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In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Politics, Relationships

What World Do You Want to Live In?

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

We have an election in Canada on April 28, 2025. I vote in every election, because our vote is our voice, but this election feels so much bigger and more important than any previous federal or provincial vote. This month, I’m asking myself and others, “What world do you want to live in?”

The answer really matters. It goes way beyond aligning with a particular political party because you want a perceived tax break, or because you’ve historically identified with one party over another. In 2025, we are observing in real time what happens to a country when you vote for a person who dismantles the checks and balances to exert authoritarian control over individuals and systems.

I find the situation developing to the south to be terrifying. It feels like the end of days, like the freedom I’ve previously taken for granted is perilous and in constant danger of disappearing altogether. Every day, reading the news headlines is like watching the water level rise, until very soon I’ll be taking my last breath and the sea will be over my head.

I’m posting this a few days ahead of my usual schedule, because I want it to come out before Canadians go to the polls. I beg any person reading this to ask yourself, “What world do you want to live in?” One that remains the Canada that we know and recognise, which is admittedly not perfect, but still values freedom of the press, gun safety laws, public health, social services, diverse human rights, public school funding, and more? Or something that could slide alarmingly into the power hungry surveillance state that started an unnecessary trade war with Canada and continues to threaten our sovereignty as a country?

I know what my answer is. I’m for freedom, in all areas, and for all people. I keep thinking of how many times I’ve gone down the thought exercise road of wondering what I would have done in Germany in the mid-1930s if I’d been alive then. It’s horrifying to recognise and acknowledge that this is no longer a theoretical thought process. It’s now. It’s real.

I don’t want to live in a Canada that aligns itself with authoritarian governments and economies. I want to know that my rights and freedoms are not worth more than anyone else who lives in my country because we might have different skin colours or backgrounds or belief systems. I want a social care network that holds every individual, for none of us know when we might need that help. Freedom is worthless unless it belongs to every citizen of the nation. Otherwise it’s not real freedom.

In every bone of my body I’m longing for a world where we learn to care for everyone around us once again. Where we don’t prioritise our own safety and personal economic success above what other people might need to survive and flourish. Wouldn’t it be lovely to live in a world that believed it was a good and healthy practice to care for everyone in the community instead of just caring about ourselves and our immediate families?

That’s the dream I put into my novel Post Civ. And it’s what I’m dreaming about this month, as Canadians go to the polls to elect a new government. I hope desperately that government is a Liberal one, that will continue to stand up to the authoritarian threats we are facing from our nearest geographical neighbour. We need to consider history with this vote, and veer sharply away from any possibility that brings us closer to losing our freedom of choice and not caring about those who need help and support.

We are all Canadians, more alike than we are different. When voting, please consider the world you want to live in. Don’t gamble with your freedom or mine. Let’s stay united as a country, as far away from authoritarian rule as possible. Let’s remain the true north, strong and free, forever.

In Culture, Identity, Politics, Relationships

Elbows Up

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

The world feels like a total shit show right now. Since January 2025, when leadership (I’m using that word generously here) changed hands in the US, neighbourly relations between our two countries have sharply deteriorated.

We are known the world over for being polite. But being nice has its limits, and most Canadians have reached those limits by now.

My initial reaction to the tariffs and the threats of annexation was dismay. Then deep sadness and frustration. Now I’ve moved through those stages and into pure rage. I’m angry in my very bones. I feel offended and enraged that we have been targeted and provoked. And I know I’m not alone in this reaction.

This is our country, and we take our sovereignty seriously. When we travel internationally, we wear Canadian flags because we never want to be mistaken for Americans. We love being Canadian, and I take the actions of the current US administration to be acts of war. To me, this is serious business.

I have a lot of friends who live in the US, and I’ve reached out to several of them to tell them how I’m feeling. It helped me to talk it through with them. To hear their dismay and sadness and then anger. To know that on a personal level, we are not enemies, even while their political landscape attempts to turn us into adversaries.

As Mike Meyers said so well on SNL, for Canadians it’s time for “Elbows Up.” We live and breathe hockey since the time we are born, and elbows up means to protect yourself and be ready to fight back when your opponent throws down their gloves and readies for a brawl.

As a nation, we are ready. We will fight. We are angry now. Canadians have a long history of courage on the battlefield. We show up, we don’t back down, and we will fight to keep what’s ours and to not be pushed around.

There’s no sense wishing this wasn’t happening. It’s already underway. Pretending it’s a joke isn’t helpful. Along with many other Canadians, we are buying local and refusing to support the US in any way through travel or commerce. We are committed to growing our economy and sending the message that we will not be bullied, bought, or threatened.

