Ep 120: Part 4/8, Ali Katz Married Herself: Why We Should Stop Waiting to be Chosen: How to Design a Relationship That Works Series

Andrea sits down with Ali Katz — entrepreneur, community builder, mother, and self-marriage pioneer — to explore her journey of box-checking success, internal disconnection, discovery of the warring selves within and the need for identity death before birthing a new soul. If you’re waiting for the one, if you’re healing from heartbreak, if you’re seeking belonging without self-abandonment, or if you’re looking to dismantle the traditional relationship script, this is for you. You’ll hear:

-How Ali fell in love with who she is

-All about her proposal, ring, vows and Costa Rica wedding

-Why magic rituals (and a Ketubah!) create reality

-Why we need not WAIT to be chosen

-How she built internal safety instead of outsourcing

-All about an ayahuasca journey vision

-Her mid-life shift from the beaches of LA to the fields of Boulder

-How self-devotion prevents future partner resentment Find Ali’s wedding online at www.thealikatz.com/marry-yourself TRANSCRIPT: Andrea Enright 0:00

Janelle, struggling to discuss sex and intimacy with your partner, not feeling met, seen or heard in your relationships. I'm Janelle And I'm Andrea. We're two midlife Mavericks sharing our own experiences, messy, AF and no regrets with marriage, divorce, polyamory and pleasure. We've learned that when you're brave enough to figure out what you want and ask for it, with partners, friends, family and most importantly, yourself, you'll feel more alive and free question everything, especially your mother's advice. There's no rom com formula for this. But don't panic. Being alone matters, honey, I can't miss you if you don't leave,

Janelle Orion 0:40

what if your breakup

Andrea Enright 0:41

could be your breakthrough? Our podcast is for brave hearts. Anyone who seeks or has found the courage to confront their fears and limiting beliefs about breaking societal norms in the spirit of finding their truth. If you're seeking permission to be brave in your relationships and want to feel less alone along the way, we got you

Andrea Enright 1:06

brave hearts. This is a different episode. This one is unique. AF, we're talking to Ellie Katz about her marriage to herself, her journey to get there, the actual wedding itself, why you should marry yourself, and why the most important thing is choosing you instead of waiting to be chosen. This is transformational shit. Okay, listen to this listen to this one. It's marriage in a whole different format, and it's a marriage. I highly recommend everyone to do before they actually marry another person. Stay tuned. Hello, bravehearts and welcome to permission to be human. I'm Andrea, and Janelle is not here for the first time in 125 episodes, but she is in New Zealand at the Haydn mystery school for six weeks, and I can't wait to see what will be revealed about her life when she returns. We'll be sure and have an update episode about that. But this is a continuation of season six, where we are talking to people about how they design a relationship that works, that thrives in all the different formats, in all the different ways, in all the different choices we have. And today I'm so pleased and excited. This is a very unique episode, and you'll find out why very shortly. I'm so excited to interview ally. Katz. Ally and I met at an ista retreat in Costa Rica, many years ago, and she's also been a friend to Janelle for a long time, so we're already quite familiar with her, and we're so happy to have you on the show.

Ali Katz 2:55

Allie, so happy to be here Andrea, I feel like I'm filling in a little bit for Janelle, and I'm going to bring my best so that nobody misses her at all, and we're just sending her so much love out there.

Andrea Enright 3:07

Amazing. That's a great idea. Love that. So let's just give a little we'll introduce what alley Katz is all about. So she is 52 she's divorced and lives in community homes that she's created in both Boulder, Colorado and Nosara Costa Rica. Allie has many life partners. She is CEO and founder of eyes wide open collective, a portfolio of eight businesses, a mom to two kids, 22 and 26 she loves adventure, sexy time, and thrives on building world changing businesses, as well as creating new paradigm systems in the legal, political and financial world. That is big. It's all encompassing. But most importantly, Ally is married to herself. I even got a ring. Even got a ring. Oh my gosh, let me see, let me see that ring. Let me see

Ali Katz 4:09

that ring. Yeah, yeah. And I had a choice of course, of, you know, do I go all out on this ring when I post to myself? Or did I like, should I, like, you know, skimple it all, like, I don't have to go that big. And I went all in on the ring the wedding, the whole thing, yeah, changed

Andrea Enright 4:31

everything, yes. So a marriage to yourself. Let's just, let's dive right into that first, and then I'll kind of go back and we'll, we'll uncover and reveal how you got there. So what does that mean?

