space | spās | noun
1 a continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied
2 the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move
3 an interval of time (often used to suggest that the time is short considering what has happened or been achieved in it)
4 the portion of a text or document available or needed to write about a subject
5 the freedom and scope to live, think, and develop in a way that suits one

This year has sharpened me in ways I was not sure I was ready for or wanted.

For as brave and bold as some may believe me to be, I, too, can cave to the depths of doubt and weakness.

I realized this year that to claim space meant I needed to rise up and hold that space with the confidence I have. To not just fake or pretend but to truly and wholly own.

I was raised in parts but not in whole, on the value of humbleness and meekness within one's womanhood.

Yet something was nagging on me.

Something that brought me to tears when it kept raising it’s ugly head.

It happened simply and quietly when expressing myself around a dinner table.

It went something like this:

"I can give them something unique. I am a skilled storyteller and carry something others don't have. My previous training and way of seeing things make me excellent at what I do."

"You should watch how you say that. That sounds prideful, and it isn't Godly." was the reply.

"It's not prideful at all. If any of the men in this family sat here and said the same thing, I know for a fact they would be praised for their skills and intelligence. The same is true here. I know my skills, weaknesses, and where I need and want to grow. Both can be true." I responded.

It was a simple and symbolic yet crushing moment of realization.

The work was endless.

The struggle might be forever.

I spent months after this exchange navigating my self-doubt and wondering if anything would come of anything.

Yet during that time, I was learning what I was worth and what I was willing to do to make the effort I could make known.

I found that effort and work within a project of holding space for others.

This is my passion, and I have learned this more than any other this year.

I am meant to hold space for myself to do the heavy and essential work of holding space for others.

It won't stop here.

This word.

This theme.

It's a lifetime commitment.

Just because a new year comes and with it a new word,

Space will remain a word that I will hold and continue to strive for.

I pray as 2022 turns 2023 that, our pauses of reflections of the days behind us remind us of the sacred and beautiful art of being wholly and fully capable in our places.

None of it is a mistake.

Every single moment is here for the teaching.

The making and the breathing.

Thank you, 2022, for being the year that reminded me of the true intent behind the work.

Onwards,

con·ver·sa·tion | ˌkänvərˈsāSHən |

noun

a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged: she picked up the phone and held a conversation in French | [mass noun] : the two men were deep in conversation.

Conversation is happening all around and within us.

What does that look like?

The exchange of news and ideas?

Social Media has given us the licence to sound off. To believe we are carrying a conversation when in truth, it is a sounding board of one.

How often are we genuinely crafting our words to create a dialogue that moves past the 'me vs. you?'

5 Simple ways we can create a safe space in a conversation:

1. Drop and remove any name-calling from referencing a person or group of persons. e.g. clowns, idiots, etc.

When we rely on a caricature of an individual or group, we strip 'others' of their humanity and their identity as living and breathing individuals on this earth.

2. Know your values and realize that others' values will never perfectly align with yours.

When we truly honour our values, it's much easier to relax into the idea that someone else may be different. We stop being so concerned with the differences, become more content with our choices, and get curious about what makes others who they are.

3. Get curious.

When divisive statements/topics arise, realize there is often so much more than the statement beneath what is said. Upbringing, age, culture, personal experiences, and generational wounds are the backing of many of these strong stances.

4. Recognize you cannot change minds.

Instead of trying to convince someone of something, stand by your values and perspective while expressing yourself. Often it's our own calm and unwavering convictions that speak louder than any debate ever could.

5. Never tolerate bullying/racism /hate etc.

Safe space cannot exist within the atmosphere of bullying, racism etc. When this occurs, shut it down, don't negotiate or tolerate it.

I am reminded of Maya Angelou's statements when a racist comment was said in her house during a party she was hosting.

"I'm convinced that the negative has power. It lives. And if you allow it to perch in your house, in your mind, in your life, it can take you over. So when the rude or cruel thing is said—the lambasting, the gay bashing, the hate—I say, "Take it all out of my house!" Those negative words climb into the woodwork and into the furniture, and the next thing you know, they'll be on my skin."

You do the courageous thing, a small one, and you like yourself. And then you do another two, three, and you like yourself better. And before you know it, you are able to say, "Excuse me, not in my house, you don't. You don't paint my walls with poison and vulgarity. You will not do it in my house. Out. Is this your purse? Thank you. Bye."

- Maya Angelou

I started 2022 out with the word Space as my One word. I have been carrying with me these words to go along with them:

How am I expanding into S P A C E today?

