A less is more kind of morning....

Let's face it:  We are afraid.  

We are afraid of losing.  It's a humanity thing.  We gather and gather and gather until we have a nice pile of our 'ness' around us and then we sit next to it and twiddle our thumbs and think about what's missing.

Did you just catch that?

Did you just see how endless that is? It is an endless search for whatever it is that we 'don't' have.   Because I guess the pile of crap we're sitting on isn't enough, so we have to go out and gather some more.  

More friends, more retweets, more music, more money, more clothes more, more, more, more.

And then what?

There is no answer to this because you don't, you won't, you can't and you couldn't.

So freaking stop it with the hauls!  The endless amount of hauls we do.  Hauling more friends, more things and more memories.

What about 'who you are is enough'!  Why not haul that for a change?

Haul yourself!

Get your life! 

And that means some hard core purging to get to the haul of you.

Go inside your own protected castle of you and starting clearing out all those boxes that have hidden you.  You gotta haul yourself this time because ain't nobody gonna go and get you out of your mass protected pile of 'whatever-it-is-you-have'.

What this is coming down to, isn't that I am all 'Oh we gotta do some New Years January Ass kicking cleaning' ...cause we can do that.  We can tidy our rooms, our friends, our social life up so it looks like it shines.  Anyone can do that within a day.

It comes down to a real deep solid life purge.

Clear out:

• Your living space
• Your closet
• Your media
• Your social life
• Your relationships
• Your mental state
• Your emotional state
• Your spiritual state
• Your physical state

What are you left with?

Just you.

Thats when you can focus on hauling yourself.

And I mean some badass hauling.  Go and get that food that will make your body happy and strong.  Go and get those clothes that look like you and not just a version of some commercial you just saw.  Go and get that music that makes you shiver and quake.  Go and cultivate those people who bring out the real raw you. 

BUT

NO MORE & NO LESS than what you need.

Because Less is More, and a closet full of clothes is not going to define you.

You define yourself by your own ability to see yourself without it all.

It's legitimately official now.  Less is More.

So go and get it!

The calendar is starting new this first full week and there isn't a soul on this earth who can tell you what you need to put in it.  People sledge hammer their way through this life and through our weeks.  Go here, do that, make time for this and don't forget I need you to...

The calendar is full of boxes.  January has 31 boxes and only twenty-four boxes left.  

Our calling goes beyond the box of a day, beyond the needs of others and beyond the labels that people slap on our days as if it's theirs.

Your days are not anyone else's but yours and the One who created your days. 

It's a limited life that we have lived with our boxes and our square instagrams telling our moments within the confines of a simple shape.  Life is beyond the shapes, beyond the upcoming and the unknowing.

This is the time to make your calendar a different shape.  Metaphorically I mean, because the squares aren't really the problem.  The problem is us.  How we let them define us and create us into walking squares of limitations.

This is the week we let our squares lose their shape and we become who we were meant to be.  What we want for 2015 that is beyond our boxes and our limited world view.

I'll start:

Amy Grace - 2015

• Create a life that welcomes baby without the sacrifice of personal identity
• Purchase new home that fits our desires and needs
• See growth & maturity in work 

These sound all vague and pretty right?  So I'll redefine it because what I actually mean is this:

• Being 'Amy' before 'Mama' will keep your feet on the ground.  You know this, so live it.  Shake off others expectations of 'mama-hood' because you are your own version of 'mama'.  
• Don't settle for a house just because you need one.  Yes, you need one, and that nature, ocean spray home is out there.  So go and get it, and don't think you can't.
• Friggen, just blast work on loud this Winter and don't stop there.  You glow when you work so you just keep it glowing, because becoming a mama is going to be the best thing for your word pocket and life. 

Thats what it looks like.  To burst through the box.  It means to get down and honest with the depth of you and then take the limitations off and put the gloves on.  

Stop tidying up your days with 'appropriate wording' and just 'get real'.

Tear down your life so God can build you back up.  Yeah, I said God... because no matter who you think made your beating heart, you've got one and that heart needs to be tended this year.  And hearts aren't stored in a box.  They are stored inside your unique shape.

So break down your limitations of what's possible and start 2015 with limitations on what's impossible.

