safe spaces to be ourselves
Happy halfway to Matariki everyone! Or happy new year, 2020, 11 days since the summer solstice, Tamatea, however you roll... whatever this time means to you.
The 'nothing time' since Christmas has been a lot fun, a lot of mahi at Nans and low-key, it's been awesome. The blur of what day or date it is has provided some good opportunities to check out of mahi and a few heavy kaupapa and recalibrate a little bit..
Safe spaces have come up a lot in the past few weeks.. you know, spaces where we can express ourselves freely and openly, without fear of judgement.. where we feel safe to be ourselves in our beautifully natural perfect imperfect way…. My safe spaces are out in the taiao (nature) and with my favourite people and ideally,
our lives would be our safe space right?
Much like how pēpi and tamariki (babies and kids) can be perfect little angles at Kohanga, kindy, or with their one particular favourite aunty… and the second they get home to their māmā or primary caregiver, they breakdown.. their māmā is their safe space. They exert themselves throughout the day and keep it together-ish, until it’s māmā time, who bears the brunt of it, and they feel safe enough to be relax and feel whatever they’re feeling.
I’ve been feeling a little like that lately, like how over the past 18 months I’ve been exerting myself and stretching myself (too thin) and since October
I’ve been getting my safe space back, in my own mind and heart and also back as a regular in my routine.
This has meant more time at home, less travel. More time out in the taiao, more time with the people who mean the most to me, fewer kaupapa that aren’t meaningful to me, more safe spaces..
Not to be confused with comfortable spaces — which are nice, but nothing ever grows there.. I like to think of safe spaces as the equaliser, as recovery. As a state of mind or even a physical place we can be in, to top up whatever we need, to relax, to take a breath, to be ourselves without fear of judgement…
The upside of the safe space being a state of mind, is that we can take it with us wherever we go and it evolves as we do. And it means we can be the safe space we need to be ourselves all the time, every time.
Ngā mihi,
Hana.