The sense of betrayal we feel from America right now cannot be understated. I find it impossible to understand a majority of the country voting for this chaos, stress, horror, and hatred toward individuals and nations. The long term damage of what is happening here will have ripple effects for generations. When trust is broken, it takes a long time to repair, and it will never be the same.

As a country, our elbows are firmly up. Picking a fight with polite people doesn’t get you kindness in return. In this case, it gets you a show of strength.

Canada didn’t initiate this fight, but it sure as hell plans to finish it.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships, Spiritual Life, Writing

The Long Yearn

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

The first word I chose to focus on in 2025 is deeper, and boy, did I get walloped with it weeks into the new year. It felt like unshed tears, a tightness in my throat, a pressure in my chest, and a tingling in my nose. Going deeper seemed to mean allowing my feelings their full range, and at the beginning this looked like grief and sadness.

As time went on, I thought of this process as The Long Yearn. I felt stirred up, hyper-aware of people, things, and experiences that I had yearned for since childhood and early adulthood. I missed my Granny, who died in 2008, with a keen sense of loss. I longed for the career I wanted to have in the film industry. I felt the absence of my own mother and siblings, who are alive but emotionally distant from me.

This process felt like sandpaper on raw skin. I felt up close in my own life and feelings, while also standing apart from me to notice what I missed and what was lost or too far away to grasp. The overall experience was one of grief—I saw myself standing on the edge of what I longed for but couldn’t reach.

More than once in the last six weeks I’ve wished I’d chosen another word besides deeper. When I picked it, I was thinking of it as an intellectual exercise. But our human emotions don’t function like that. What I was initially looking for was a way to deepen my work. To stay away from the surface when I wrote, to stop playing it safe and dive below into the churning mess below day-to-day life.

What I didn’t realise was what that process would cost me. It’s hard down in the depths of our being and our consciousness. That’s where the old stuff from our childhood is buried. That’s where the pain and the loss and the longing and the trapped love with no one to give it to lives. And it’s not intellectual. It’s the subconscious, which means our soul needs to feel it.

The Long Yearn is how I’m describing this murky expanse that I cannot reach with my mind. This is a feeling place. It’s dark, like the sky at midnight, with a bit of hazy purple around the edges. It’s a graveyard for lost hopes and dreams. It’s where the relationships that ended are stored. And all of these areas are swamped with pain.

I’m learning how to feel it and not crumble. I know it’s leading me somewhere. Taking me by the hand and tugging on my spirit. The Long Yearn is unveiling me to myself. I feel so consciously aware of my inner landscape when I’m in this longing space, but it requires tenacity to stay here and not to run to the safer confines of my logical mind.

If we want depth, we have to go to the depths. We have to face up to what we may never achieve, and the people who might not want to love us, and the fears we’ve tried to pretend we don’t have. It’s all here, part of this yearning expansive space inside of us, but we need courage to sit with it. I can see my failings in here. And I can also see my strengths and abilities, clearer than usual.

I’m trying not to rush this. I wanted to go deeper, and now I know how hard it is to do so. But I believe this work will bear fruit. I know that I will make it through this and get to the other side. I know this because I’ve done it before, many times over. There’s no way to get to deeper without swimming through this murky place. Most of the true things in life we can’t think our way into. The way to travel there is to feel, and to feel it all.

In Books, Identity, Movies/TV, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships, Speaking, University, Writing

3 Words for 2025

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Last month, I wrote a post reflecting on 2024, and as I usually do every January, now I’m sharing the three words I’ve chosen to focus on in 2025. I know a lot of people choose one word, but I find that too narrow. Maybe I’m just a slow learner, but I like to see how my three chosen words work together over the course of the year to change me.

For this year, I picked these 3 words: Deeper. Simpler. Quieter.

I’ve decided that 2025 is a year to turn inward. To create, to dream, to plan for the future. I’m working on stillness right now, and building in more space for myself. I can feel myself longing for deeper roots, both within myself and in my relationships and my career.

I love the agricultural concept of allowing the soil to lie fallow in order to regenerate. When I got quiet at the end of 2024 to imagine what my next year would look like, I realised I wanted a period of quiet and simple depth. I longed for a year where I focused more on writing than on publishing.

