There isn't enough time spent on the ways in which we need to rest.  Need to heal.  

We are walking hearts who experience any manner of things in the run of a day.  It's not to say that we can't handle it, but it is to say, that we play possum to the amounts of blows we take.  We keep on going without a deep moment to process. 

And sometimes life happens and we get blown out of our reverie and healing is but the only thing we have left. It's painful.  

There is a process and a waiting for healing that doesn't seem to make sense to our instant-living type of lives.  The process of healing a broken heart can, in the midst of it all, be the most torteourus recovery.  The process of healing our bodies can be, in the midst of it all, an intricate complex journey.  

Yet there is a process that needs to occur for the healing to take place.   

We need to break first.  In order for us to recover, we need to submit our bodies, our spirits and our hearts to being broken and that is often the side of ourselves that we hate to see.  That we are fragile and capable of falling to pieces.  It's humbling, scary and almost unbelievable.  

But thats the truth of it.

We break.

We break, because we were made to reach for healing not just once in a while, but everyday.  We are everyday broken and everyday need to grasp for the healing we need.

This may be hard to swallow because it seems like an ode to the broken, the lost and the physically undone.  But it's for you.  The strong, the invisible, the confident and the happy.  Because you need this too.  Believe it or not, you need to let it be healing.

I say "Let it be healing" because I mean the any manner of things that you run into today, this week, this month, this year.  Let this be the time that you don't shy away from facing what you aren't strong in.

Healing occurs slowly, and we can only know it has happened once we look back.  So while you inspect your brokenness do not be discouraged, for seeing a break, a tear, an open wound, a scab...whatever it is you discover, you need to let those things stay open to the process one day at time.  

So let your moments, experiences, and circumstances open you up to the rest of the healing you need.  

It's an everyday thing.

So let it be healing. 

We are going to let out some of those unpretty words you got there in your hands.

People have words hanging in their closet that they dust off for rainy days to remind you of things you thought you had sorted.  It's not that they knew they would use those words at you, it's not that they dusted them off and said "this is just the kind of kick in the face type of thing I want to say to her next time."  Seriously, they didn't think that hard about it, but, it's still a thing isn't it?  That when you feel like you got it handled and settled someone always has to show up and throw some more of those unpretty words your way.  

Whats worse?  They have no idea that's what they did.

Some people are born cynics.

Some people are born motivated.

Some people are born worry warts.

Some people are born free spirits.

All people are born.

Since you were born and you might actually want to live a life that isn't weighed down by anothers words all tumbled out because they thought they were helping, sharing, communing...

You can say 'no'.

It's hard sometimes.

Saying 'no' to words that were well meant but ill regarded.

It's not that you want the person to zip up their words, but you want those unpretty words to change.  Because those words seep into your skin like water to your spirit and they feed you.  

You notice the 'It was rough', 'It wrecked me.' and the 'It's okay."  when actually, your spirit needs it as 'It was real', 'it made me' and 'it will become clear in time.'

But you can't tell words to change.

You can't blame anyone for your word needs.

But you can say no.  And it won't be pretty, it won't come out smooth and pretty as you imagined it, because whenever you need to keep the positive going, there is never an easy way to do it.  It's like turning on a bright light after being in the dark for too long.  Your eyes can't adjust fast enough and you are left blinking.  

You are blinking.

They are blinking.

Ouch. 

So accept that it can't be an easy process when you are fighting your insecurities and your negative monsters.  

You know what YOU need, and just because someone else thinks you need some good ol' fashion 'This is how it is' talk, you are the only one who knows if and when you need to hear it.

And us listeners who see that another is affected by our narrative, we need to back those words up! 

We need to back up and breathe because the last thing we want to do is send someone off with a version of our words that didn't leave them with truth that softened and not truth that stung.

Truth doesn't sting it heals, so the truth of your story should be to heal and bring salve to a wound.  Words have power and we can't be so concerned that someone isn't 'getting it', when really...it's us.  

Our communication, our narrative, our words that we think are just normal, may actually have a side to them that are unpretty, unwelcome and unhelpful.  

And if truth words heal, then our receivers should be healing along with us as we share.

You can do anything.  That is a true statement.  Limits are not enforcable against the human spirit and heart.  You can take on the world.  You can move others with your passion, dedication and work.  

And then,

You can sell out.

I am not talking about that kind of 'I said I would do this, but now I am not.'  

I am pointing my gaze at the:

"I can do it all, maintain it all and be all" mentality.

It's in all of us today.  That 'wake up, roll out of bed, overcommitted, yeah, I do it all' type living.