Ali Katz 4:45

Ali, so I wondered the same thing, and when, when it all began to unfold, I did not know that I was going to have an actual wedding. I certainly didn't know that there was going to be a ring and an engagement and the whole thing, it's. Started kind of toward the end of covid times I was going through a breakup, and a friend said to me, have you considered marrying yourself? And like, I had heard people, you know, do it in the past, you know, maybe we've all heard of somebody who married themselves. But like, what does it really mean, and is it really a thing, and is really real. And I was like, well, she's like, Well, why don't you just create a marriage contract with yourself? She told me that she had done it. She had had somebody take her through the process, actually a guy that she considered like her rabbi. I'm Jewish, and in the Jewish culture, there is a tradition of creating a Ketubah, something called a Ketubah, which is a marriage contract before you get married, and you actually sign it. And I got married to a man my kid's dad, in 1999 and we had, you know, we had a, we had a, I think we signed a Ketubah back then, but it wasn't, it wasn't really a ceremonial thing. We didn't intentionally, consciously create it. We like signed a paper before we walked down the aisle. But that, that is a thing.

Andrea Enright 6:18

So is a Ketubah typically, or traditionally used for more of a legal reason or more like about your intentions for the relationship?

Ali Katz 6:28

Yeah, it's more ceremonial, more intentions. I didn't know exactly how it would apply to me marrying myself, so I was curious, and I said, Okay, I'll just check out this process. Sure, I'm in heartbreak. It's covid times. You're, you know, towards the end of covid times, and sure, like, I'll check it out. So I met, I met the guy, his name is Skippy and and what I discovered is that he was going to take me through a process of creating this marriage contract, this Ketubah turned out to be a four month process, and it was extremely transformational, because in This process, I noticed that I needed to get really clear about who I am, what I stand for, what I'm committing to, what the relationships are in my life, and how I relate to all of these relationships. And that was really important for me, because I had kind of a rise to fame, kind of in my first stage of building my life back in 2008 2920 10. And in that period, I was a family financial and legal expert on TV, and I was very public online with my life, and a lot of people came at me when that occurred, and I didn't have good clarity about how to relate to all of the people that were coming, and my boundaries were very permeable, and I wanted to help everyone, and I wanted to show up for everyone, and I wanted to be in relationship with everyone.

Andrea Enright 8:26

Yeah, what I'm hearing is that there was you weren't sure. Maybe you knew who you were, but you weren't clear about your boundaries, and you didn't know how to interact with the public, maybe, and yet, still keep ally secure, is that right? I didn't

Ali Katz 8:43

even know who I was. Honestly I was. This was like at a time when I think that I was still very much living for whatever I perceived as success, Best Selling Author, you know, person on TV, successful business builder, Mother, is

Andrea Enright 9:03

that your definition of success? Or maybe societies.

Andrea Enright 9:06

It was societies, right? Like, okay, million dollar business. That was the first definition of success. Build a million dollar business. Okay, I did. Well, really, the first one was get a really good job at the best possible law firm I could right because I'm a lawyer. I graduated law school in 1999 and I graduated first in my class, so I had my pick of where I was going to go. I chose the place that was the hardest to get a job at, because to me, that was success. They want me that's success. I'm going to go there. I was there for three years, and in that time, I realized this doesn't feel like success to me. I'm earning six figures, but I feel broke all the time. I'm commuting an hour each way in LA traffic. I don't really feel like I'm making a difference in people's lives. I'm married. We had literally the house with the white pick. Offense, you know, all the things that I believed signaled success, but it didn't feel like success. And I began to have thoughts of like, Oh no, I've pursued this path of success. I got here, and there's no here, here. And so through a series of like, continuous, okay, well, then what? Okay, I'm gonna start my own business, okay, then I'm gonna build it to a million dollars a year, okay, then I'm going to write a best selling book, okay, then I'm going to get on TV, okay, then I have a house near the beach, d and each time I hit the goal, and each time I think we hear the story all the time it was empty.

Andrea Enright 10:51

Yeah, brave hearts. You know, we talk about this a lot on this podcast, that there is a time when you realize that you've you've checked the boxes, and you need to start opening the boxes.

Ali Katz 11:05

Yeah, so I started opening boxes in a pretty big way. It really all opened for me, I would say, in September of Oh, nine, with my first journey with plant medicine, Ayahuasca, which I was very resistant to. You know, I was a very traditional lawyer. My name was Alexis Martin Neely. It was like this big name, you know, this big image and this deep unhappiness inside.

Andrea Enright 11:35

I think this is really all leading up to the fact that you needed to build a relationship with yourself is that kind of where we're going.