I'm starting a new video series on Mondays. Check my YouTube Channel weekly for updates.

This is a channel to help kickstart your week, to motivate you, to give you the energy you need to keep going. Our goal for these videos is to bring you into a new sense of what Mondays could be, what they are, and what they can be. I love Fridays and i love my weekends, but why can't we love our Mondays as well? This is the week that you don't limit yourself! Happy Monday!

This was an amazing wrap to our year.  This meeting of the regulars with the new.  I have learned these nights have more to do with trusting the process and what needs to happen and come about then the 'too many plans'.  Don't get me wrong, I think this type of thing that we do needs a 'plan' in place, but there has been an environment created over time that has made having an idea capable of landing in the centre of the evening possible.  How that idea unfolds is left to a plan bigger than the planner. 

And thats what happened here.  This night in November.

I truly believe that those who can show up, be them new or regular attenders are meant to be in these conversations that unfold.

An architects manifesto project started us off and changed my heart.  Suddenly the questions and struggles I was working through in my work had come face to face with the humble words she had written.  

Past colleagues of an old life sat on a couch and related in ways that is beyond the plans and they filtered light into places we all needed to see.

We called out a writer to take that time.  That hard decision and struggling realization that there is a need that needs to be met and yet how?  How do we meet the needs of our spirits without crushing the needs of others?  Yet being a maker, an expresser is the most natural and purest form of a person that not meeting those needs of the self is not meeting the needs of those others.  So it's a cycle we have all known, a cycle we face again and again.

And I breathed a sigh of relief at how different and similar these people are.  How one can bring me spun around to a new thought, yet at the same time end up nose to nose with the same emotion I have carried.  

It's a unity thing.

This group.

What was created...It wasn't because of me opening up a home.

I relinquish that concept.

It was because everyone opens up.

And without that humble, open, vulnerable, safe and encouraging atmosphere,

It wouldn't be.

It couldn't have ever been.

So I thank-you, you creative warrior women.  I thank-you for traveling 2014 together and welcoming those who can come by.  I thank-you for teaching me that each step means something, and that it's the coming together that matters. 

Thank-you for all the conversations we have had in 2014 and all the conversations we will have in 2015!  I am humbled and honoured to be apart of your lives.  

There has been a sense in the air that I need to stop and wait.  Wait and discern.  Discern and decide.  Decide and act.  

There is a 'mama restlessness' inside of me that doesn't want to move until I have put my finger on what it is I need to focus on next.

For now, I am taking a break.  A break from 'Chewables' and a break from pressuring myself to get work out there.   I will still 'work' but I may be working in a different sense this December.  I will be bringning myself into a healthier place of this awareness so that 2015 can be a year of new life, of focus, of spiritual awareness and of maintaining myself along the way. 

I don't plan on being a mom who carves her life out for only her children.  No.  I want to be aligned with my faith, and in turn I believe that will bring me to understand the needs and desires of myself.  If I can understand the direction "I am called to be going" then I can connect with my husband at an honest level and if our marriage is settled in the moment we are in, then being parents in a way we want to be should become clear.  And doesn't everything else just trickle from there?

So I need a month.  A month to gather myself into a warm blanket and listen to whatever this new year, new life will mean.  Because there is more where all this came from and I don't want to spout out nothing.  I want to leak love out like an ocean through all the cracks.  I want the truth of life to slip through my fingers and into my work like an impossible deluge of rain.  I want to collide with those who need to hear in ways I can't understand, and I want to stop this voiceless fear that had me silent so long.  It's been a journey to become this woman and I don't want to stop.  I don't want it to end here and plug up the drains and say "thats all I can do."  

I am committed to becoming every day, and every year more of what I was called to do.  This was a training year....so now I am getting real. 

The Dalhousie Swing Dance Society has graciously asked me to MC  their now annual Halifax Swing Exchange of 2014.  

"You're Intentionally Amy." My Grandmother says with a smile back to me, often after I let how I truly feel slip out in ways that aren't always delicate.   Delicate was never something I felt described me, so this whole middle name of Grace thing didn't mean anything to me.  Not until I realized that Grace had a whole other definition outside 'graceful like a ballerina'.

