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In Books, Identity, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

No More

Julianne HarveyOctober 13, 2015October 13, 2015Leave a comment

“It often takes just a single brave person to change the trajectory of a family, or any system, for that matter.” This quote, from Brene Brown’s terrific new book Rising Strong, struck me in the heart like a well-placed arrow.

It’s brave to make huge life changes. It costs us, every single time, and has far-reaching effects for others. I’m just arriving at a point where I feel comfortable talking about the work I did three years ago with my side of the family. Before now, a lot of silent, underground healing was still happening.

I loved listening to Brene talk with Liz Gilbert on her Magic Lessons podcast about the types of stories we share. Brene said that she only shares stories when she’s worked through the shame, pain and regret. If she tells these stories before this healing has happened, it’s too much vulnerability and other people can use the story against her. Once she’s finished processing the wound, she can talk about it without feeling the same sting.

Hearing this boosted my courage because I recognized its truth in my soul before I even worked it through my mind. A single brave person can alter the trajectory of everything, by simply deciding, “No more.”

In my case, it was, “No more pretending. From this point on, I’m moving toward being real, authentic and honest. I will not ignore my feelings any longer. I am worth more than that. I deserve to pursue my own path, without constantly worrying about how other people will perceive me. From this point on, I’m looking after myself and my dependent children and refusing to caretake for other adults.”

This statement caused great unrest and upheaval in my family of origin. It did not fit with my lifetime habit of rescuing, fixing and people-pleasing. I can finally own this as a brave act of vulnerability and risk. I did it to save myself and to model a different way of being for my two kids.

It was very hard, for a long time. I felt this stand was selfish. I worried about disappointing my mom and siblings. I grappled with less-than identity concerns about my own value and worthiness – how could anyone else love me if I was on the outs with my own family? Working through these issues was agonizing, but worth it in the end, for I got to change the trajectory for myself and my kids. It’s never too late to stand up and say, “No more. It’s time to chart a new course.”

The consequences of these decisions must be weathered and borne. We can’t skip past them. Other people will hurt as a result of our choices, but this is for them to endure and feel. We might be in pain for a long time. I’ve had to learn to forgive and then love from a distance while the healing process is underway. But I have the right to change, grow and be free from old patterns. And so do you.

In Books, Personal Growth, Speaking, Writing

In the Game

Julianne HarveyOctober 6, 2015October 5, 2015Leave a comment

This week, I’m presenting my seminar, It’s On You: Taking Responsibility for your Choices, to 125 students in grades 6-8. It’s new material, and I’m not as familiar presenting to teens and tweens as I am to younger kids or to adults.

So it was a growing edge. We all have these, if we are challenging ourselves. I love Rob Bell’s reminder that “butterflies are good because they mean you are in the game.”

When something seems hard, that often means it’s worth doing. The reward is in the risk. You step out, unsure of the outcome, believing that when the chips are down, you will have what you need to complete the task.

I used to overthink everything. My mind would race ahead, attempting to cover every possible zig and zag, producing nothing but anxiety and despair. For this seminar, I decided to try putting my energy into my own confidence instead of all the eventualities that I cannot control.

I prepared, to the best of my ability, by going through the slides and recording my delivery so I could listen to it and fix the problem areas. I went for long walks and imagined myself relaxed and happy when in front of the students. I asked a few specific friends to encourage me leading up to the presentation – to cheer me on and remind me that I was up to the challenge.

Every one of these things helped to make the seminar a success. Planning, positive visualization, and organized cheerleading. When we step out in vulnerability, asking for what we need for a challenge we are facing, we can better prepare for a happy outcome.

I just read Jenny Lawson’s hilarious book, Furiously Happy, and author Neil Gaiman gives her this piece of advice when she had to record her audiobook: “Pretend you’re good at it.” I found that to be helpful on the morning of my first seminar. It’s like playing a trick; pulling the wool over people’s eyes by acting as if I was a polished, confident speaker when really my stomach was jumping up and down before I got up to speak.

My first slide in It’s On You is about cutting the tie that connects your inner sense of value with your outside performance. It feels healthy to practice this skill myself. To know that I am worthy of love and care, whether I deliver a successful seminar or fall flat on my face (or somewhere in between).

The risk is the reward. It helps us grow, to shoot for more the next time around, to bank up our trust in our abilities and skills. We simply do the very best we can, knowing that it’s better by far to have tried than to give in to our fear and back down from a challenge. It’s enough just to be in the game.