Ali Katz 11:43

I certainly didn't know that at the time. What I experienced in the in that initial Ayahuasca ceremony was I had a visceral experience and kind of a vision of a world that works for everyone, people living in harmony, living on land, growing food, raising children, and I had never experienced or thought or felt anything like that before, like I'd had this longing for community, but I didn't even know it was a longing for community. I literally thought I was looking for a church. I found a church, which is very weird, because I'm, you know, a Jewish girl from Miami. Why am I looking for a church? But the minute I walked into it was agape, international spiritual center that was really brought to me through this internal prayer that I didn't even know I had. And the minute I walked in the doors, I realized, Oh, I'm home. This is, this is what I was looking for. It didn't end up being quite what I was looking for, ultimately, but it was the next step. It was the next like, Okay, I'm like, following the breadcrumbs, like, you say, opening the box. This was like, this was like, maybe, like, the big box. And then I realized, like, oh, there's all these other boxes inside. But that was really my first awakening. Was this awakening to the power of my mind. I had no idea that the mind could create. I didn't know that I was a creator. I didn't have any of those concepts and and so many things occurred that led up to this Ayahuasca ceremony and many layers of awakening before that, awakening to the power of my mind, awakening into my feminine shortly after my father died and getting divorced, and going down the whole road of learning Tantra and connecting to my heart, and recognizing that my heart and my mind actually were not connected, and they needed to Come into connection concepts. You know, I had not had. It's not

Andrea Enright 13:43

like there was a lot of transformation happening. And I'm curious at this time, how was this impacting your relationships, like your romantic relationship, your marriage?

Ali Katz 13:55

I mean, it led to the end of my marriage. I recognized that I needed to get divorced. I was not in love with my husband. I loved him, but I had married him from a place of deep insecurity, and he wasn't growing with me. If he had been willing to grow with me, we'd still be married, because the we actually still live together. We got divorced 20 years ago, we still live together to this day. So gosh, I would have loved if we could have, like, stayed in romantic relationship, but that that wasn't possible because he wasn't willing to go on the healing and growth path. I think I was his healing and growth path, but he's still really far behind. And at the same time, I didn't want to abandon him. He's the father of my children, so I made a vow and a commitment the day that I told him that I wanted to get divorced, that we were going to stay friends and CO parent our children. And he told me, fuck you. You have lost that privilege that is not going to happen. And I held the vision. I held the vision like, Okay, I hear you and I. I'm going to hold this vision that it is going to happen. Ultimately, it did. It did occur. But in that in that separation, in that divorce, I was able to experience a series of awakenings into my feminine, into my direct experience of what I call oneness, or God's Spirit source, and all of these awakenings were powerful and wonderful, but I was still not happy. There was a deep inner conflict inside of me that, at the time I did not realize was an inner conflict. I just knew that I wasn't happy. I didn't like the people in my life, I didn't like the friends that I had, and I only had a couple of friends, and there was this longing, and I couldn't quite figure out what I was longing for. So when I went into this Ayahuasca journey, and I saw and I felt this world that works for everyone, and living in harmony. And I was like, Oh, this, this is what I desire. And I came back into my life after that, and systematically, was very confronted, like, as like, wow, about how I was creating the exact opposite. I came back into my life after that Ayahuasca ceremony, and systematically was extremely confronted, cannot ignore it, saw all the ways that I was creating the exact opposite of a world that works for everyone. I was creating or attempting to create, a world that works for me, and I didn't know how to be in community. I didn't know how to have friends. I didn't know how to feel connected. I was the way I was leading my business, the way, you know, when I when I would go on TV, my ego, it was the only time that my mind was silent. I would show up, I'd be at the studio, I'd get ready to be talking, my mind would be completely silent because I really egoically was like, I'm doing what I'm here to do. I'm on, going on TV. You know, I'm going to be seen by all these people. And kind of the final straw for that period was I showed up to go on a show called The Nancy Grace show, where she has a bunch of lawyers on to talk about whatever's happening in the news. It was about Tiger Woods divorce, and I was literally about to go on, and I hear this booming voice in my head, and it said, Alexis, what the fuck are you doing? You can never do this again. You spent four hours to get hair and makeup, get a car, go to the studio and gossip about another human being on television. You're contributing to the world negative 1000 you can never do this again. I was like, what? Wow.

Andrea Enright 17:52

Okay, it's the perfect segue into my question is, like, what were you taught about relationships growing up? Because you're saying right now, it's like you didn't know how to be in those relationships.

