IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Tulips sprouting from garden earth. Text: Spring 2023 - byamygrace

When Spring arrived on March 20th, I was ill-prepared.

I felt the heaviness of the project I was working on (a project that highlighted the severe plight of paramedics in my Province) and the lack of connection to my faith, which usually feels closer during the Lent season. I felt the pressing in of my life and business partners' trip in early April coming all too fast.

I decorated for Easter with lacklustre. I found agony in how other families gathered and celebrated bunnies, eggs and cute family photos in a way I have been unable to make happen again since childhood.

Yet as the sun begins its descent each evening, I have felt a promise of a world opening up. A new birth to a new version of the life we have been living.

And isn't that the promise of Easter in the first place?

New life, a rebirth.

The broken, the perceived dead could be risen out of the ground and made into something we couldn't have imagined.

This Spring, I am actively sourcing a new way, a new life, and the renewed soil ready for me; for us.

Enough of this life I thought would be.
Enough of this old narrative and the old way of doing things.
It is time to embrace the miracles. The right now moments are rich with potential and joy.

This Spring, I will leave behind

• Surface small talk to get me by

• Hesitating in scarcity mentality in my work

• Staying street bound in family movement

• Sinking into the weight of death.

This Spring, I will be

• Welcoming deep, intelligent connections and conversations

• Investing back into the work, I am driven to create

• Embracing collective family movement

• Celebrating life.

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.

Spring was jam packed with personal endeavours.

Birthday parties, our first home renovation and many regular/additional ‘spring cleaning’ items on the list. I was able to give that heavy and long list of personal items a lot of my attention, while also leaving my creative self longing for more luxurious time at my desk.

This spring I have been learning the art of ‘curating time’.

I would say I had already learned this, since anyone who has a baby knows that the time between the ages of 0-3 years of age are years that one looses their hold on ‘having control of their own time’. That being said, I am on a new journey of what it means to take on more, handle bigger projects both personally and professionally and enter into them acknowledging the potential of overwhelm while also creating boundaries for my own mind and spirit to maintain and curate peace in all that I do.

I have learned

when tackling big projects I need to stick to the matter at hand, stop myself and even at times, my partners in crime from wondering too far ahead so as not to feel the weight of what has yet to be done.

I have learned that unplugging for 24 hours once a week is exactly what I need to monitor my anxiety as well as give my every fast paced mind a forced break.

I have learned that I do extremely well when my expectations for myself and from others are clear and I have prepared a bit in advance to meet them.

Overall, this Spring has been full personally, and professionally I have gained a lot of strategies to handle the projects and work that lies ahead.

What my work space looked like for almost 3.5 weeks & still has a lot of kitchen items chilling with me as I post this.