MATRIMONY
A Book Launch Event
An unscripted, emergent, realtime encounter between Stephen Jenkinson & Kimberly Ann Johnson
Sunday, August 10th at 9am PT – online
MATRIMONY
In honor of the release of Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart’s Work
by Stephen Jenkinson
Available August 2025
by Stephen Jenkinson | available August 2025
What does it mean to approach matrimony as something other
than a predictable, foreseen conclusion?
Are weddings overly performative?
What does a ‘real’, ‘authentic’, ‘meaningful’ wedding look like?
What are the consequences of less people marrying, 15 minute weddings, or no weddings at all?
There’s a crackle to a live conversation.
Join Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly Ann Johnson for a live, emergent conversation on Sunday, August 10th.
There will be a book reading from Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart’s Work — a newly published work that implores us to reclaim the true purpose of matrimony and ritual, especially in a time of ceremonial illiteracy.
There will be reckoning, storytelling, cyphering, and Q&A.
“Rituals are waltzes with wild things.
If you don’t know what you’re doing—and ofttimes when you do—things can go sideways with unnerving suddenness and ease in ritual. Intention does not rule the day in ritual. In ritual, everything but you rules the day. Imagine, then, turning your love and hopes for a better day over to that. This book tracks ritual.” – Stephen Jenkinson
Who is this for?
- culture makers
- storytellers and those who uphold oral transmission
- celebrants, ceremonialists, or rites-of-passage guides
- marriage counselors, coaches, or therapists
- facilitators of men’s or women’s work
- students of folklore, mythology, or etymology
- builders of kinship networks, traditional skills, or intergenerational repair
- those disillusioned with hookup culture, app-induced intimacy, or sovereignty
“This book is for people who crave the village —
and are willing to be villagers.”
Kimberly Ann Johnson, Foreword to Matrimony
Registration for this impromptu, realtime encounter includes:
Access
Access to the live event and replay of the 90–120 minute unscripted conversation
between Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly Ann Johnson — a real-time exchange on matrimony, ritual,
culture, elderhood, and the old ways that honor the village and ancestors.
Book
Your $25 event fee includes a copy of the Matrimony paperback ($21.99 + shipping) for US residents.
Those who reside outside the US will receive an e-book.
Book Preview
You will immediately receive access to the book Prologue: Two by Two + Chapter One:
If Only There Were Words to Say It.
Book Discussion Guide
Our Matrimony Book Discussion Guide features powerful quotes + excerpts, as well as questions
for inquiry and reflection. Gather your people.
“Only a village can give one of its young away to matrimony. The village is the mediating translator of young love.”
Stephen Jenkinson
This book — and this event — are not only for those who have married or will marry.
They are for those who know that our ancestors are not receiving the honoring they need.
For those who suspect that kinship goes beyond family.
For those who are at the end of their rope with borrowing the sacred from everywhere else. For those whose grief for what has been forgotten propels them to remember.
The Spirit of Matrimony is here.
“Once, there was no audience; there were only witnesses to a ritual. The witnesses’ bodies shivered and swayed to what they heard, and that’s where the ritual event happened and took shape.” – Stephen Jenkinson
Advance Praise for Matrimony
“Matrimony is a triumph… a bold, clear-eyed view of what the marriage ritual could be, if we are courageous enough to tune in to the ancestors and to follow our truth.” — Manchán Magan, author of Thirty-Two Words for Field
“With Matrimony, Stephen Jenkinson trails a troubled beast… he sets our sights for the initiatory core of the endeavor. Turns out, we barely knew the thing at all.” — Martin Shaw, PhD, mythologist and author of Bardskull
“This book will shake loose your assumptions, invite you into the work of witnessing and being witnessed, and, if you let it, alter your understanding of what it is to be bound—to another, to time, to the making of meaning itself.” — Elena Brower, bestselling author of Practice You
This book — and this event — are not only for those who have married or will marry.
They are for those who know that our ancestors are not receiving the honoring they need.
For those who suspect that kinship goes beyond family.