Ali Katz 18:05

If I look back at what I was taught about relationships growing up, it was all the surface. My parents were very surface level focused. I grew up in Miami. It was all about image. It was all about the way you look. It was all about what you do. And in my family, I was the pretty one and my sister was the smart one. That was very destructive. We're both pretty and smart

Andrea Enright 18:34

humans like to categorize stuff, and

Ali Katz 18:36

because I was the pretty one, I had a real question about my insides, like, was there anything real here? And I didn't know, and because of that, I had a very hard time connecting with other people. So there were all these social dynamics that were happening in my world that I was navigating really poorly. I was very confused about, yeah, just a lot of I was very outcast in high school. I felt much more comfortable with the like, Stoner poor kids than I did with the wealthy, you know, Jewish families that were part of my family's circle. And again, it was this inner conflict. There was a deep, deep, deep, inner conflict. I now know that my relationship with myself was fractured, that really, I would say, because of my parents and the way that they did not like each other, and they really put me in the middle, as many parents do. I had then, a war inside of me, because the parts of myself that were like my mom, feminine, like my dad, masculine, were at war inside of me. I did not know this back then. I now know it, and I can see it very clearly, and that was part of what led you know. I. Link to life, wanting me to marry myself to reconcile this fragmentation.

Andrea Enright 20:07

Wow, so it sounds like you've effectively learned some values about relationships while growing up, and then had to unlearn them completely.

Ali Katz 20:16

There was a complete deconstruction that needed to occur, and I needed to leave Los Angeles in order for that to happen, because I built everything in Los Angeles and so that Ayahuasca, September oh nine, the television show, November oh nine, January, 1 2010 I moved to Boulder, Colorado. Packed up everything, the kids, the ex husband, the animals, 2u hauls. We moved to Boulder, Colorado. I didn't know why I was moving there. Other than that, I had to leave LA and then all the planes were pointing to go to Boulder Colorado. And it turned out that the reason that I was moving there was so that I could unravel and deconstruct everything while at the same time learning how to connect to myself, and therefore then be able to connect to other people, and therefore then be able to call in that thing that I was longing for, which ultimately was community and belonging. You know, they say, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but it was the belonging layer that I was just craving so much, but I couldn't actually have, because I wasn't reconciled with these warring parts inside of myself, right?

Andrea Enright 21:36

It seems like ultimately, this belonging has two layers. Is that you want it to belong to you, and then you want it to belong to a greater community. But the former has to come first. So I'm also just hearing so much bravery and courage to just like, Okay, I'm reinventing, like I did all this stuff, all these layers of success. Live by the beach, you know, successful on TV, and now you're like, yep, that's all going away, letting go of it all. Wow, that's a lot of letting go. Like, as someone who's just let go a lot of stuff in the last year, I find it excruciating, and I fight and scream many points before I eventually, like, really drop it. And so, yeah, I just want to, like, take a moment to honor that that's that's really

Ali Katz 22:23

hard to do. When I moved to Boulder, I bought a farm, a two acre farm, not for me to live on, but for my kid's dad to grow medical marijuana. This is back in 2010 before you know, there was anyway. And the day I signed the papers, I said, mark my words, I will never live here. Be very careful when you say, Never

Andrea Enright 22:44

say, did you end up living? Yes, yes. It turns out like a great place to live.

Ali Katz 22:49

It turns out that I actually bought that farm so that I could literally walk away from everything, move to that farm, fire everyone that was working for me, change my name and file bankruptcy. So I had had a persona out in the world as, like, a million dollar business builder. And you know this again, this very like, like, Oh, she knows you know what she's doing. And here I very clearly, at this time, do not know what I'm doing. And so giving, literally giving up everything, all of the ego, all of the success, all of the image. And I did a kicking and screaming I have a great video at some point I'll need to relate, release it of right as I'm moving out of the house that we had moved into in Boulder this like big, 3800 square foot house on a lake on a cul de sac, you know, two houses down from our best friends at the time, and I'm in my bathroom, and I'm like, packing everything up to, like, leave to go to the farm, and I'm just sobbing. And I'm like,

Ali Katz 23:50

I don't understand what's going on. Why am I doing this?

Ali Katz 23:54

Why am I making these choices? This does not seem like a good idea, and I I made a commitment to myself that I would spend a year only doing what I would do for free, because I had recognized some part of me recognized that I had been corrupted by money, by my pursuit of money, by my pursuit of success, had corrupted me and had I'd lost connection with who I was, why I was here, and what was mine to do. I knew that I was not here to pursue money as a goal, but that is what I was doing, and so I couldn't actually trust myself from that place, because I was internally corrupted.

Andrea Enright 24:38

What rises up for me is that like you were listening to spirit. I think this is how Janelle phrases it. I don't know if does that land for you? Oh, yeah. And it takes me back to something, an organization Janelle and I were part of years ago. It was called the three to five Club, which and our mentor there told us, like, you need to have a why that cannot be checked off. You need to have a goal that you can be. Doing until the day you die, right? And money is not enough of one, and this is what you, what you, I guess, what you decided, but still to really move toward that. It just sounds like there would be so much fear. I guess maybe. How were you building relationships at that time so you could be supported in in all of this change?

