Tag: faith

Categories
Daily inspiration

What’s in a Word?

Celebrant Musings on “Officiants” in Modern Wedding Ceremonies

I’ve always been fascinated by the power of words and the stories behind them.

Anyone who knows me knows that my book, The Will To Surthrive, wasn’t just inspired by my own journey. It was also inspired by another ‘will’ altogether – William Shakespeare. Or, as I like to think of him, history’s most successful celebrant of the human condition.

Shakespeare had an extraordinary ability to reshape how people thought simply by reshaping language. He coined words, stretched meanings, played with assumptions, and reflected society back to itself in ways that influenced everything from politics to perceptions of monarchy. Kings and queens might have worn the crowns, but Will had his hand on the script.

Perhaps that’s why I find language debates so interesting.

Words aren’t fixed monuments. They evolve and gather meanings. Sometimes they lose meaning; sometimes they acquire new ones entirely.

Take the word ‘officiant‘. To some, it suggests legal authority. To others, it simply describes the person leading a ceremony. Neither interpretation emerged from nowhere. The word has carried different shades of meaning across different places and periods.

I’ll admit it – I don’t have a problem with using the word officiant to describe my role.

Perhaps that’s because, in a very real sense, I am in office. It may be a self-appointed office rather than one granted by church, state, or statute, but it is an office nonetheless. When I step into a ceremony, I take on a responsibility. I prepare diligently, hold the space, guide the proceedings, manage emotions, tell stories, calm nerves, read the room, and lead people through one of the most significant moments of their lives. I also guide them honestly regarding the current legalities and support couples to have the legal documentation before the celebration of marriage, which I officiate!

Of course, I understand the concerns some celebrants have about the term. In certain contexts, people may assume an officiant has legal authority to register a marriage. We don’t! Clarity matters, and we should always be transparent about what we can and cannot do. We are awaiting the outcome on our legal position to marry couples from the Wedding Law Reform, and that may soon change everything.

But I also think it’s worth remembering that officiating at a celebration of marriage is about far more than legal paperwork.

When couples search online, many already know the word officiant but have still never encountered the term celebrant. Using a familiar word can help people immediately understand our role. It creates a bridge rather than a barrier.

For me, officiant speaks to the act of presiding over a ceremony with skill, confidence, and care. It describes someone entrusted with holding a moment, shaping an experience, and guiding people through a rite of passage.

That’s something celebrants do exceptionally well.

So while I am happy to follow any collective approach agreed by our profession, I also think it’s worth understanding the full meaning and history of the words we use before we discard them. Language has a habit of carrying more than one truth at a time.

And if standing before a gathering of family and friends, leading a ceremony, holding everyone’s attention, and carrying the responsibility for the occasion’s atmosphere doesn’t count as officiating, I’m not entirely sure what does.

Who Owns Words?

This is where things become interesting. Throughout history, rites of passage have often been overseen by institutions – churches, states, registrars, and other established authorities.

As modern celebrancy has grown, we’ve created new possibilities and continue to push for greater diversity and choice. We offer ceremonies that are personal, flexible, creative, respectful of diversity and deeply centred on the people involved. Naturally, language evolves alongside that growth.

Perhaps part of my fascination with this debate comes from a lifelong tendency to question who gets to define the meaning of things in the first place.

I’ve never been entirely comfortable when words become fenced in by narrow legal definitions, particularly when those definitions seem designed more to protect established institutions, professional territories, or historical privileges than to reflect how people actually use and understand language.

Of course, the law has its significant place. Clarity matters. Precision matters. Public protection matters.

But language belongs to people before it belongs to legislation.

Many of the words we use every day existed long before the legal frameworks that now seek to define them. Their meanings have evolved through culture, community, and common understanding, not simply through acts of parliament or professional rulebooks.

Perhaps that’s why I find celebrancy such an appealing profession. At its heart, it is inclusive. It adapts. It responds to people’s lives as they are lived, rather than insisting they fit neatly into pre-existing categories. As celebrants, we are often helping individuals and families create ceremonies that reflect who they really are, not who a system says they should be.