For those who are at the end of their rope with borrowing the sacred from everywhere else. For those whose grief for what has been forgotten propels them to remember.
The Spirit of Matrimony is here.
“Once, there was no audience; there were only witnesses to a ritual. The witnesses’ bodies shivered and swayed to what they heard, and that’s where the ritual event happened and took shape.” – Stephen Jenkinson
Advance Praise for Matrimony
“Matrimony is a triumph… a bold, clear-eyed view of what the marriage ritual could be, if we are courageous enough to tune in to the ancestors and to follow our truth.” — Manchán Magan, author of Thirty-Two Words for Field
“With Matrimony, Stephen Jenkinson trails a troubled beast… he sets our sights for the initiatory core of the endeavor. Turns out, we barely knew the thing at all.” — Martin Shaw, PhD, mythologist and author of Bardskull
“This book will shake loose your assumptions, invite you into the work of witnessing and being witnessed, and, if you let it, alter your understanding of what it is to be bound—to another, to time, to the making of meaning itself.” — Elena Brower, bestselling author of Practice You
Event Details
Date
Sunday, August 10th, 2025
Time
9am PT / 12pm ET
90 minutes to 2 hours
Format
Book reading
Dialogue
Q&A
What's Included:
Cost
$25
*U.S. registrants will receive a physical copy of the book, international registrants will receive a digital version.
Matrimony Book Trailer
Matrimony
Book Trailer
For further study...
Forgotten Pillars offers a 5-part exploration of matrimony, patrimony, kinship, ancestors, and ceremony.
“Matrimony is the workings of alchemy upon
the solitary, sufficient human heart.
It isn’t the affirmation of human affection. It is the redemption of that affection,
recasting it as spirit citizenship. It is the mothering of a culture.”
It isn’t the affirmation of human affection. It is the redemption of that affection, recasting it as spirit citizenship. It is the mothering of a culture.”
Stephen Jenkinson
About Stephen Jenkinson:
Stephen is a worker, author, storyteller, culture activist, and co-founder of the Orphan Wisdom School with his wife Nathalie Roy. The school is a teaching house for skills of deep living and making human culture that are mandatory in endangered, endangering times. He makes books, tends farm and mends broken handles and fences, succumbs to interviews, teaches and performs internationally.
He has Master’s degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work).
Apprenticed to a master storyteller when a young man, he has worked extensively with dying people and their families, is former program director in a major Canadian hospital, former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school.
Stephen Jenkinson is the author of: Reckoning (2022), co-authored with Kimberly Ann Johnson, A Generation’s Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching, 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life – (live teaching, 2009), and Money and The Soul’s Desires: A Meditation (2002).
He is also the subject of the feature length documentary film Griefwalker, a portrait of his work with dying people, and Lost Nation Road, a shorter documentary on the crafting of the Nights of Grief and Mystery tours.
About Kimberly Ann Johnson:
Kimberly Johnson is an author, postpartum care activist, trauma educator, structural bodyworker and single mother. She graduated Valedictorian from Northwestern University with a BS in Social Policy (‘97).
She studied yoga directly with the three main lineage holders of the Krishnamacharya tradition- Desikachar, BKS Iyengar, and Pattabhi Jois and taught yoga full time for 15 years, while running a Structural Integration practice.
When radically rearranged by childbirth, Kimberly’s life changed shape to attend to the cultural chasm of postpartum care, and as a result she trained in Somatic Experiencing and Sexological Bodywork to be able to help women heal from birth injuries, gynecological surgeries and sexual boundary violations.
She is the author of the feminist trauma book Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power and Use it for Good (HarperWave, 2021) as well as the early mothering classic, The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions and Restoring Your Vitality (Shambhala, 2017) – translated into 8 languages. She is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma podcast with over 1M unique downloads.
MATRIMONY
A Book Launch Celebration
A live conversation between Stephen Jenkinsonand Kimberly Ann Johnson
A live conversation between Stephen Jenkinson
and Kimberly Ann Johnson
Sunday, August 10th
