The Shape of a Calling
~ On listening inward, honoring thresholds, and finding my way to celebrancy.
I do not think a calling always arrives all at once.
Sometimes it comes through a whisper, a nod, a knowing, or tiny happenings we only understand in hindsight.
For me, celebrancy came that way: not as a lightning bolt, but as a shape slowly forming. A wedding altar. A coaching conversation. A friend’s question. A tiny acorn. A growing willingness to listen inward and trust what I heard.
In 2014, dear friends asked me to officiate their wedding. I was surprised, honored, and nervous.
I wrote their ceremony the day before, with their words, my memories, and a sense of who they were together in my heart. Then they arrived at the altar. I took a deep breath, focused on them, and began.
The ceremony was fun, beautiful, emotional, and alive. The couple and their guests laughed, cried, and made the little sounds people make when a story lands in all ways intended. I felt surprisingly comfortable. I also recognized how much I loved having a mic in my hand. Another sign?
Afterward, many people told me how meaningful the ceremony had been. And still, I did not think, “I should become a celebrant.”
More than ten years later, a friend who had been a celebrant for many years asked me, “Why aren’t you a celebrant?”
My honest answer was, “I don’t know. It never occurred to me.”
And yet the thought of it felt immediately warm.
I had already officiated a handful of weddings but had also told my wife Tina, I could not imagine marrying people I did not know. It felt too personal. Too sacred. How could I hold that kind of space for strangers?
What I understand now is that people are whole beings trying to find their way through change, grief, love, fear, longing, uncertainty, and becoming. They are trying to make meaning. They are trying to come home to themselves.
That understanding began to take root through coaching.
Before becoming a success coach, I spent many years in corporate HR, in countless conversations about work, performance, conflict, leadership, fear, ambition, and change. But one day, while coaching an employee, something in me became very still and clear.
I was witnessing myself from above, on high, fully present with another human being, listening beneath the words, sensing what wanted to be named. My felt sense was a tickle of energy in my heart and a full-body tingle. Then came a clear inner knowing:
This is what you are meant to be doing.
Within two weeks, I had enrolled in a year-long coaching program. That program felt like a return to myself, my gifts, and a purpose I had spent much of my life unable to name.
For years, whenever people asked, “What are you passionate about?” or “What is your purpose?” I felt dread rise in me.
Please don’t call on me.
I could admire other people’s certainty, but I did not feel that same inner current. I felt longing, envy, and shame.
Coaching changed that. It lit something up in me. I felt alive, curious, energized, and hungry to learn. My courage shifted first. I began to understand that my own self-work was not separate from my work with others. Examining my own experience became my rite of passage into a more heart-centered life.
That same passage now informs my work as a celebrant. As a coach, I learned to listen for what is said and what is not yet said. I learned to hold space without taking over the experience. I learned that presence is active. It has warmth, boundaries, honesty, and care.
Ceremony asks for the same kind of presence.
My training with Natural Transitions Institute helped me understand ritual in a way I had not before. I used to balk at ritual. Some rituals felt so...extra. A little performative. A little unnecessary.
But through NTI, I began to see the care beneath the form.
Ritual gives people a way to move through transition rather than brush past it. It honors what is being left behind, gives shape to the space between, and welcomes what is now becoming true.
One NTI exercise asked us to identify and speak about a symbol in our lives that held meaning. I chose the acorn.
The acorn first appeared in my life through a tiny pair of earrings Tina wore when we were first together. Over time, it became more than a sweet memory. It became a talisman of love, potential, rootedness, and unseen becoming. During that NTI sharing session, I realized how quietly and powerfully the acorn had been carrying its wisdom through my life.
A tiny thing holding a whole future.
That is what ritual can do. It can take an ordinary object, moment, gesture, or story and reveal the depth already living inside it.
Today, I see coaching and celebrancy as deeply connected. Coaching helps people walk through inner transitions with awareness and compassion. Celebrancy helps people mark outer and communal transitions with meaning and witness - honoring the before, the liminal space between, and the becoming.
I am focused on weddings now and love helping couples tell the truth of their love in ways that feel personal, grounded, and alive. I am also drawn to other rites of passage and community rituals.
Looking back, I do not think celebrancy suddenly appeared. I think I was being led by small signs and sacred nudges: people, conversations, places, opportunities, experiences, and the inner knowing I have grown to trust.
Each one left its imprint.
And when I began paying attention, celebrancy stopped feeling like a new path. It felt like the shape of a calling I had been walking toward all along.
~ by Mindy Shotwell
Mindy Shotwell is a professional, certified Life-Cycle Celebrant™, integral coach, and founder of Acorn & Roots Ceremonies in Portland, Oregon. After nearly three decades in corporate HR, she followed a deeper calling into heart-centered work rooted in presence, meaning-making, and whole-human care. Through ceremony and coaching, Mindy helps individuals, couples, and communities honor life’s thresholds with warmth, honesty, and intention.
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Interested in learning more about becoming a Life-Cycle Celebrant™ with NTI? Follow this link: https://www.naturaltransitions.org/certification