I returned to university in 2017 as a mature student, and after I finished my BA in Creative Writing I continued on for a master’s degree, graduating in spring 2023. I started my publishing company Ruby Finch Books immediately after this, learning the indie publishing world so I could release two novels (Jamesy Harper’s Big Break in 2023 and Post Civ in 2024). At the same time, both of my kids were finishing high school and moving out of our house and into university, which required me to practice my skills in letting go (and in general, I prefer to hang on rather than let go).

For 2025, I want to slow down and catch my breath. I’ve also decided to live into my longest-held dream of adapting my books into screenplays and TV scripts to try to get them made. I wrote about this in my January Substack newsletter, and I’m calling this adventure Ruby Finch Pictures even though I don’t know exactly what form this will take yet.

It’s important to keep our dreams alive. I didn’t know how to indie publish a novel before I learned that process, and now I’ve done it twice and I’m thrilled to have these books out in the world and available through many libraries. This work will continue, and it’s good work. But I also want to form a production company and see my stories come to life on the screen. This dream is going to take some time, but it’s worth pursuing.

I’m loving settling into this year, our first one as empty-nesters, and prioritising quiet, simplicity, and depth. I’m working on my first murder mystery novel, A Body at the Fair, and I’m adapting two of my books for the screen. I’m teaching writing and nurture, both online and in person at conferences and through libraries, and Jason and I are creating a new routine and existence that’s just for us as a married couple and not for us as a family of four.

This year feels like a completely fresh start already, and we’re only a month into it. How about you? What words are you hoping to live into this year?

In Books, Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships, Speaking, Writing

Goodbye 2024

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I like to take some time every December to reflect on the year that’s ending, before I look ahead to the new one about to begin. I know there’s nothing particularly unique about this practice, and turning over a calendar page doesn’t really change anything, but a new year still serves as an invitation to set new goals and dream fresh dreams.

Since I began Ruby Finch Books in June 2023, I’ve been relying more on my intuition. And our intuition flourishes in the quiet. It needs us to mute the many other noises and distractions of our world in order to get cozy enough to hear it whisper.

Our intuition is the way our soul can speak to us. And at the end of this year, I’m loving the time and space I’m taking to ask my soul what it’s longing for. I still feel amazed when I hear my soul speaking to me. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I’m amazed I’ve finally quieted down enough to listen to what it has to say.

My three words for 2024 were savour, intentional, and receive. All three of them worked on me at various points of the year. I noticed that I really improved at awareness of the present moment I was in. I tried to experience life through my senses more: to awaken my five senses and invite more wonder at being alive. Not in every single moment, because that’s not possible (and some moments are crummy). But in general, I attempted to notice my food as I was eating, my relationships as I was talking and laughing with people I love, and my life as it was unfolding moment by moment and day by day.

Part of this involved savouring, and some of it was setting my intention. Receiving was by far the hardest thing for me to learn. I wrote about it in July. But now, in December, I can see how far I’ve come with this concept. I don’t struggle so hard over my own worthiness. I can feel the love and care and nurture offered to me by others, and it’s so beautiful and inspiring that it can bring me to tears.

This month, we are preparing for our upcoming empty nest when both kids are off to university in January. I’ve gone through lots of different stages with my feelings about this big transition, but now that it’s imminent, I’m feeling mostly at peace. Having a sweet new kitten to spoil is helping. And so is taking the time to imagine a whole new life for just Jason and I at home once again.

I really did love this first full year of running my new company Ruby Finch Books. I published Post Civ, which is the book I’ve longed to write for my entire life, and got it out into the world this fall. It was so exciting to see wait lists for the book at my local library. And to talk to readers who loved it as much as I do. I look forward to more of these discussions next year.

I worked with a lot of libraries in 2024 and can’t wait for more of the same in 2025. Librarians and patrons are truly the best people. And I presented workshops on nurture and wellness to hundreds of teachers at conferences in BC and Alberta, and worked with a lot of writers in my online classes and through Alexandra Writers for the Writing Well series (plus I presented at a big writing conference in Calgary this summer). It’s such an honour to teach. I’ve been so inspired by the people I’ve met through my classes.

I’m excited about my three words for 2025, which I’ll write about here in January. I want to thank each and every one of you for reading my words this year. You mean a lot to me. If anything I write about resonates with you, please drop me a line and tell me. It’s lovely to feel connected to real-live people reading what I’m writing here. And if you haven’t had a chance to subscribe to my free monthly Substack newsletter and podcast, I invite you to join me over there as my company continues to grow.

Goodbye 2024. Thank you for what you taught me. What is your soul saying to you as we close out this year and prepare to move into a brand new calendar year?