Expand into

Fill Up

Hold

Make

Create

S P A C E

I started the year feeling more empowered to make daring moves. To claim the space, I was seeing before me. It wasn't easy, it was scary, and I continued applying, pitching and finding little wins along the way.

Then I was hit.

Self-doubt.

You see,

Despite a deep belief in a calling that calls me to hold space for others, ask them deep and inspiring questions, capture them and find a way to showcase what I see about the world around me, I also recognize I came into all of this unconventionally.

It wasn't until I made my most daring and scary move thus far in my creative / documentary career yet at the end of May that I realized I was putting myself out there in a way that scared me.

And then S P A C E, meant a totally different thing.

Space became a challenge to remember how to hold space for me when no one else is around to hold me.

When the quiet rages, the lack of response, recognition, and relational interactions persist.

What does it look like to hold space for me?

It has led me back to me.

We believe that we hustle to success.

That we become millionaires from building something from the ground up and never stopping.

We believe that we are the makers of our own designs.

We forget that we are the souls that need our whole selves, not just portions we leave on the shelf because they are too weighty to carry.

I continue to strive to fill up, hold, make and create space that honours myself and those around me, and that may mean that I won't see the bigger picture until much later, but I will not become less of myself in the process. I will not shelf my healing until later, and I will not lose relationships that matter along the way.

I will honour the whole process, not just the portions that look like success. I will also honour the quiet and most mundane and lonely moments.

They all

equally

matter.

In BNV Media Studio | Halifax. N.S.

***Martina and I officially met when I featured her in a CBC Radio project earlier this year on creativity. Interviewing her was a joy and clearly left us with so much more to discuss. Sitting and joining her in her space was a joy.

Ep. 64 | Holding Space with Guest, Amy Grace

Writer, Producer and Director in tv and film, Amy Grace is here as our first guest this season on the podcast!

Amy has graced us with her presence this week in the studio and has shared some beautiful sentiments with us on holding space, discovering our path and understanding the many things that shape our journey, through our childhood experiences and creativity.

To connect further with Amy, check her out on Instagram at @byamygrace or at www.byamygrace.com

Life Out Loud Podcast — now available for download on @applepodcasts, @spotifypodcasts, @iheartradio, or wherever you download podcasts!

Produced by: @bnv.media

In BNV Studios.- Marinta Kelades & Amy Grace ‘22.

space | spās | noun
1 a continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied
2 the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move
3 an interval of time (often used to suggest that the time is short considering what has happened or been achieved in it)
4 the portion of a text or document available or needed to write about a subject
5 the freedom and scope to live, think, and develop in a way that suits one

Regarding life, I often compare living experiences to that of a space we have been invited into.

Everyone has their own unique Space they are in. Some are busy growing and cultivating; others, wounded and confused with how to tend to the wreckage of the Space before them.

Some of us have taken too much pride over our perfectly tended to Space's only to realize that all it takes is one of life's tragic hurricanes to completely destroy everything we have built.

As it is with any space, as it is with life.

Nothing is permeant.
Everything is experienced.

I believe that despite what it looks like at this moment, I am being called to claim the Space that I have already been growing into.

This is a very 'New Year' concept, yet I mean this truly and uniquely.

Understanding oneself enough to know what one brings to Space will boost everyone and honour one's own skills.

To take up Space means you understand there are nuances.

Embedded in our society are two structures that directly conflict with each other.

Your voice only matters if you pay your dues, look a certain way, act a certain way and play the system.
Your voice matters no matter who you hurt, how you slander if it's based on proven facts or not and if you are louder than the opposite side.

I want to unlearn these two very scary structures.

Because the truth is,

To show up to the Space, we are called to expand in that will be long lasting and legacy building, we need to

1. Hold Space for oneself.

2. Hold Space for others.

3. Discern the difference between a rare and unique situation and an unhealed wound.

4. Show up and harness oneself to bring ones' best to any given moment.

Hard work is what it takes to stay open to the nuances of life.

And for me, that is what Space is all about.

To walk into the Space. To do the hard work to press in, cultivate it for healing, understanding and creating new boundary lines to thrive even when my heart aches, the body is tired and the soul, weary.

The invitation to expand into space isn’t easy, but the journey

I believe

Is life-changing.

And so,

Into this space, I go.

Learning how to stand taller, expand wider and grow deeper.

Onwards,

Amy Grace

I say this a lot.

Grace.

We need to pass grace.

But sometimes, I say it with pain in my heart.

