I heard the rumble beneath my feet.
A storm warning.
I think we all heard it.
I think we all knew that 2020 would change us.
I’m not sure that any of us knew how much.

How much wreckage, ache and wounds it would leave in its wake.

The people who died.
The people who suffered.
The people who wailed for a nation and a world to wake up.
The people who lost incomes and opportunities.
The people who were trapped.

2020 was a year I proclaimed boldness over my life. I knew that if I was to continue in the direction I was heading, I would need to harness my fears and daily make choices that went against my own tendencies to anxiety. So with an understanding of what it would mean to be bold, I went into the year asking for the grace to keep space for myself and others as I navigated the unknowns, and the confidence to trust the calling.

And then it began.

My steadfast and strong grandfather being taken by cancer in mere weeks, gripping onto my cousin as we grappled with the loss we just couldn’t comprehend and the realization that we couldn’t hold a funeral. The world announcing a pandemic, and staying home to stay safe. Thirty-three people murdered near our city by a man dressed as a police officer. Watching the outcry of the Black Lives Matter movement and discussing the systemic racism found in every corner of our world, including our own mixed-race family. Finding that our current home might not be the best place for our little family to continue growing, trying to sell our little home and find a new one. Kidney stones. Sending our daughter to her first year of a public school during a pandemic with masks in her pockets. A grandmother diagnosed with cancer….

But I see it there.

Boldness.

It’s a golden thread.

It’s in those quiet moments of attempting to hold each other close in the grief despite past traumas and pain. In that persistence in writing applications despite a lack of work opportunities. In the discussions with those in Women in Film about how to better support our BIPOC community. Trusting that our next home was waiting for us as we did the work of preparing and searching. Accepting sponsorship to take online classes from a producer and writer in England and learning how to collaborate with colleagues in new ways. Advocating for my own physical health in an emergency room. Supporting our daughter through so much change into her first year of school. Pitching ideas to broadcasters and honouring contracts. Finding a new sense of ourselves after so much heartache and pain.

& so,

We’ve suffered, and we’ve come out battered and a bit wounded.

I would also argue, that a lot of that wounding and reshaping…

It was for a way to be made new in this new decade.

We are called to new things.

If we stay the same,

Live the way we always have lived

See-through the same lens we’ve always been viewing it all through,

We’ll never be truly becoming.

Making the bold next right move has transformed the way I look at things. The world is a place full of beauty, and full of pain. How we hold space for both of those truths is something that will define us and those around us.

I want to continue into the next year continuing the work that boldness showed me.

It’s possible to call out what is dangerous, what is systemic and harmful and not lose the grace and perspective that allows us to recognize the pain and wounds that have shaped the situations before us.

Ever complex, ever-evolving, ever-changing and always needing someone to hold space for the next bold right thing.

Conrads Beach, Nova Scotia. 2020

How is it that we are already at the midway point of 2020?

It's safe to say this year was not a year any of us would have expected.

Globally, a pandemic and call to action to address racism, specifically in regards to Black communities.

Nationally, the effects of a pandemic and wake up call to how we work and play.

Provincially, a mass shooting concluded to be our countries largest to date and the very strict lockdown and social distancing measures our government took. Their leadership leading us to have zero cases the past two and a half weeks and to open up to the Atlantic provinces after Canada Day to connect with our maritime families.

Personally, the loss of a grandfather, a delay and unknown time for a memorial service, work being shifted to pre-production and development instead of production and being on sets. Working from home, teaching preschool from home…

I could go on…

I started 2020, embracing the word "Bold'. I wanted to embrace the next right bold moves.

Shockingly despite the blows, this remains true. I may not be hopping on a plane like I thought I would be, or seeing Jeremy off to Israel for a work trip, but we have found that the bold moves can also be the quiet and unseen ones.

Applying for a learning opportunity, saying yes to new initiatives, developing new concepts and working on new collaborations with ongoing projects.

Recognizing a need for our family and stepping out in faith to ask for it. Unknowns all around but feeling strongly that it's the Bold right next step we need to take and patiently see where it takes us.

So far, 2020 has taught me that Boldness and making Bold moves are often not as loud as you think it would be.

It's not the roar the lioness makes, but the way she looks before she does it. Her roar is simply a signal of what is to come. A minor thing in comparison to the action she is about to take.

So, although I thought 2020 would be about me making a big noise in work and life, what I realize is that it's the intent behind the next bold right move that is what get's you places and sometimes the next bold right thing is not what you expected until you are right on top of it.

And then you pull back, look around and prepare to roar before leaping forward and digging into what comes next.

The days ticked by in December.

I still hadn’t identified my one word for 2020.

A year that looks and feels like something special. 100 years ago, women in North America and beyond were beginning to modernize and break out of the molds that had been set for them. It seems fitting that we are entering a new decade where #metoo, cultural sensitivity and gender parity are topics on the table. Ten years ago I graduated as an American Sign Language English Interpreter, got engaged to my now partner in crime and started my first career-focused job interpreting at a high school. I was attempting to fit the mold I believed was what I was made for. Part of it was learned, part of it was my own interpretation of what was expected of me, and part of it was fear of not having a place in this world. So I made it myself.

I didn’t ask permission then, and thankfully I don’t ask permission now.

It was seeing a simple posting from a professional entity on social media mid-December that moved me into 2020. A simple post about an opportunity. So I clicked. I clicked through many links and read through all the information and then it dawned on me.

This is my next BOLD right move.

Bold

bold | bəʊld | adjective 1 (of a person, action, or idea) showing a willingness to take risks; confident and courageous

It’s wasn’t the certainty that I could get something that made me sense the rightness of it. It was the realization that I had come to a place, somehow in the past 365-day journey where I could click through all of these links and recognize that who I am matched what was being asked for. That I could step up, raise my hand and ask “How about me?” and do that with a nervous heartbeat, but one that was assured, confident and ready to step out and welcome the risks.

I am ready.

2019 was, in many respects, a difficult year. It was also a year of growth and seeing that growth made me realize that it is time to be making moves.

Not rushed and unsure moves.

Just simple, patient and the next bold right move.