Before this small website, there was "Amy: With Intentions".   At the time it was a dare to myself to learn how to write again.  A weekly exercise to get me writing and focus on the things I felt were important as I walked into my twenties. I didn't know it then, but that was the journey back to my core.  It took some years but Amy With Intentions became a blog I was happy with leaving behind and focusing on other things.  The concept of intentional living had sunk deep within my soul and somehow became a part of me. 

Intentional means to drop your expectations of the moment you are in.  It means that you are in the 'here and now' and you will be and find out what 'this now' means.  Eating a simple lunch brings a whole new expierence when it is done with intention.  A pinterest board made out of wishful thinking becomes a vision board full of potential and action.  An autumn walk becomes a journey for your soul... Anything and everything becomes a whole new expierence when intention is involved!

Breathing becomes a moment to remember, and when I write words on my chalk board painted fridge I think different, because words carry intentions and energy.  I may as well grasp this intentional thing for all its worth and write quotes and things that will inspire, move and help create a better place.  

So I choose the intentional life because the alternative is a side of me that brings nothing good.  I can be destructive, and so can anyone really.  I found a way to get to the best of me, and it's not me doing it.  I call it out right here and now.  It is a deeper calling on my heart and I know that God places desires in each of us, and for me it is to live fully and grasp the moments, so maybe intentional is my natural and most best place to be

Either way.  I do it

This intentional life.

I live it. 

For some reason this particular night stands out amongst the many.  It was a night pre scheduled to accommodate the Halloween Friday that was to be our night.  An earlier week in the month than what we are used to.  This was the week we needed this most.

In many ways, all these women are growing from where they started.  They are glowing with progress and even new faces seem to have come from places of experience and an understanding for the 'hard worker' one has to be in this world.

Yet:

As sold out as we all are on our crafts, we sighed a huge relief at the stories that came from around the table.  An architect-to-be made and poured us tea as we realized that it is 'balance' we crave.  And the process to find it is at times, brutal.

"What keeps you motivated to keep going?"  Is all I had to ask.

A deluge of insecurities, rediscovery and self identity was bounced off each other.

A Writer-Mom-to-Be , I soaked in the truth of discovering the self again and again.  

I think we all felt it, because there was something that settled this time around.  Something deep and that resonated with the core of us.  What one shared was like the heart beat of another.  Sometimes, it is possible to sit down and relate.  Sometimes even the pregnant writer can understand the artist.  And sometimes the artist can relate to the photographer.  

It's just how it is when you open yourself up to relating.  

So heres to more relating to each other and more nights of us around the table and trying our hardest to work through finding the rest of us through and around our work. 

"But theres a timeline on how long you can waste dwelling on the absent 

Keeping your eyes open as you live is not the same as staring at the dusty empty space where it originally was."

©2014 Jeremy Lai

The past thirteen weeks have been the most humbling weeks of my life.  I assume that the humbling has just begun, because you see... I am carrying a life. A life completely different from me.  A life full of unique possibilities and although it may share half of my DNA it has a unique voice that I cannot speak to.

We are calling 'it' Roo while we wait for the big ultrasound appointment coming up in about a month or so.  Names have been picked out but wait for delivery day to get used and for now Roo, because of Kangaroos ... and if anyone knows Winnie the Pooh, I need not explain.

Considering myself to be 'A Maker' this is about as 'Maker' as one can get.  This growing belly, heart beat inside of me, and purging my stomach of foods and smells I cannot stand.  This is the ultimate making.  I am a factory for life, dreams, hopes and personality.

This hasn't been easy, this morning sickness thing.  We mamas brave the storm of life and vomit in all sorts of places.  Cars, parking lots, garbage cans, toilets...other peoples toilets... we do what we can to stay hydrated and fed, but the truth is, it is the ultimate test.

Can you take care of your child's mother the way she deserves?

It would be so easy to skip the water and the meals... trust me,.... when you are vomiting daily...the concept of meals becomes a chore and for a fooide like me, well, utterly disappointing.

I have felt a little less than.

Sure, I get it, the hormones do that.  But the 'doer' and the 'maker' of me is yelling daily.  "Get up!  GO!  Do it all! Dance, write, sing, party, don't be slaking!"