So when discussions arise about whether we may or may not use particular words, my instinct is not to ask, “Who owns this term?” but rather, “How do people understand it, and how can we use it honestly and inclusively?”

That feels like a healthier conversation.

After all, Shakespeare himself delighted in stretching language beyond its accepted boundaries. Had he accepted every definition as fixed and final, the English language might be considerably poorer for it.

I’m not suggesting celebrants should start inventing or inveigling words at quite the same rate as Will Shakespeare, but as someone who wrote The Will To Surthrive, you may have guessed that I have such admiration for Bill the Bard; he understood that survival often depends on adaptation. His genius wasn’t simply inventing words; it was helping language evolve to meet the needs of the people using it.

I think celebrancy is doing something similar today…finding new ways to express ancient human experiences. The word “officiant” is not a legally protected title in the UK, and it therefore embraces the notion that celebrants are entrusted with authority by the people they serve.

Latansani operates as an independent wedding celebrant and officiant. I specialise in creating and conducting personalised, symbolic, and celebratory wedding ceremonies. Please note that I do not hold legal licensing to solemnise marriages under UK law. All legal marriage paperwork and registration must be completed separately by the couple through an authorised local registrar or licensed religious official.

Categories
Daily inspiration

The Hands That Shape Tomorrow

She Who Nurtures the World: A Mother’s Day Tribute to the Power of Feminine Virtue

In the 1800s William Ross Wallace wrote a celebratory poem of women – mothers in particular – honouring how “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.” The words and context are a little dated, but the notion of women as powerful influencers who don’t just nurture children but who shape the world is a recurring theme for me.

Today, that sentiment feels less like ornamented praise and more like urgent truth. We are living in a world still shaped by patriarchal systems that prize dominance over dialogue, conquest over compassion, power over partnership. It is a world bruised by conflict, divided by ideology, and too often deaf to the quiet wisdom that sustains life rather than destroys it. In such a world, the qualities long dismissed as “feminine” are not soft…they are essential!

To mother is not simply to raise a child; it is to cultivate conscience. It is to teach empathy in a culture of indifference, patience in an age of haste, and tenderness in times that reward hardness. The influence of women does not end at the cradle’s edge; it ripples outward into classrooms, communities, movements, and nations. Women have always been architects of humanity’s moral framework, shaping hearts long before laws attempt to shape behaviour.

The feminine spirit: resilient, intuitive, life-giving. It carries within it a fierce strength. It is the strength to endure, to forgive, to rebuild. It is the strength to gather fragments and make them whole. In a war-torn world that glorifies destruction, the ability to create, to heal, and to hold space for vulnerability is revolutionary.

This poem is written in honour of that revolution…I wrote it after watching my daughter-in-law patiently cradle her two girls after a full twelve-hour shift in her role as Deputy Head; it was her SLT day with late-night meetings. I thought of the quiet, daily courage of women who nurture not only children but hope; who carry both grief and grace; who persist in loving and shaping when it all feels so costly. It is a tribute to ‘mother figures’ in all their forms: those who birth, those who adopt, those who teach and mentor, those who stand in the gap and offer shelter in a storm.

If the hand that rocks the cradle still rules the world, it is because it shapes the values by which the world is ruled. And perhaps now, more than ever, we need those hands…steady, compassionate, and unyielding in their commitment to life, to guide us toward something gentler, wiser, and more just.

Here is my modern ‘take’ on Wallace’s original:

The Hands That Shape Tomorrow

Blessings on the mothers of this restless, changing age,
 Who balance dreams with duty, and write love on every page;
 With laptops lit at midnight, with lullabies at dawn,
 They build both homes and futures in a world that rushes on.

They guide with steady wisdom through a storm of screens and noise,
They raise resilient daughters; teach compassion to young boys;
 They show that strength is gentle, that courage can be kind,
 And plant the seeds of justice in each open, growing mind.

In boardrooms and in classrooms, on city streets and farms,
 They carry hope and history within determined arms;
 Through spirit, art, and service, their quiet power grows
 In every field where they labour, their lasting influence shows.

