#  Graduate Profile: Maya Elizabeth Howe Pace, MTS '23  

 





May 15, 2023

 

 

     ![Maya Pace smiling, with arms stretched upwards](/sites/g/files/omnuum5526/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hds2/files/6x4_mayapace.png?itok=D0sTZKW1) 

Maya Pace. Photo courtesy of Maya Pace.

 



 

 **How I've Changed**

 This question feels both beautiful and challenging. How have I changed? Perhaps my best answer (today) is that these past two years have asked me to look at parts of myself I had hidden away, asked me to contend with what it looks like to hold even those pieces and say "yes, you too are here." I feel more equipped to access my own fire, and—I hope—more aware of how to humbly witness others in their own.

 **Message of Thanks**

 I am deeply grateful to the web of relationships that have sustained me, challenged me, and held me throughout this time. My teachers and mentors (including my professors at HDS and beyond, as well as those whose words I've only ever read in texts) have taught me what it means to be embodied, to use ritual as a container for transformation, to face truth head on, to be brave, to be in love, to be with the divine. My beloveds—my deep soul friendships—have gently and lovingly invited me deeper into imagination, creativity, and have created spaces of rest, profound nourishment, and growth. And my family has never let me doubt their love, encouragement, and bolstering. It is through these relationships that I am brought back, again and again, to my own divinity, and of the divinity of the world. Thank you for your loving reminders, for your wisdom, and for your accompaniment.

 **What do you hope to be remembered by?**

 Perhaps I'll use this space to offer a short blessing to this beautiful community that has given me so much over these past two years: my loves, you love without letting go, you show me what it means to clasp hands, to accompany, to witness. You live with heart forward. You love with your whole body. This lights me on fire. May you never walk alone. May you always feel palm against palm. May you always look up and find the divine, look down and find the divine, look at your own hand and see the divine. May you always have light for the way, may you always feel loved