Ali Katz 25:20

I hired a lot of people during that time who were shepherding me through this process, and there was a way that I was able to accept that almost I needed to pay for my friends. I needed to pay to get into proximity with people that I respected, that I looked up to, so that I could get close to them, so that I could see what was really going on. In fact, prior to that, I had invested $100,000 to be in a mastermind with a woman that I had long watched from afar and judged. But in that judging, I had recognized, oh, my judgment is actually showing me what I want, right, like the way the jealousy often shows us what we want. I recognized, oh, I'm I'm paying a lot of attention to this woman. I need to go to her next event and buy whatever she is her top level offer so I can get close to her and understand what is it? Does she actually have what I want? And so I saw that I was doing that, and I and I saw that that was valuable, but then I needed to let go of earning money, and I needed to let go of making every decision through the lens of money, and I needed to let go of buying my friends so that I could come back to the truth of who I was and spend this year on this farm only doing what I would do for free, earning the max I could earn because I was going to go through the bankruptcy process was 5000 a month, because you could, you know that those were the rules for bankruptcy. I had set up a bunch of asset protection I'm an estate planning lawyer, asset protection lawyer, and so I'd set up a bunch of asset protection and structures with maybe in some part of my consciousness, the knowing that maybe this day was going to come, because I'd set those up many years before, and there was a way as well that the bank part of the bankruptcy journey was like, I need to test these asset protection structures, because I'm going to, if I'm going to teach about them, I need to know if they work.

Andrea Enright 27:39

Catch me up on the timeline here. So are you nearing when you married yourself?

Ali Katz 27:44

No, marrying myself was still very far away. So, so this was 2010 through really. 2010 through 2012 was this process, right? And I don't know if you all remember, but 2012 was a very particular moment in time, from like an astrological standpoint and a timeline shift standpoint, like Mayan Calendar stuff, like a whole thing, you know, December 2012 was like, This is the moment. So there was some way that my system was in tune with that. And I actually ended up filing bankruptcy in August of 2012 um, 12, and that was like the completion of this year, where I would only do what I was doing for free, and I was now then beginning to, you know, enter back into the world, right? So if we think of like the hero's journey, so like the letting go of everything. While I was there, I discovered some critically important concepts around money, something I call money dysmorphia, something I now know is the journey to financial liberation. It's all part of, you know, this body of work that ultimately only reconciled right around my 50s. And I was, you know, pre 40 at that point, late 30s, I think, is like the perfect time for a midlife crisis, a spiritual awakening, whatever you want to call it, you burn out, you know? It's all the same. It's like, okay, what the fuck am I actually doing? You know? Yeah. So that was what was happening, yeah. So what I began to discover in that time is, oh, I want to be in community. With people I love. And I wasn't mature enough to hold it. Wasn't mature enough to hold it. But as I came back into the world in that time, I would then, you know, step into this kind of nine year timeline of really learning how to get right with money. Get right with leadership. Get right with connection with other people. Get. I started to explore polyamory at that time, I knew that, I knew that, like the traditional monogamous context, was not for me, but I didn't know how to do polyamory.

Andrea Enright 30:14

And I'm hearing here just a theme that we talk a lot about, on permission to be human, which is just a beautiful letting go of form, right? Like life is supposed to look like this? No, actually, I want it to look like this in all the ways, right? And so I hear now that you're thinking about community potentially, instead of having one partner,

Ali Katz 30:34

yes, but I did keep entering into serial monogamous context, one after the other after the other, that happened for quite some time in that time period, because I do think that my system still felt like it needed that, like safety of a man. But then every time I would get into a relationship, and I was not finding the safety, I was not, yeah, I wasn't finding the love that I really wanted. I wasn't fine, and I there was something every time, you know, it's like in relationships for like, two or three years and and then they would end oftentimes, because in that phase, because I wanted more freedom, and I could give them their I learned how to give them their freedom, but they couldn't, you know, give me my freedom. And all of that ultimately led to 2022 and, well, really, really 2021 I would say. So, you know, it's like 10 years of just, or really eight years of just like I'm figuring it out, I'm like, following the signs and listening and focusing on my business and focusing on raising my kids, because they were teenagers, you know, through that time, and that required a lot of really a recognition that I needed to grow up. There became a moment in time where I actually almost sent my daughter away, because, in my mind, I was clearly not able to parent her. Well, she got into high school, she started getting into drugs and sex very quickly, getting in trouble. I didn't feel like I was able to parent her, and I was about to send her away to a wilderness therapy program. And again, life conspiring for my benefit and my ability to listen. I got a very loud message again, the booming voice, and it says, Be her mother. I don't know what that means. What do you mean? Be her mother. And it became clear that really, what spirit was saying to me was, be her mother, my own internal mother that had never really been mothered. And through that, I would be able to be her mother, and one of us needed to grow up, either me or her. And I decided it would be me, and then I would be able to hold her and her growing up. And so instead of sending her away, I actually took her with me. This was 2015, rock bottom of all rock bottom moments in my life, and all the things like I thought bankruptcy was rock bottom, moving to a farm was rock bottom. No, it was not that would come a couple years later with the real rock bottom and this recognition that I needed not send her away. I needed to take her with me. I came down to Costa Rica, I brought her to envision festival with me, and had another very, very big supported awakening in that moment that really led to me being here now, and led to me having the name that I have now, and began kind of this next phase of my growing up, my real Growing up, stepping into my full role as CEO, stepping into my full role as her mother and her brother's mother. And through all of that, then I get to 2021, and I'd been through this process now of I'm creating this marriage contract with myself, and I can see that in the creation of this marriage contract with myself, I actually really love who I am. It was like, wow,