No longer bound by narrow walls nor limited by role,
 They nurture independence and ignite the human soul;
 They model fearless leadership, integrity, and grace
 A thousand unseen victories in every time and place.

For the hands that hold the future are steady, warm, and wise,
 They are shaping stronger nations as the generations rise;
 The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that leads the way,
 Still guiding the world with love and light but more boldly every day.

Categories
Daily inspiration

Gifts We Carry

On Christmas Eve, we carry gifts, carefully wrapped, hidden under twinkling lights, each one chosen with thought and love. Some are small, some grand, but all are offered with the hope that they will bring joy. The gifts we carry are not only the ones we set under a tree. Each of us carries other offerings: our hearts, love, and hope.

As a celebrant, I bring those gifts daily. I stand with people at the most sacred thresholds of their lives.

I witness beginnings and endings, holding joy, grief, hope, and rupture. I speak words when others cannot find their own. I bless unions, honour deaths, and mark moments that will be remembered long after the day itself has passed.

But behind the role and ritual, behind the calm and carefully chosen language, there is a most simple human being. Another thinking, feeling, vulnerable person who also needs the gift of love and care.

2025 has been for many of us, a year of severance. It has been a year of letting go, and not always by choice. I saw it in the ceremonies I held and felt it in my own life. People losing – work, partners, relationships; losing possibility, as well as certainty; and people losing the deep belief that true love is real, that love is something we can rely on to see us through. To lose faith in love is not just painful; it is devastating, decimating, disorienting. It breaks our resolve and shakes the entire ground beneath.

There have been moments this year when I wondered whether love was still possible in the way I had once believed in it – not as a means of rescue, not as fantasy, but as something steady and real.

And yet, again and again, the couples I married this year gently challenged that doubt. I watched them stand before one another not promising perfection or salvation, but presence. They chose love with eyes open, aware of each other’s histories, complexities, and unfinished edges. Their vows were not about being rescued, but about walking alongside; not about grand gestures, but about daily devotion. In their steadiness, their laughter, their willingness to be fully seen, they reminded me that love does not need to be loud to be profound. It simply needs to be true.

This year, I was also held by a very different kind of love – the love of my granddaughters.

Their love is innocent and pure, unburdened by history or expectation. It does not ask me to be anything other than present. In their eyes, I am already enough. Their laughter, their small hands reaching for mine, their unguarded trust reminded me of a truth we so easily forget: love, at its essence, is simple. It is not earned. It is given freely. Being with them returned me, again and again, to a place before doubt…before stories of loss and protection took hold. They showed me love as blessing, not transaction.

And then there is the love that brings us all here on earth – the journey to love ourselves.

Self-love is not indulgence or ego; it is responsibility. It is choosing to care for the part of ourselves that feels deeply in a world where hurt can be inflicted so easily, often unintentionally, as others move through their own journeys of pain, fear, and becoming. To love oneself is to learn when to open and when to protect, when to soften and when to stand firm.

Rising above hurt does not mean bypassing it. It means seeing it clearly, tending to it gently, and refusing to let it harden the heart. It means recognising that another’s wounds do not define our worth, and that compassion can coexist with boundaries.

What I am beginning to sense now, as 2026 approaches, is a different invitation to love.

Love, I am learning again and again, is about being seen.

Seen in our grief.

Seen in our contradictions.

Seen in our strength and in our exhaustion.

Seen without needing to be more polished, more healed, more “together.”

2026 is the year to be seen! This is the spirit I feel gathering…

A year of connection…not just between partners or families, but between our inner lives and our outer ones. A reconnection to self, to meaning, to one another. A softening back into relationship.

A year of gratitude…the kind that arises naturally when we survive something difficult and discover that tenderness is still possible. Gratitude for the people who hold us, the rituals that ground us, and the quiet moments that restore us.

A year of creation…new ceremonies, new ways of marking life, new language for love and loss. Creation that flows not from obligation, nor from ritual but from truth.

