Coming of Age Liturgy

I have moved through the ritual of girlhood without a ceremony, as many do, and I mourn those moments spent in idyllic bliss. Give me back my apostles of girlhood. Jesus was not greedy with his disciples. But I am. I wish them near. I beckon them back: orange push pops, Care Bears, Scooby-Doo, sugar cookies, sock monkeys, dried paintbrushes, Barbie dolls, theater tickets, the color pink, ribbons, imaginary friends, earnestness, innocence.

Even the Judas among my disciples—I wish they were close. I know what it is to be sold for thirty pieces of silver.

We slam bedroom doors and miss the rites. We move through milestones like passing stones on the side of a highway—fast, unnoticed, unceremonious. I do not propose that every passing day deserves cake and candles—but it deserves recognition. Instead, we opt for blurry, private transitions. Quiet moments that mark change but go uncelebrated. My own rite of passage into womanhood was muddled. It was marked by anxiety, not excitement—though I’ve come to confuse those feelings even now.

How do we reclaim ownership over the body as a daily liturgy?

We are taught to be suspicious of the body. It bleeds. It wants. It betrays. It swells and shrinks. And then we become worm food. Before we truly learn to look at ourselves, the body changes again and again, toppling over itself with feverish intensity. Coming of age is wrought with anxiety.

There comes a moment—maybe in your therapist’s office, maybe inside the pages of a notebook—when the throat opens. When the act of saying I am, I want, I will not becomes sacrament. Becomes psalm. To name oneself is an ancient ritual. And though this voice may not be loud, it is holy nonetheless.

There is a holiness in resistance. Not in obedience. A refusal to pretend that belonging must come at the cost of one’s soul. Simone Weil wrote, “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” But what she did not say—and what we must learn—is that roots rot. And the only way to stay alive is to tear ourselves from the soil that once held us.

Coming of age is not only becoming—but un-becoming. A slow peeling away of identities that were never truly ours. The holiness of not walking away, but walking toward what is meant for you—it feels like a flame to the gut.

May your voice rise like incense.
May your body become a sanctuary again.
May you be brave enough to let go,
And soft enough to change.

You are not behind.
You are not too much.
You are not lost.

You are becoming.
And let it be so.