Andrea Enright 34:10

you're falling in love with yourself, like it sounds like, over this course of all of this time, you've slowly fallen in love with yourself.

Ali Katz 34:18

Yes, and was able to see, oh, this internal war where I had two names, I was living two names out in the world. I was still living as Alexis Neely, the lawyer, and I was Ali Shanti, this like feminine fun creature. And I had two brands, right? One Brand serving lawyers, and one brand serving, you know, creative entrepreneurs. And I was able to see, oh, there's this war between Alexis Neely, this very masculine, driven, ambitious part of myself, and then Ali Shanti, this very creative, expressive, right brain part of myself. And they're at war. They hate each other. They actually both believe that the other is. Winning everything, and they're constantly fighting.

Andrea Enright 35:04

I love this vision with two there's two of you, right, just and you were going back and forth. So, so in the marriage, then to yourself, did these people become one?

Ali Katz 35:15

I had already taken the integrated name of ally cats, like ally cats was already living in the world, and the name la Katz came to me in the jungle in Costa Rica when I was in a deep prayer and back in 2015 even though I didn't actually embody the name until 2019 so it was like four years where I got the name, but then it took time to like live into it, and I realized in this, in this deep moment of prayer, that Alexis Neely and Ali Shanti wanted to die, both of them, I wanted to die. Wait.

Andrea Enright 35:53

Okay, so I'm hearing just a death, a death of the two alleys internally. And I just want to point out brave arts, we're familiar on permission to be human, with the importance of sometimes killing a relationship, yeah, the relationship doulas that help with this. I'm sure you're familiar with that too, ally, and so I'm hearing that you had to let go of those two alleys you were carrying. So what did that process look like?

Ali Katz 36:20

Alexis Neely and Ali Shanti wanted to die, but in that process of recognizing that they wanted to die, I recognized as well that something wanted to live. And as I began to get curious with the part of me that I call oneness. So I've got this part of me that I call oneness that's connected to source that is, you know, the all of the everything. And as I came from that place and questioned the thoughts and the feelings and the emotions and everything, I was like, Okay, well, if these parts want to die, but something wants to live. What is that? And I reached into the future and I and I was able to connect in with what wanted to live and feel her, embody her, even though I was very far away from embodying her at that time, for just a moment, I was able to touch her and glimpse her and give her a name, and that name was ally cats. And so I began to make choices that would lead me to her. And ultimately, I let go of the names. I reconciled everything online. But that was surface, you know, that was really, that was like surface level. It was good and important, you know, to claim the name and reconcile everything externally. But I was at this women's gathering in maybe it was like October of 21 and this woman said to me, you should marry yourself. She didn't know I had done a marriage contract, but yet she said this to me, and I was like, Okay, I already did this marriage contract. I did fall in love with myself through that process, I made vows, I created clarity around all of the different relationships in my life. Bucketed these relationships between blood family, chosen family, purpose, family business, family, fans, family, how I would relate to all of them, creating these appropriate layers of boundaries, which I needed to do, because I otherwise didn't know how to manage all of the relationships, because a lot of people were in my life at that point, and then I created practices, right? So this is all in my marriage contract, but her saying you should marry yourself had me realize, oh, I actually need to take the next step of creating ritual, which is what marriage is, right? It's ritual. It's magic. We're doing magic. And I have a whole set of tools that I call Practical Magic, which are like really practical, legal, financial, strategic planning tools that create magic. So I was like, Okay, this is this needs to be ritualized.

Andrea Enright 39:26

Okay, so you, you said ritual and magic kind of are the same thing. Can you tell me more about that? If you think

Ali Katz 39:32

about a proposal, a signing of a contract, a wedding ceremony, these are rituals. They're ritualistic ways that we create reality, right? So when you sign a contract with somebody, you are creating a relationship. So these are ritualistic, ceremonial ways of creating so we create a relationship by. Signing a contract.