And a year of richness…richness of feeling, of presence, of spiritual depth. Oh, I hope that there will be material abundance too. But above all, I hope that this year, my life and the lives of those around me will feel inhabited rather than endured.

As I prepare to gift others through weddings, farewells, namings, and renewals in the year ahead, I am also tending to my own heart. I will allow myself to be held. To be rested. To be seen.

Because even those who guide others through rites of passage are always, quietly, moving through one of their own.

On this Christmas Eve, as you carry your gifts and watch the faces of those you love, may you also pause to honour the invisible treasures you carry – the courage, compassion, and love that make life sacred.

Merry Christmas!

Julie

Categories
Daily inspiration

Hanna Green

Hanna Green’s life was one that began and ended in perfect symmetry. Sixteen years in completion… and although it was a life brief in years, it was vast in love; immense in learning, in meaning, and in light.

How do you begin to honour such a rare, radiant soul on this, the seventeenth anniversary of her birth and the first of her death?

Perhaps, like many things too big for words, we can look to nature. Mother Earth speaks not with explanations but with metaphors. With her constant reminders. With her cycles and rhythms. Among Hanna’s great loves were watching night skies filled with stars, growing sunflowers, and loving delicate, endangered turtles. So, I’ll turn to them for their help…

One of the most powerful illustrations of both beginnings and endings is a supernova; that’s the word that describes the final, most brilliant act of a dying star. Stars are born when hydrogen atoms fuse in the cold of space, lighting up the darkness for billions of years. But when that process ends, when the star can no longer hold itself together, it explodes in a radiant burst of energy. In death, it outshines entire galaxies. And as it does so, it sends its building blocks of other beings and entities across the universe. These become planets. Oceans. Trees. People. They become you and me. So when a life ends – even when it’s far, far too soon for us to contemplate with any understanding – it does not vanish. The light continues. The elements remain, reshaped. Their love lives on in new forms, just like the stardust we’re made of.

There’s so much beyond our current comprehension about someone being born and dying on the same date. And yet, when you think about it, this cycle is everywhere…in the perfect symmetries of Gaia. The sun returns to the same place in the sky, tracing a perfect circle…a full revolution. Although this symmetry can feel both piercing and profound, there’s a completeness to it, even in the midst of tragedy.

And in that painful symmetry, nature speaks again. A sunflower, for example, turns its face toward the sun each day, tracking its light across the sky. Sunflowers symbolise adoration, loyalty, and the persistence of hope, even in the darkest of times. They remind us that grief is not an end to love, but another form of it. Even when our hearts are broken open, they too still turn instinctively toward the light. I see all of Hanna’s family doing that now. Perhaps that’s why sunflowers are so comforting in grief. Their golden faces look like miniature suns, radiant and resolute, even as summer fades. They bloom, they bow, they return again.

And then, there are the turtles. So small. So slow. So easily overlooked. And yet, they are ancient symbols of endurance, protection, and quiet resilience. Turtles carry their homes on their backs…a reminder that we all carry what is most precious with us. Something vulnerable, yes, but also strong enough to weather life’s storms. They emerge from their shells in their own time, in their own way. They know how to retreat, how to rest, how to begin again.

In grief, we often feel exposed and raw, as if we’ve lost our shell. But the turtle reminds us that healing does not need to be fast or loud.
It can be slow. It can be gentle. It can be deliberate. It can happen beneath the surface, as we learn again to move forward with care, with memory, with meaning. Hanna saw the magic in turtles. She loved them not just for their vulnerability, but for their quiet strength and maybe she saw something of herself in them. Delicate and determined; beautiful and rare.

So how do we remember someone who left this earth on the same day they arrived in it?

We remember them the way nature remembers – not just with fixed monuments – but with living, breathing symbols:
We plant sunflowers. Watch them grow tall and proud, even in rough soil. We gaze at the stars and whisper their name to the vastness. We honour their day not just in mourning, but in movement …through a walk along the sands, a swim in the sea, a dance beneath the moon. We light a candle, not just to grieve their absence but to acknowledge their continued presence in the way they changed us.