In Books, Personal Growth, Writing

How You Do Anything

Julianne HarveySeptember 29, 2015September 28, 2015Leave a comment

In last week’s RobCast, This Episode is Sugar Free, the brilliant Rob Bell quotes Dan Klein who says, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” I can’t seem to get this statement out of my brain. It’s whirring gently in there, like a washer on a spin cycle.

The little things matter in this life. It’s a cliche to say that they add up to be the big things, but it really is true. It’s not healthy to focus on the “everything” because it’s so big, and often out of our direct control. But the “anything”? This amounts to the daily choices we make, the small moments, the one-on-one interactions.

How you do anything is how you do everything. I’m trying to pull the focus of my life’s camera lens back, to tighten it on what’s in front of me at any given time. We can’t build the big structure until we learn to hammer a single nail. It’s wishful thinking to get ahead of ourselves by imagining the finished product before we complete the thousand tiny steps we need to do to get there.

How are you spending your time? Is your dreaming outpacing the work you are doing? For years, I lived this way. I felt resentful when other people succeeded at something I longed to do, but my energy went into fantasizing about the end goal instead of plugging away at the hard work of completing one task after another. What right did I have to begrudge someone who was actually putting in blood, sweat and tears, when I was only dreaming?

Of course, it’s fine to have a vision and to daydream about the big score. But doing only that focuses on the everything without actually doing the anything required to see your dream become a reality. No one succeeds without effort, failure, resilience, courage and time. These ingredients are required. Big projects have a ton of small steps, peppered with setbacks. Most of the time we just don’t get to see them.

We hold a finished book in our hands, listen to a terrific new album, or walk into a stunning building. We don’t know all of the individual days, months and years of effort that went into these things, so it can be easy to fool ourselves about the project. If the person or team got to the “everything” that you read, listen to or look at, they learned how to master each individual piece of “anything” that built up to the final product.

Every step matters. I’m paying closer attention now to my anythings because without each one, I wouldn’t ever reach my longed-for everything. Inch by inch, we grow and change and develop, and all of it counts.

In Books, Identity, Parenting, Personal Growth

The Gift of an Ordinary Day

Julianne HarveySeptember 1, 2015September 1, 2015Leave a comment

In my ongoing literary agent research, I came across a recommendation for a motherhood memoir called The Gift of an Ordinary Day, by Katrina Kenison. I just finished it, savouring the last fifty pages like a gourmet meal I didn’t ever want to end, and I feel profoundly stirred by Kenison’s heartrending observations on letting go of our beloved children.

The Gift of an Ordinary Day details her family’s journey to build a house as their two sons are reaching adolescence and growing away from their parents. It’s a familiar story of loss and change; a road I have yet to travel with my own children but can already sense, heavy in my bone marrow, for one day this metamorphosis from dependent to independent happens to all of us.

And what better time to face up to this fact than right now, the beginning of September, with the challenges and demands of a new school year upon us? We cannot freeze-frame the lives of our children, any more than we can halt the steady march of time for ourselves. The entire process of life itself is moving on: changing, dying, transforming. Nothing is static. Accepting this is better than fighting it.

But sometimes it hurts. We feel a deep ache, in the centre of our being, at just how fast our children are growing. We empty out drawers of pants that are too short and socks that no longer fit. We place pencil marks on closet doors until they are taller than we are. We love them at every stage, but we cannot hold them there. We must learn to let them go. It’s the hardest work there is as the mothers who fed them, rocked them, guided and nurtured them, until they have learned to do all of these things for themselves.

Tomorrow Ava begins grade 7 and William starts grade 4. We celebrate these milestones together, but privately I also mourn the ages that are now behind us, stored only in our memories. Parenting is one long lesson in letting go. It’s about transition, adaptation, surrender. Being a mother means loving with our whole heart, a process that opens us up to feel terrible pain and loss.

When we do our job well, raising kids who contribute positively to society and know how to look after themselves, by definition this means they will one day leave us to make their own way in the world. Each step they take in these school years is a step further from our warm, encompassing care. This is what we signed up for by having kids, but it’s important to acknowledge our own feelings around this process.

I’m so grateful to Katrina Kenison for holding up a light for me as I navigate the path of my daughter’s newfound adolescence. I do not want to overlook the beauty, healing and transformation available in each and every ordinary day to come.