Andrea Enright 40:00

Yes, and society teaches us this. We're faced with these rituals kind of throughout life.

Ali Katz 40:06

We kind of take them for granted. We don't think of them necessarily as rituals, but that is what they are. They are rituals that create reality. This is how we create reality. Actually is is by doing this.

Andrea Enright 40:19

And are you shifting these rituals? Are you changing them? Are you just adding to them? How? What's your take on them?

Ali Katz 40:26

Yeah, I'm infusing them with intention, beautiful, beautiful. I'm infusing them with consciousness, right? So that they're not just things that we do. We're not just going through the motions. We are actually infusing them with prayer intention, so that they have real meaning inside of our nervous system and externally to the outside world as well. Right? I'm like signaling something

Andrea Enright 40:52

to me, like what you just said is really the poignancy of the marriage to yourself, right? Because you are treating marriage in a different way. Yes.

Ali Katz 41:03

So the next step was to get engaged.

Andrea Enright 41:06

And so where did you propose to yourself? Tell me about what that looked like.

Ali Katz 41:12

My 48th birthday, I had bought the ring. I brought together a circle of friends who are ritualists. They're very they create ceremony for themselves. I'd invited, you know some people. I did a formal proposal. I did an acceptance, put on the ring. That was November 17, 48th birthday. So whenever that was 2021, and I still didn't think I was going to have a wedding. But I talked to a astrologer, and I was like, I'm thinking about doing this wedding thing. He's like, Okay, well, if you're gonna do it, you should do it between February and April in Costa Rica. It was like, Oh, well, I'm gonna be in Costa Rica during that time. So that's cool. I chose the date, February 22 2022 and I ended up having a full, complete, total wedding, which up until three weeks before, I still didn't know that that's what was happening. Like, I thought it was gonna have, like a little like ceremony Lena, like, go to the beach and, like, marry yourself. No, that is not what happened. I had a full wedding. And you'll see it. I'll share it with you. We filmed it. Actually made like a little, a little course about it, because I was like, There's something significant happening here. I need to document this. It turned into a 50 person wedding at a home overlooking the ocean. Full wedding dress, which the wedding was on a Tuesday, the Friday before I did not have that wedding dress. There was a harpist, two officiants, flower girls wearing the most incredible flower girl dresses you could ever imagine, bridesmaids, DJ, wedding cake caterer, and as it was happening, I was just listening each step of the way, and I was kind of in shock and awe that this is what was happening. But life was clearly conspiring for me to have a full wedding, and I went into the wedding that day not knowing what was going to happen. I had no idea what a self wedding ceremony was at all, and my officiants were masterful. And it turns out that that wedding was actually not just a marriage of me to me, but me to the community,

Andrea Enright 43:43

not just me to me, not just you to you, but you to the community. Let's dissect that a bit, and I really want to though, also ask like, so Why marry yourself?

Ali Katz 43:57

I needed to commit to myself. I needed to stop waiting for the one. You know, this the king. And there's still a lot of people in my life who think that I'm like missing something because I don't have the king. Interesting. Yeah, and that's so I, you know, I still like come up against that in various ways. Are you

Andrea Enright 44:19

open to marrying someone else. Now, can you be married to yourself and someone else?

Ali Katz 44:24

Well, I am polyamorous.

Ali Katz 44:28

That is the truth of my viewers.

Ali Katz 44:31

Yeah, sure, yes, okay, okay, you were done waiting for this person, this one, this ultimate that was gonna claim me, right, right. Okay, I love that right as well. Because really, and something I talk to my clients about a lot is like, Okay, we need to choose ourselves, instead of waiting for someone to choose us. And yet, our whole life, I think from birth, so many of us are like, okay, how can I be attractive enough? So. Successful enough, smart enough, amazing enough, so that someone will choose me. You claimed yourself

Ali Katz 45:04

and that someone was me. I did. I did, yeah, yeah. It was amazing. And in the in the claiming of myself and in the choosing of myself, that I think that was the thing that was the most surprising thing is the way that I felt, really this, this belonging and connection with the people in my life, not all of whom are still in my life, which is very interesting, and it didn't matter, because now people can come and go through my life without a clinging, without a grasping, without a oh, gosh, if they leave. I'm devastated, like there's a steady, consistent primary partner right here that I just didn't have that relationship before. I didn't, I didn't have that relationship before with the knowing that I am my primary partner. I am the one, and people can come and go throughout my life. And today, as you mentioned, I have a lot of life partners, interestingly enough, and all of those are impermanent, because everybody's going to die. We're all, you know, they're all going to die. Yes, they're all going to leave me at some point in time, or I'll leave them, because I'll die. And so, you know, getting right with that actually has really allowed me to transition through my last and most very, very recent a relationship transition that I'm still in right now with a man that I I would look at him in our relationship and I'd be like, Oh, my god, i Wow. I can't even believe it. We are in Wow. I am so in love with you, and that relationship is transitioning into a new form. And because I have this relationship with me as we are in this relationship transition, I don't have to villainize him. I don't have to other him. I don't have to cut him out of my life, even though, in some ways maybe that would, like, be psychologically easier. Like, okay, let me just go no contact with you. Like, forget that you exist. That is actually not the world that I want to create. I want to create a world where we can be fluid in our relationships with people, where with the people that we are in love with, with the people that we love, we get to stay in each

Andrea Enright 47:29

other's lives. Yeah, I love this for life this, right?