I let it slip out a time or too.

"I am not making anything of worth right now!" 

A woman or two scowl in reply. 

"You are making a human being of major worth right now!"

And I slump back and realize that the purging of my stomach and the whole shift of my life is for the health and goodness for a tiny soul inside, and for me as well.  Because becoming a mama isn't a sentence for an artist.  It's a blessing. 

A child's eyes have the wonder every writer, painter, dancer, singer, musician needs and I will be drenched in it.  However this tiny life comes out, I will see life new and different because of it, and that will only make me better for it.

So I guess the morning routine of pee, vomit-in-garbage-can , and husband passes breakfast to slowly digest, is all worth it, and truly... how amazing is this growing belly?

©2014 Jeremy Lai

I choose Grace again and again.  It's inescapable.  Not only because it is my middle name but because it is the call on this world.  It is the concept we all are living under if we only just grabbed the keys that hang around our necks.  We all have grace keys.  We all have grace moments and we all have the ability to pass on a grace key to someone else.

I freely talk about that time I did the unthinkable.  That time that swept me off my feet and made me think I was made out of heart break and endless pain.  Comments were made from sideliners, from the grace-holders who kept it hidden in fists instead of in open palms, and I was trashed.  I wasn't worth the risk or the comments of nothing more than disgust.  I was that bride who chose to throw the veil in the trash can because I couldn't fathom a way out.  So I torched a union for something that glittered gold in moments.  And the glitter moments, they were real and messed up, because that is how it is with people who are lost...they make unions in pain and they connect over loss and emotions run ragged from running.  

Running from Grace.

Everyone was running from Grace.

Everyone around that scene were grace-key-holders, stuffing them in the deepest pockets they could find because they couldn't comprehend how passing a key to three messed up spirits could solve the mystery they couldn't relate to.

And when it was all said and done and everyone was in their corners of destructed love and lies .... it was all just a hopeless mess.

But something happens in the hopeless.  Grace-keys shine , and those who can get over the egos, the pain, the denial and the rift of people trashing, they grasp the key and hold it out...they would rather pass on grace then let anymore of this continue.

And I tell you this, because this Canadian-Church raised girl in a generation of God-Isn't-Real, found more in a Grace that is gifted than in the solutions of this world.

I tell you this because I am watching all these broken stories and I want to hold my key high and shout Grace at the sky.  I want to cry with the hearts rather than ignore them.  I want to gather the men and women who found solace in each other, broke one another and tell them I understand.  That Grace understands.  That there isn't a messed up moment that couldn't be redeemed.  I want to tell them that I have seen miracles and I have seen new life come out of the cemetery of my dead one.

I want to sing and dance Grace all over these hearts because they need it, they will thrive in it, and I know that my Grace giving God has more in store than just blood and a cross.  There is everything fresh and renewed and that show,  it is not sold out, because it is yours and you are the honoured guest to a Grace-Event made just for you. 

So stop withholding Grace from each other, because that cheating wife, and that sneaking man, and that desperate husband just needed Gods Grace.  

I was that wife, and I couldn't have remarried a husband and found a whole new life if it wasn't for the messed up wedding and the  Grace that was given to me.

Give Grace like you would give water to a thirsty man.  Give grace even when the betrayal is deep and the circumstances bloody.  

Give Grace because the alternative is a war within your spirit that you will never overcome.

----

The key I am wearing is from  http://www.thegivingkeys.com where keys are made, bought and given.  Read their story http://www.thegivingkeys.com/pages/about-us 

I will be giving this key away this season to someone who needs Grace ... which is all of us.  

In lieu of actual photo from the night : A photo from a Summer Party around the table, 

It's a new season, and everyone arrived with the same relief of getting back into some sort of schedule and life together.  It's a funny thing, this group of women that has collected around my living room over the past year and half.  The group that always swells over the months and yet comes back to the same core women. 

Strong women who push boundaries in their lives and work.  Women who are young, yet somehow taking on the world one month at a time.  The wine glasses on the most part, were left behind as we got into the meat of things.  The food was enjoyed, yet somehow it was left as we heard the adventures of the summer and the challenges of this new season before us.