If anything has taught me more about grace… it's becoming a parent.

I'm not sure that I genuinely understood forgiveness and its complete process until working through the parenting journey.

I still am.

It's hard.

Hard to see that there are things I will need to be forgiven for. I will need to create healing space in my child's life and understand that there is no end to that cycle of needing to create space for a person and the grace to exist in the air between us.

Grace is a path I am walking and stumbling in again and again.

Sometimes it's a beautiful journey, and other times it becomes dark and full of thorns.

I can feel weary in the journey of forgiveness.

Yet, the idea of turning back, of not continuing on and finding that next part of healing, albeit alluring, is not a place I want to go.

We get frozen in time without the path.

We need the path.

It's just… hard.

Painful and not always a fun feeling.

And sometimes, I want to stamp my foot and decide to stay where I am.

I don't need to go any further.

But then…

I am raising this little spirit and the path is for her to learn as much as I.

If I can't pass grace for the pain within myself and exist with it, I can't give grace for the pain within others.

It's hard to look at.

It's not fun.

Yet,

it's a path.

A journey.

And thus far, the path has provided me more grace, more healing and more compassion than not being on the path.

So onwards we go.

As I have been working this year on various projects, I have been reminded of this vital concept again and again.

Holding Space is an incredible act.

It takes more grace and humbling than one can genuinely wrap one's head around.

Even when I find myself saying, "ahh, there we are, we are doing it. I am sitting in this moment holding Space for this." I am highly aware of how it is attempting to slip and change through my fingers at any time. Our egos and sense of self-importance are at constant war with the act of holding Space.

I am not sure that I am excellent at it.

But I know that I can walk away from moments with an incredible sense of wonder when I attempt it.

"Wow…what was that?"

"What went on there?"

"Something just happened, and somehow we all survived."

If I could communicate anything through this incredibly abstract concept, is this:

Holding Space is simply that. You exist at the moment you are in, and you have that moment. You look around you, feel inward, and feel outward, but your output stops or is slowed.

Instead of worrying about what to say next, how to act, or how to be, or how to react at all, you get comfortable with what is happening in front of you.

Often times this is very apparent to me when it's obvious someone is spinning out emotionally.

And let me be clear,

I recognize this because I can be this.

It's easier to recognize something in someone else that we have already been or done.

Holding Space for someone who is not acting appropriately, not comprehending their own possibly toxic behaviour (my own included) is a way to honour the hurt that is occurring in front of you, but it is also honouring the 'you' inside. To hold Space means that you can see the depth and layers of it all and recognize that although you may have triggered something and have something to learn here, the behaviour isn't about or a reflection of you.

Holding Space is the practice of taking your own self-importance and placing it on the shelf to bear witness to what is happening.

Does it mean you let abuse occur?

No.

Does it mean you relinquish your own humanity and allow someone to treat you inappropriately?

No.

Does it mean you table your own healing to stay in the pit with someone else?

No.

It means holding Space for yourself first.

If you can learn to hold Space for yourself in a holistic way, you will hold Space for others.

Hold Space for what is still broken in you.

Hold Space for the learning you still have yet to learn.

Hold Space for the dreams you are dreaming.

Hold Space for the body that you are caring for.

Hold Space for the history that made you.

Hold Space for the healing that you are working on.

Hold Space for the you that is you.

When we do this, turning it outward and holding Space for others becomes not just something we can begin to understand but a practice that we can fully take on holistically and healthily.

We bear witness to the pain and life of others because we have first bared witness to our own.

Light is different in the spring.

It washes over us like an antiseptic.

Clean.

Simple.

Warm.

I have been working on projects and reflecting along the way during the winter months.

this Spring there is a a tangible force I can’t deny.

It comes in the concept something like this:

Give the light space to breathe.

We are so busy trying to package up our thoughts, arguments, perspectives, projects and insights that we so often miss that beautiful moment that happens when we have allowed space.

What if, in our conversations, our work, our existing in the hard and the easy that we allow it all to be washed in sunlight?
We step back and breathe and see what happens in the silence of it all?

Whimsy? Abstract? A bit “What-the-heck-does-that-even-mean?”

Yes.
And,
It means something like,

Shedding our critique, holding our rebutle, caring for the why behind a project more than the “show” of it, standing still when questions are formed…

It means that we might see things and feel things differently in the light of it all, rather than only see it shaped in the corners of our minds.

If this was easy, there would be no writing about it.

Yet,

As I work and play this Spring I will be working to make space for the light to breathe.