dream of following the law, but in my world that meant putting people in jail or keeping them out, and that seemed like an awfully limited life.
I didn’t want to be just a doctor, detective, or spy; as an actor, I thought, I could be them all.
This was a dream my parents were hesitant to nurture, probably because they didn’t want me dead on Mulholland drive, but it was a dream that fit. It felt eerily familiar to the priesthood, because like the priesthood, it was another dream of standing in sacred space. As an actor, I could inhabit the moments of a character’s life and let that character live. Express that character’s struggles. Drag that character out of imagination and into a four-dimensional existence. Wait a lot of tables. Wait for calls and callbacks. For lighting to be set. For my cue.
Sheri as an Active Ensemble Member of The Neo-Futurists circa 1989
I supplemented the waiting with writing—monologues, performance art, poems, textbooks, stories and articles for kids and adults—until the writing became my primary form of expression and performance became its accent. If my life were a song, performing became the occasional syncopation in the melodic line.
Still, I was intrigued and drawn in by the sacred. So I supplemented the waiting and the writing with a stint in the Unitarian Universalist seminary, where I discovered a host of brilliant creative thinkers who were not so much about themselves as . . . whatever it is that is bigger than all of us. I was still allergic to organizations—to clubs—but seminary affirmed for me the connection we all have to each other, to the earth, and to existence itself.
After I left seminary, I stumbled on the Celebrant Foundation and Institute, where I continued exploring the importance of myth, ritual, and celebration. I found echoes of myth in the stories of my own life and I decided to help locate and express them in the stories of others.
About ten years ago, when storytelling blossomed in Chicago, I happened to be right there, with redbud petals falling beautifully on my shoulders and magnolia blossoms smashing grossly underfoot. I found ways to use story to express both the melody and the syncopated beat of my life—your life—anybody’s life.
My biggest and most delightful challenge, now, is to respect and observe the fact that not everyone wants their life told outright. Some of my clients tell me they only want their stories, their secrets, close enough to hold. They want to share their story with each other, not the whole world. So I give them their story, and then I excise it from their ceremony. I find and read sacred texts, profane texts, and texts I pull out of my own brain to express the truths behind their story.
And I encode their story inside their vows to one another.
And I help them enact their story—by having them set on fire all the reasons they shouldn’t marry. Or by having their guests make sacred vows to support their union. Or by helping them weave an unbreakable rope of the values or experiences that tie them to each other. Or by a myriad of other actions that symbolize the moment before them. Together, we tease meaning out into the open. We share it in a way that feels safe and true. We get to inhabit the romantic and/or funny and/or sad and always the sacred.
I get to live on inside those moments, albeit as a minor, even forgotten character. But more importantly and more joyously, I get to make that moment eternal for them. It's a privilege my childhood self could never have dreamed up.
Sheri Reda
Writer, performer, and storytelling celebrant.
Sheri Reda, who is a certified master life-cycle celebrant, lives and works out of Chicago and will travel almost anywhere. Sheri was a member of Julie Laffin’s performance collective The Trancesisters, and remains a Neofuturist as well as a poet, storyteller, and performer.
She’s a regular participant in Lifeline Theatre’s Fillet of Solo and has performed at Story Sessions, This Much is True, Essay Fiesta, and various other juried events. She also facilitates Narrative Medicine and Jungian introspection. Sheri’s communications firm is called Flow and Moment, LLC. Her celebrancy practice is Flow Ceremonies. She can be reached at sheri.a.reda@gmail.com. Sheri’s most recent stories have been published in The Examined Life Journal and in the anthology entitled Chicago Storytellers, Stage to Page.
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