This year, my husband and I are celebrating seven years of marriage. We had our first date in May 2009, experiencing a whole lot of love and laughter since then, but at the same time, we acknowledge that the journey hasn’t been all roses and sunshine. The most important part is the commitment to us, our family and our partnership.
It was truly an awesome feeling for us to start our anniversary weekend reflecting on our life and love up until this point, while also looking ahead to #foreverett.
To celebrate our 7th anniversary, we decided to celebrate with other Black couples by hosting game night at our home. I was a bit extra by asking all of the couples to share their favorite photo together so that I could create a Canva slideshow. The goal was to showcase and celebrate the power of our love.
Truthfully, there wasn’t a whole lot of game playing (although I was fully prepared), but that was perfectly fine. I take pride in having a circle of friends that can just vibe, chat and hang, period. There was great conversation and reflection on life and life as married couples. Between seven couples, 60+ years of marriage was represented, ranging from one year to 20 years.
After an intense round of Left, Right, Center and a weak round of the Water Challenge, we ended up having a conversation about lessons learned from marriage. My husband posed the question, “What is one word you would use to describe marriage?” While so many gems were dropped from reflecting on how our trauma and upbringing impact our relationship to how we must deal with ourselves first, evolution was the word that I found to be most powerful and real from the conversation.
Time, life and experience change us in so many ways. Add children to the mix and there are more lessons to learn and grow from. Even as our relationships evolve, we have to continue to grow together, communicate effectively and stay committed to doing life together. It means reflecting on who we were when we first got together, while still holding space for the ways that we are going to change over the decades.
Here’s to continuing to celebrating love, creating our own story and evolving together.
