Culture Archives - Page 16 of 18

In Culture, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Going Deeper

Julianne HarveyNovember 16, 2016Leave a comment

I sat down to write my blog yesterday and for the first time in six years I had literally nothing to say. I started and erased four different entries before giving up.

The U.S. election has put me in a funk. I’m fighting my way out of a cloud of uncertainty, fear and barely suppressed rage. It’s awful to watch something unfolding and have no compass for understanding why it’s occurring. I hate the direction the culture of the world is heading in. It feels like stepping back in time and losing all societal forward progress toward acceptance, freedom and kindness.

Today I feel marginally stronger and able to marshall my flying thoughts in one direction. I long to go deeper. The answers are not found on Facebook, Twitter or by watching so-called “experts” on the news. This is the way of madness; futility and bleak predicted outcomes that have no basis in reality.

What helps is sitting still and breathing. Praying. Being generous to ourselves so we can give to others without burning out. Remaining calm when the world is burning is an act of radical courage. Peace provides a balm that soothes frayed nerves and overworked minds.

It takes a lot of willpower for me to stop forecasting disaster scenarios and listening to other people’s doom and gloom doesn’t help me break this cycle. The world has not ended. The sun continues to rise and set and our loved ones are still all around us. Our kids need us to show them the way through. Bravery is the currency we need right now.

Answers are found in stillness, not in social media. I’m weary of my own opinions and everyone else’s. When nothing is clear, go deeper inward, to the place where peace is buried. It’s there, under the noise and the strain and the worry. It’s in each of us, a lit candle in the fiercest, blackest storm, and I’m determined to find it and shelter its flame.

We need each other, now more than ever. It’s helpful to reassure and encourage when so much of the Internet is aflame with anger and insults. We are all just trying to find our way. We want the best for our children. We do what we think is best so gentleness is paramount, even when we cannot grasp why this series of events has unfolded and we have strong feelings about it.

I’m so glad Christmas is coming. This year, more than ever, I’m desperate for hope, love and a promise of peace. If I want stability in the world I must first create it in myself. And so must you. Let’s link hands in the darkness and whisper, “We are okay. I’m here with you.” This will help. So will going deep to find that place of stillness and comfort. It’s always darkest right before the sun rises and we get another day to do some good for ourselves and for others.

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth

When Worried, We Have Two Choices

Julianne HarveyNovember 8, 2016November 7, 2016Leave a comment

Like most people, I’m concerned about the U.S. election today. But I’m over worrying about the things I cannot control. I’ve wasted too much time on that already.

When something is worrying us, we have two choices. We can stew and obsess and forecast disaster. Or we can intentionally choose to hope that it’s all going to work out the way it’s meant to. Probably not the way we would design it, but we only have a portion of the information we need at any given time. In order to see the whole picture, we have to simply keep going to see what’s next.

This summer I decided to live in the now instead of the future or the past. It was easier to do this when I was sick in the hospital and recovering at home, because my whole world shrank down to the next hour in front of me. I could not make any plans for anything beyond that.

Once I accepted this reality, everything got easier, simpler and clearer. Planning for the next hour makes more sense than the next month, year or decade. But when I recovered from my ruptured appendix and we were suddenly moving to BC and dealing with massive change, my commitment to staying in the present was put to the test.

And I failed, more often than not. Lately I’m stuck in the past, longing for the comforts of the life we had built for ten years in Alberta: predictable, safe, reliable. Our new existence in the lower mainland is the opposite, but I know this is a temporary instability.

So I’m back to the two choices when I’m worried. Stew and obsess or hope it’s all going to work out. My fallback is always number one, but I can work at this and choose a better option for my mental health.

At the end of 2015 I picked three words to focus on for the new year: strong, clear, optimistic. I’m reminded of these now when I feel weak, muddled, hopeless. We can all do hard things. We can make it through the challenges we face on a daily basis. We can choose optimism over despair.

No matter what happens tonight with the election, I’m not going to allow it to steal any more of my peace and contentment. I’m going to love myself through the change in the U.S. government the way I must love myself through every other obstacle that arises.

It’s all going to be okay. It’s going to work out like it’s supposed to. Believing this can be challenging, but it’s preferable to the fetal position where we are too afraid to continue. Let’s put our fear aside and trust in God, the universe, goodness, ourselves.