Ali Katz 47:33

The form can transition, yeah, but the love can remain.

Andrea Enright 47:39

So I mean, and love begets love, right? It sounds like you're just expanding your capacity to love all the time, rather than like having to choose and make it smaller again.

Ali Katz 47:48

Yeah, I've expanded my capacity to love. I really love myself. My kids love me, which I don't think was always so certain. I love my work, I love my clients, I love who I am, why I'm here, what's mine to do? Like there's there's no more questioning my mind no longer beats me up. I don't shame myself. I don't hide I almost never go into a downward spiral of negative or victimized thinking anymore. I feel empowered. It's not to say there's no hard things. There's been a lot of hard things. I had a breakup with a COO business partner that almost like took my company from me. That was right, you know, shortly actually, after the self marriage. Because when you do something like this, everything that's not in alignment is going to come up to be seen exactly.

Andrea Enright 48:49

But that's and that's why, ultimately, even though it's hard, as we say, like, I mean, things that are a pain in the ass are usually my biggest personal growth catalyst. And so that's just the way it goes. So it's fascinating to hear your journey leading up to this marriage with yourself. And I don't know I'm thinking like, Let's encourage everyone to have a marriage with themselves before they get married to someone else. Because I know I've also heard Janelle talk about her position as solo poly, and how she describes this is that she puts her relationship with herself first before any other relationships. Does that resonate with you

Ali Katz 49:26

absolutely, and so in the past, where I would go from one kind of, you know, serial like, right relationship to relationship to relationship. That's not happening. Now, I'm not in a hurry to get back into a relationship with anybody else at this time, I'm actually quite full relationally, and I'm also open. I'm I'm, there's a guy that I met that I've been talking to that, like, really curious about, like, okay, but I just want to get to know you. Before we start to engage sexually, before we I want to go slow.

Andrea Enright 50:06

Yeah, I love that. And that also speaks to what you said earlier, about like, not grasping, right? You're just like, you know, you're holding on loosely as a what are they? 38 special said like 1819, 86 There's a song called hold on loosely, like, just, you know, like, that's okay, and I hear you doing that. Is there any last thing you'd like to say to bravehearts around your marriage, to self, around this journey, and then we'll tell bravehearts how they can get a hold of you, how they can watch your wedding, and how they can reach you in business, anything, any last words,

Ali Katz 50:44

you're worth. The commitment to yourself. Anything that you see outside of yourself is a reflection of your own internal consciousness. And so if there's something that you want, give it to yourself, and in the process of that, begin to build self trust, which is the most critical thing that you could ever give to yourself, is self trust. Nobody can ever take it from you once you have it and you deserve it. To me, it's the ultimate fulfillment. It's the ultimate success is to trust yourself.

Andrea Enright 51:23

I love that. I love that so beautiful ally. How can, how can brave hearts see your wedding?

Ali Katz 51:31

Yes, so if you go to the alley cats, T H, E, A L, I K, A, T z.com, forward, slash, Mary, M, A, R, R, Y. Hyphen yourself, Mary, it might be maybe we're going to just get it up at Mary, because it's easier, easier, but you'll find it the alley cats calm forward so and we'll put it in the show notes, I'm sure. Mary. Hyphen yourself, you'll see the wedding ceremony and a place that you can then opt in to see, like, the whole thing, like, how it came to be, the engagement, everything, yeah,

Andrea Enright 52:06

this commitment to self is just, is so beautiful. And I, I feel like there was so much to take in. I couldn't, like, I'm gonna, like, finish this interview, and then I'm gonna go listen to it later again to, like, just, just take up in all of these nuggets. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for being willing to come on, permission to be human. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. Your journey is really inspiring. Thank you, Bravehearts, for listening. We love you and we'll see you soon. Bye, bye.

Andrea Enright 52:37

Hey, Bravehearts, looking for permission, work with us, Andrea offers permission coaching, and Janelle offers erotic wellness sessions. Follow us on Instagram, meet us in real life at permission to be human workshops in Denver. Subscribe to our newsletter. Do all this and more at our website, permission to be human, dot live. You.