But, most importantly, we live. We become the stardust that shapes new worlds. We carry their memory not as a heavy burden, but as a spark that lights our own becoming.

The story of a life that begins and ends on the same date is not just a circle…
It’s a spiral.
Grief, love, memory…all of these things move us forward, never back, even as we return again and again to a particular day.

In time, this date might hurt a little less. It might even become a day of connection, of planting, of lighting, of remembering. It might become a day of sunflowers. A day of stargazing. A day for turtle-watching, or simply for sitting so still with anything that is precious to us.

Let the sunflowers bloom.
Let the stars remind you.
Let the light – Hanna’s and yours – keep flickering. Because what she loved most still surrounds us:
The stars: vast, bright, eternal.
The sunflowers: strong, loyal, reaching.
And the turtles: slow, gentle, enduring.

She is in all of them.
And in us.
And she will never fade.

Categories
Daily inspiration

Love in Motion: A Mother’s Rite of Passage

I’ve navigated a good few rites of passage in my life – marriage, motherhood, the sweetest transition into becoming a grandmother, and so many more quiet thresholds in between. But nothing has felt quite like this moment: standing at the threshold of another letting go, not of a child, but of a man – my son – who is approaching his 40th year on this planet and who has just gone through something I experienced many times – a grueling Oftsed inspection.

He’s tall and steady now, in senior leadership in a big secondary school, a father himself, with two daughters of his own. On the day of his unannounced inspection, I watched how he rushed in, after 12 hours at work, to cuddle his girls before bedtime.

I watch him nuzzle their necks, hold their hands, guide them, make mistakes, learn, and love in his own way. I feel an overwhelming sense of pride. And at the same time, a quiet ache.

I’ll never forget the moment I watched him marry. As the mother of the groom, it’s a peculiar and profound role…so different from the fairy-tale spotlight so often placed on the father of the bride. We aren’t typically the ones walking anyone down the aisle, or making grand speeches. We’re often quietly watching from the edge, holding a hundred memories in our hearts while our sons take a step we’ve known was coming but still feels like another tiny goodbye. It’s a moment of silent surrender, handing over the centre of his world to another, while blessing the union with love and restraint. The pride is deep but so is the ache. And yet, this too is part of the great letting go. This too, is love in motion.

Because here’s the truth no one prepares us for: motherhood is the long, slow practice of preparing the one you cannot live without, to live without you.

This isn’t a clean break. It’s not a dramatic severing of ties. It’s a subtle, complex, deeply emotional shift and one that unfolds in moments so ordinary they can almost pass unnoticed: a text replied to hours later, a celebration planned without you, a quiet gap where your voice used to be central. No longer being the first person they turn to, but one of many they might update. The shift from “What do you think, Mum?” to “I thought you’d like to know what I chose.”

And while I’ve known for ever that this is what love demands…this loving and letting go…nothing truly equips a mother to emotionally detach from the very being who taught her the depth of unconditional love.

Letting go isn’t just an act of love – it’s also a process of grief. It’s remembering the baby we held, the little child who needed us daily. It’s missing the rhythm of that caretaking, the identity that came with being at the heart of someone’s world. And now, it’s watching the cycle again, as I witness my daughter-in-law prepare to go back to work after the birth of their second child.

Yes, there is pride. Joy. Relief even, sometimes. But it’s tangled with sadness and nostalgia. A mother’s heart can be both full and empty.

There’s a beautiful transformation in my stage of life: shifting from being the hands-on caregiver to becoming a quiet supporter, an emotional anchor, a presence rather than a guide.

I’ve had to really learn to respect his family’s space, to trust his choices. And that’s no small feat after decades of being a protector and guide. But he doesn’t need that from me. What he needs is for me to see him fully, as the man he has become, and to love him from a place of respectful distance. I am so proud of him.

And my identity? That too is evolving. I’m more than a mother. I’m a nanna, a celebrant, a storyteller, and a witness to life in all its beauty and ache. Letting go has cracked me open…but you know the saying…where there are cracks, the light is coming in.