Let’s believe that something bigger is going on here than we can piece together with our own perspective. When all of the pieces are eventually revealed, our individual lives will make more sense, to us and to others. For now what we need is optimism, teamwork and kindness. We can get through this together.

In Culture, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Uncertainty

Julianne HarveyAugust 23, 2016August 22, 2016Leave a comment

Uncertainty is a part of life for everyone. We can defend ourselves against it, using strategies such as denial, manipulation and over-confidence in our ability to control outcomes, but at the end of the day the result is the same: uncertainty is always a factor.

I’m a Type A personality, so I find uncertainty to be an uncomfortable bedfellow. And yet as I practice going with the stream and not against it, I discover a fresh source of peace and contentment. When I believed I was the centre of the universe, by squeezing my eyes shut and willing certain things to occur, I felt more in control of my circumstances. But I paid a high price in stress for this make-believe certainty.

It was never real. Not then, not now. It’s the equivalent of a toddler standing in the middle of the room with her chubby hands pressed against her eye sockets, shouting, “You can’t see me!” I’m embarrassed to say I lived more than three decades of my life with this as a worldview. But the older I get, the clearer my uncertainty becomes.

I’m more certain now in my uncertainty than I ever was in my certainty. I’ve said that before and I’m sure I’ll state it many more times before I’m through. The sheer relief of admitting out loud that I don’t have the answers and I never really did is liberating. It’s the bubbles in a freshly-poured glass of Prosecco. It’s the helium that allows you to soar above your surroundings and see the bigger picture.

Uncertainty means you need faith on a daily basis. It requires you to let go of your preconceived ideas about how any experience or relationship should go and invites you to surrender to what is and not what you want it to be. Living this way allows you to recognize that you are one part of this world and not the whole shebang. You play a small but valuable role but huge amounts of this life are above and beyond what you can influence or manage. And this is more than okay.

I am practicing staying in each moment I am in. I don’t allow myself to forecast far into the future any more, for too much will shift and change and I’ll be forced to re-evaluate anyway. So I may as well just decide once, when the moment is upon me, instead of having fifty outcomes mapped out. It simply takes too much energy to live that way.

If you need permission not to have all the answers, please accept this from me. You are not the world’s Wikipedia. As Rumi said, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” We are marvellously complete, all on our own, but we must live this life to the best of our ability day by day. We don’t have to see around every upcoming bend, simply because we cannot. The job is too big and we are defeated before we begin.

It’s lovely in some ways to live in this age of instant information, but it messes with our natural rhythms. We aren’t sages or fortune tellers. We aren’t certain of what is coming. What we do have is our natural intuition, our sense of humour, our huge, warm hearts that can love without measure. We don’t have certainty of what will happen next or a set prescription for how others should behave.

We are responsible for ourselves and for our dependent children. We can let the rest slide from our shoulders. We can walk away from the drama and the fears of others that spread like wildfire if we let them. We can learn to live with uncertainty; to talk ourselves through it the way we get our kids through difficult situations. By breathing, discussing it in a calm manner, eating a bowl of chips or some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

Uncertainty is part of life. We may as well embrace it instead of fighting it.

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth

Lessons from the Hospital

Julianne HarveyAugust 2, 2016August 2, 2016Leave a comment

So, my appendix ruptured in the middle of last week and I’ve been in the hospital for 5 days now and counting recovering from post-surgery complications and issues.

I’ve learned a lot from this experience. Type A Go-Getters like myself don’t do well recovering at a snail’s pace, with one step forward and three back every damn day. I want to see results. I want to be the BEST at recovering, not the worst.

But what we cannot control, we must learn to accept. Kicking and screaming, maybe, but fighting what we can’t alter is a fool’s errand. To that end, these are some key things I’ve learned in my five days of recovery so far from appendicitis:

Our Bodies are Equally Strong and Frail

My mom reminded me that recovering from surgery is like labour: it helps to get out of the way and let your body do what it knows how to do. When you are tired, rest. When you need to get your bowels moving, walk. When you are puking into a tin in the middle of the night, totally lost, wasted and alone, trust that your body is doing the best that it can to heal.

In this way, I have newfound respect for my body and I feel more ready than ever to let go of my stupid issues about wishing my stomach was flatter or my arms sleeker. My body is a machine, like yours, and it’s healthy to respect what it can do.