An artists trip to Spain, a photographers summer of weddings, an Architects summer challenges and a freshman at the beginning of a theatre degree ... all these conversations lead us to discuss what brought us together to begin with.  

Striving to not just do, but do well and do amazing... it is a challenge this journey of Creative & Innovative, but with each other, no matter what stage of life we are in, student, newly independent artist or new mother to be.  

We are makers.

Heres to another season of making!  

In all it's forms.

In all it's and ways. 

One summer when I was about ten or eleven, my family went to the beach almost every few days.  And during that time I made a friend, a boy about my age, with brown hair and eyes and a gangly body.  My sister about fifteen/sixteen allowed me to amuse her with my energy for running into the waves, diving under the water and feeling the sand hit my face.  I would burst out of the water, take deep breaths and laugh loudly trying to entice her in.  The boy as I had noticed over time, would watch us.  Watch me.  He would swim on his own but always with an eye at my joy over the waves.  Eventually over the days that followed, he began to interact with me, and suddenly I had a friend.  I was young, but not too young to realize that this boy and I had a spark of friendship that perhaps wasn't just friendship.  But of course, that is just speculation now...It was then and there in the waves off the coast of Nova Scotia I settled my heart deep in the ocean.  On the drives home from the beachside that summer, I would daydream about the boy on the beach and the joy I had found there.

To this day, I always remember that boy and our summer beach days together.  I never saw him again, but I think of him fondly.  I remember the dimple in his cheek and the laugh he made when I did something lunatic crazy as I usually did.  

There is something sacred in it.

In the ocean I mean.

The way it moves and swells.  The way it mirrors the sky with all its blue, grey, green glory.  The salt lingers in the air and the waves sound like a song.  A song that changes in rhythm, melody and tune at any given moment.

For those of us privileged enough to be raised by it, we are given to moments of advantage that others do not have.  For our lands do not roll on forever the same.  No.  Our lands are vast and varied by the watery depth of the ocean influenced weather.    The rolling hills, the cliffs and the coves that capture land from sea is something that Nova Scotia is all too familiar with.  I couldn't live without this landscape...I may travel, and still my heart beat aches.  Where is the ocean?  Where is the sea?  Where is the salt in the air that brings my spirit alive again?

I once thought I could leave it all behind.  Heartbreak does that to you.  It makes you think starting over and forgetting would be the best thing... but I have found, that it would be the worst thing.  If you leave your roots behind you in effort to forget and move on, you are denying the honest soul in you. If you move, move with respect and honour to your past.  If you need to start over, start afresh and anew, but do not start without coming to terms with the roots that are deep in soil of the land and hearts you leave behind. 

The ocean is my heart.  It has captured every heartbreak and every sorrow, and it has also captured every good and wonderful thing I have come to know.  This is why I am a bird of the sea.  This is why my wings cannot be clipped for as long as I live and journey through life, I will always need to remember and be reminded of the truths that lie within the sea. 

Everything changes, nothing stays the same, and yet it all moves apart of one story that continues forever.  Nothing is for certain, but like the tides of the ocean, everything is brought in and out of life with a pull that has a purpose and reason.  

"So light a sparkler! Raise your dreams to the sky and watch your endings burst into a dazzling beginning!"

©2013 Nicole Payzant

Motivation became a middle name for me.  It was the rope that dangled down in the dark places offering a lift out.  It was the single solitary coloured balloon that floated in my sky.

Motivation became a way of life, and the more I lived it, the more I lived fully.

Motivation is such an overused word that we often scoff at the notion.

"Heres another Motivational youtube video put together with instrumental music and images of sick children.  Another typical "I beat the odds survival video". "

So I guess, I was the cliché-girl who found herself at the end of a heart break and on the beginning of a motivational kick.

And the kick hasn't left.  Two years later I aim to consistently spew out motivational words and projects.  Because somewhere amidst all that cliche mambo jumbo I found some real stuff.

I found words that weren't just.

"If at first you don't succeed..."

"You can do it."

No, I found brilliant shiny words.

"Love yourself out."

"Blessings can come out of the mistakes."

And so I chew on motivation like a vitamin because I needed it.  Still need it.