As a rite of passage celebrant, I speak often of thresholds. We mark births, deaths, marriages, retirements but this, this shift in the mother-child bond as our children become fully themselves, this too deserves ritual and reflection. Our culture doesn’t celebrate a mother’s rite of passage at all!

It is a rite that is so often invisible, but it is sacred. It is one of the deepest initiations of a woman’s life.

So to any mother walking this path with me, I say: you are not alone. You are not weak for grieving. You are not clingy for caring. You are not outdated because your child no longer needs you in the same way. You are simply crossing a threshold. One where your love is no longer shown in holding tight but in letting go with grace.

The poet Rumi said, “Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.”

And if you, like me, are learning this balance in real time, know this: there is a new kind of relationship waiting on the other side. One built on respect, space, and mutual admiration. It’s not the same as it was but it can be just as beautiful.

This, too, is love.

Love in motion!

Categories
Daily inspiration

Thinking About Thinking: What’s The Problem?

I had to have a calming conversation with a family member just yesterday; he is in a partnership – a civil partnership actually – but he has become more dependent on his partner recently due to failing health. It’s interesting because, back in the days when civil partnership was ‘new’, they didn’t consider making any personal vows as such and simply repeated the legalities…something along these lines: P and C are here to formally pledge their love, to be united in a partnership, and to offer each other the security that comes from promises sincerely made, and faithfully kept. They are choosing to make a commitment to each other for the rest of their lives.

They’ve been together in a solid relationship for more than fifty years! As you can imagine, with the frailty that can come with illness and old age, it’s easy to get caught up in overthinking about what might be (or, in his case, also what might have been). My brother – P– certainly overthinks; he is a classic example when it comes to catastrophising – the act of thinking the absolute worst when a problem occurs. Perhaps if they had considered writing their own promises and commitments, he might have been more aware about trying to control his thought patterns. If you hold with the neuroscience and appreciate the brain’s plasticity, or with spiritual practices such as meditation and yoga, it is possible to control thought. And taking the conscious decision to be with someone for the rest of your lives requires some conscious thought!

Here is yesterday’s illustrative scenario:

P wasn’t feeling well in the morning so instead of their usual stroll into town, he took a rest and C went off to fetch provisions and do some errands. My brother dozed, but when he woke up to find his partner hadn’t returned, what do you think was his first thought? That C had met a mutual friend and had an impromptu coffee? That C had missed the local bus that brings him and the heavy shopping bags back up the hill? No…by the time C got back, my brother was pacing up and down, weeping, and contemplating telephoning the funeral director to prepare for a body! He had imagined all sorts – a cardiac arrest, a terrorist attack, a Reginald Perrin type disappearance into the sea.

His slightly wild imaginings illustrate how the problem is never really the problem. Rather it’s the way we think that is the real issue.

Relationships and partnerships and the things that go with them, including the planning of weddings and other public events provide ample opportunity for one or the other to get anxious and imagine the worst case scenario. A wedding is a time when we want a perfect day, when everything should be in our control, when nothing must go wrong. That’s a lofty hope because, even with all the planning and preparation or love in the world, we can’t stave off every challenge.

Here are some of the ways that we can avoid catastrophising:

Catch ourselves in the act – as soon as we become aware of what we are thinking, remind ourselves that we have done this before, but we’re still here and things worked out.

Ask ourselves specific questions about the worst thing that could happen and balance it out with the best; we can take mitigating action to aim for joy.

Follow the negative thoughts to see where they lead. At every negative turn, we have the option to choose a more positive outcome, to shift the thinking into taking a different path.

Remind ourselves that we are not our thoughts. They are external – it may seem like they are part of us but if we can separate them from our being, they don’t consume us. An example is: ‘I am useless at reading in public and out loud’ changes to ‘My brain is telling me today that I am useless but I am so worthy.’

Pay attention when things go well and also when previous catastrophic predictions haven’t materialised. We can soon take note when our brains cry wolf and can recognise when we have met challenge and survived.

Look out for tomorrow’s blog to discover some more ways to, live in the now, and avoid catastrophic thinking.