The frail part is harder to come to terms with. In the hospital, on my many daily walks around the ward, you see all manners of human frailty in each room. Someone passed away this morning in my ward and family members were clinging to each other and sobbing in the hallways outside of my room. Life does not last forever. It is only here, given to each of us, for a limited, precious, important, undetermined amount of time. We’d best not waste it.

Patience is a Virtue

I spend way too much time rushing through life. Achieving, accomplishing, worrying, Netflix-binging, trying to prove I’m valuable and worthy. What is it all for? In the hospital, you have a lot of time to stare at the wall, cursing your 4-day NG tube and dreaming about the food and drink you aren’t allowed to have because of your lazy bowels and debilitating nausea from bile build-up.

The things that really matter; those you love who love you with their whole-heart in return come to the forefront. The friends you can call and you know they will pick up your kids and love on them. The offers of support, love and encouragement from all over the place. That’s the important stuff right there. Not the to-do list and the being superwoman. Slowing things down was what I needed to see what really matters.

Receiving is as Crucial as Giving

I’m a giver. Always have been. Receiving feels uncomfortable and even selfish to me. So to be this ill, with my supportive and fabulous husband a province away when my surgery was happening meant that I had to receive from a variety of people. I had to let myself need others and it was an eye-opening, beautiful experience.

I told Jason not to fly back, but he was too worried and ignored me. So he came, to bring the kids to see me each day over the long weekend, and this was wonderful. But I also reached out to my mom and many friends for help and they gave it, with such abundance it was like a blooming flower garden in my own heart, where I could stop and smell and get lost in love and inspiration.

There are many more lessons, but I’ve wiped myself out typing this to hit my blog deadline for tomorrow so I shall stop. Plus I just saw a prisoner shuffle past my room in his flappy, vulnerable hospital gown and IV stand, two burly guards walking slowly beside him, the prisoner in leg chains. We are all humbled by the hospital, by our own weakness and frailty. We are levelled, brought out of our disguises and into our true selves. We are revealed to be both more than we thought and less. We are real, humble, true, honest. We are beautiful.

In Books, Culture, Identity, Nurture, Writing

Permission Slips

Julianne HarveyJuly 26, 2016July 25, 2016Leave a comment

I love Brene Brown’s concept of permission slips: writing ourselves notes that tell us what we are allowed to do as a method for getting unstuck.

Lately I’ve been doing this and I’m amazed by how powerful it can be. Some of mine are:

You have permission to write what you want to write
You are allowed to feel successful even if no one says it
The goals you’ve set are achievable if you are patient
Believe in yourself, Julianne – you can do this!

Try it. Write your name on your permission slip so it’s not too general. Make it specific to you. Feel the liberation that comes from knowing you are all you need to pursue your deepest desires and talents. Stop waiting for someone in authority to give you the green light. You are the authority.

I’ve been struggling with my lack of qualifications lately. Looking for a part-time job when you aren’t officially trained in one specific vocation is rough on the self esteem.

I know my value is not located in my achievements. I’m worthy of love and care no matter what my tax return lists as my income or the number of books I’ve sold. It’s the same for you. But sometimes the world beats us down anyway. The good news is, the falling down doesn’t matter. Only the getting up and trying again counts.

Confidence is a tricky beast. When it flows, we feel invincible. We can do anything. But when it ebbs, that’s the time for permission slips. We need to remind ourselves that we have what it takes to sit in the driver’s seat of our own lives. We don’t need someone smarter, stronger or braver to rescue us. We can do that all by ourselves.

I can use my experience to tell people younger than me to persevere in something they love and finish it so they receive a qualification in something. This will make their lives smoother and easier. But if I continue to feel the need for this legitimization of my skill set, I have training options open to me. As long as we are alive, no matter what age we are, we can start a new adventure. We can learn, grow, evolve, become expert in an area of our choosing.

We can refuse to settle for less than we long for. We are in charge of our own permission slips. We can move bravely forward, creating the future we desire, refusing to give up when the inevitable bumps and detours arise. No one else is going to make our dreams come true. That’s on each of us. Permission slips can help us get there when we feel discouraged. Thank you, genius Brene, for this powerful tool.