Weeks of illness and I claim motivation now more than ever.  This isn't a time for me to crumble and despair.  My life isn't over and my life is so rich and full, that even the weight of sickness cannot stop me.  There is nothing more brilliant and sexy than a woman who values herself more than her fears. 

And my fears have been at war with motivation.

And motivation wins again and again.  Because there is always more words and always more inspiration.  But the fear...it cannot become more if I am staring it straight in the eyes and watching its every move.

Because

I am a sniper for fear and I aim well and strong.

A motivational vitamin on embracing change. "The wounds of your past may actually be the wounds of your present."

©2014 Jeremy Lai

Sometimes I ask myself the question "Why write?  Why write at all?" 

It's a question that comes out from the dark places.  The places I go to when things are not as intentional as I want them to be.  Because, lets face it...I thrive on the intentional.  I get energy, drive and life from inhaling an intention.  

But even intentions get stale and become like bad morning breath that you can't seem to chase away.

So in those moments I ask myself why I do it at all... I know its a dumb question and I know I always and forever will be tripping over audible words in conversation only to quickly go and write it down and find myself there in the paragraphs all precise and clear.

But I have to ask.

And I always come back to.

I was made to be a word/story girl.

I know this.

It has come back to me again, and again.

After a book consumed, a new intention written down, a new story in progress, a new journal it all gives me the biggest rush that only a romance can give.

And thats it

I am in love with words and story.  Head over heels, an addict really.  I consume them like water in dessert. 

I write because if I didn't, I would not be me.  I would not be Amy Grace.  Girl of intentional living with words and story as her harmony. 

There are stacks and stacks of journals from age six onward that prove writing isn't just a hobby for me.  Its a way of life.  It is the way I find myself and reunite with my spirit and soul.  Journals are not for the ones in denial, they cannot lie or tell a story a different way when things go different.  Journals are the historical documentation of every idea, thought, dream, wish and attempt.  These are the books that have helped me work through life one step at a time.  And those gaps of times when I didn't write...when pages glare empty or a journal abandoned too early.  Those are the markings of when I was in denial and recovery. 

It is important to declare and remind ourselves of the reasons we do things.  

Why do anything if we cannot reflect and find anew the intention behind our whys?

Whys are important.

If we can answer a 'why', we are giving ourselves and those around us a better version of us. An honest one.

I write because it is the part of me that always stays true.  No matter what stage of life I am in, what other activities I do, what people are in my life , I will always be writing through those things.

I write, because somewhere inside of me, Amy Grace, is a heartbeat that lives for words and stories.

And right now my heart beats strong and healthy.

Dear Ladies,

Summer is when things mature and grow.

Remember those good old days in school.  The days when September rolled around and you showed up and your classmates looked different?  Some older, some with different trendy hair styles.  Others with teeth missing, or a new piercing.  Things always stayed the same but somehow changed at the same time. 

I am watching you create, be, expierence and take rests in these glorious few months!  I am so thankful to see the photographs linger on my computer screen as I scan the updates.  These are growth moments.  These are the times of experience that will take hold of your work...

Do not doubt the rest or the work that you feel called to do .  Summer is a season to rest in what is.  And what is, is where you are at. 

Be where you are at.  If you have a job, work for the thrill of an artist with a pay check no matter the occupation.  An artist with money in their pocket is an artist with a secret investment to be made.  If you are in that tough spot of scavagening food and money, don't despair.  There are things growing, things that are growing for you.  Work on your craft, rest from your craft, do both as if it was your living.  When you rest.  Rest.

When you work, work.

You inspire me.

You keep me going.

You remind me to do.

Make.

Live.

I cannot do it without the echo of my sisters making along side.  I hope your summer is teaching you.  I hope you are feeling the summer sunlight soak into your pours and revitalize you.  Because, ladies I have to tell you:

There is a harvest coming.  

A harvest that will bless you, encourage you, move you and bring you into a new place.

I hope you are ready for what this Autumn will bring, because after a summer like this, you can only expect to be gathering and harvesting for a very long time.

Amy Grace 2014

So rest in the summer months of the growth of your work, life and experiences.  Don't beg it to grow faster, because it is at the pace it needs to be.

And while you wait, live and do.

Until September when we toast again over a glass of wine and something scrumptious.

Amy Grace.