I am calling BS. on that.  Yeah, yeah, harsh words.  Get over it.

It's the type of selling out your life that when I walk down the street and see a 'SOLD' sign on your property and you say "It's still for sale, come on in and sit for awhile...heck, why don't you purchase a piece of this land?" And I am thinking "Seriously?  You are trying to sell me an already sold house?"

Thats what we are....

We are walking sold properties to the things we have already committed to and somehow we want to do more.

The worst part is, you can tell someone "I am in over my head, I have to focus on other things right now."  But everyone is so sold out themselves they couldn't see a sold out person even if they were worn out, drained in front of them.  "We are all over our heads."  Comes the response and they wring us out for more.  But we are dry and we suffer.

There is this collection of 'things' that we like to boast of.  

I do this.

I bought this.

I go here.

I go there.

I attended this.

I support that.

We are so many kinds of SOLD OUT, that we have no idea that:

We do this rushed.

We bought this why even?

We go there late.

We go here stressed.

We attend this flippantly.

We support this selfishly.

It's not that we want to be like this, but thats what happens to us when we are sold out.  We can't see that our motives, our energy, our dedication is off.  We can't see that our hearts are slightly bent towards the 'performance' and just a titch away from 'whole hearted'.  It's hard to notice when you have a tendency to walk slightly to the left, but then all of a sudden if someone or yourself doesn't correct it?

You'll be in the ditch.

In the ditch with a sign on your back that says "I am all kinds of Sold Out and I don't know how it happened."

We don't want to be Sold Out for any reason.  We want to buy in, and be there.  We want to know our limits and know how much we can handle giving out before we crash.  For you it may be less, for another more.  

There needs to be a respect level for those who need to stop selling out.  A need to respect the desire to be balanced in this 'phone on twenty-four-hours' world.

It's time for us to set our boundaries for healthy balanced living and stop rushing as if "we" are gods.  Enjoy those quiet nights in.  Permit ourselves to say no to 'another event'.  We can't run on the steam of 'good intentions', because 'good intentions' so often turn into 'look at everything I am doing.'  And that's just toxic.  It's air that will crush growth and stop the flow of anything good.

If we're 'all kinds of sold out' then it's time we take those signs in our front yards seriously.

We arn't gods, so we shouldn't act like we are. 

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Babymoon in December 2014

Twenty-seven weeks pregnant,  glass of milk in hand, savouring these moments that have accumulated over the past three or so months.

They were right when they said the second trimester brings a new sense of energy, glow, and renewed sense of body awareness.  I am not sure if I have ever felt as sexy as I do now.  Sure I can't fit into that dress I bought from New York.  The one that hugged my frame and showed that I was indeed all woman.  But this is something magical!  This growing body of mine has taken on a life that has words to share, and adventures up her sleeve.  There is a delicate but very notable change in my curves and I never knew one could stretch in this way.  Stretch in all ways physical and all ways spiritual.

Pregnancy is a spiritual thing I have come to realize.

It is an ode to creation and all things that speak to something more.  I have been digging for the more, and it has been refreshing and renewing.

She bumps and turns.  She hiccups and kicks.  She has felt the rumble of her cats purr above her while they sleep and she has learned that her mama is a reader and a singer.

My heart began to burn during these moments and I realized how much it truly does burn.  A mama will burn for all things to procure a journey for a life.  It's realizing the values and morals.  The hopes and dreams.  The way in which we crave to raise her.  It brings a new sense of reason to the day to day.  And we aren't scared.  

We've been through fire and we came out refined.  We'd do it again.

So all this talk about parenthood taking us out:  

"You'll never have your body back."

"You'll never pee normal again."

"Save up on your sleep now, you won't get it back for a long time."

"Say goodbye to a social life."

I call those negative, destructive words and claims over our lives out.  They have no place over us, and no claim on our hearts.

Because people trash real life as if it's a shame.  They walk around wounded that life has seasons and responsibility.  They miss the real life moments because they are too busy thinking they got tricked by a transition.. 

So those people who like to sarcastically add 'helpful' quips to a soon-to-be-mamas heart...they don't have it right.  They have it all messed up and contaminated.  Life is meant to be lived not everyday the same, but everyday anew.  I won't trick myself into thinking that my physical, my mental, my emotional can maintain the same.  I'll be renewing it again and again, because I want to enjoy this life and all it's seasons no matter the circumstance.  No matter the convienence or inconvenience.  

This has been magical.

These months of growth have been filled with glimmer and sprinkled with worry.

All the way it is supposed to be.

Because she is life, and life is full of all the moments.

Not just one. 

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.

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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.