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In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Learning to Receive

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Every year, I pick 3 words to focus on. For 2024, those words are savour, intentional, and receive. When I picked these words in January, I had a sense that receive would be the hardest challenge for me. And it has been.

But I’m getting there. I’m learning, ever so slowly, that giving and receiving is a dance. For so many years, I was spinning in circles on the dance floor of my relationships, giving and giving and giving and not believing that I deserved to receive from those who loved me.

It’s different now. And better. More balanced and fair. When Jason and I were going to marriage counselling last spring for the first time in our nearly 27-year-relationship, I said to him, “I want a wife to care for me the way I look after you.”

At first, he had no idea what I was saying. It took us both a long time to figure out that I had been so skilled at nurturing him, while simultaneously blocking any attempt he made to be loving and caring back to me. I created a pattern in our marriage where I gave and he received. Over time, this centred his needs and interests over mine.

I was resentful about this. And angry. Our relationship felt lopsided and unfair, and the worst thing was that Jason couldn’t understand why I would be feeling unhappy.

So much of our lives is invisible to us, because we create habits around our patterns. Then we behave instinctively around those patterns, until the inner workings of the relationship dynamics are mysterious to us, even though we were the ones who set those patterns up in the first place.

But 27 years is a long time. He couldn’t see that he was the centre of our relationship, and I couldn’t see that I had been the one to put him there. We were both so lost in trying to reach each other during that painful and isolating time in our marriage.

Until we took a road trip last spring from BC to Alberta, and talked with no distractions for hours on end. Suddenly, we both found clarity on a few of these key issues. He began to understand what I was asking for from him, and I could finally glimpse the inner workings of my inability to receive the care and nurture he had been offering to me.

We both started to change on that trip last June. And now, it’s more than a year later, and I’ve been learning how to receive the care I’ve been longing for. From Jason, from my grown kids, from my close friends. Even from my beloved cat, Teddy. I opened the door that I had closed in order to protect myself from being hurt or let down by others. I started to trust again, and it’s been a beautiful thing.

In my monthly zoom nurture sessions for writers, I’m amazed at how often this issue of giving vs. receiving is coming up. So many women are conditioned to give and not to receive. Sometimes it’s an issue of self-worth and protection, like it was for me, and other times it’s tied to a feeling of obligation, like nurture is a debt we owe to someone else.

I know there is a lot more to discover on this topic. I’m just scratching the surface of understanding how complex and nuanced giving and receiving can be, especially between women and men. I’m so grateful that Jason and I can both see the inner workings a little bit clearer within our marriage, which means we can talk about it openly and make small changes to be sure we are both feeling loved and loving within our relationship.

It’s been a revelation to me, how much stronger and more generous I feel when I practice receiving that love and care from others.

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

Hinges

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

We went to a funeral recently, the first one in a long time. The man who died was the grandfather of one of Ava’s earliest friends. I remember him as kind and quiet whenever we met at christenings, children’s birthday parties, or family dinners.

His funeral drew hundreds of people. It was a beautiful service, and I felt melancholy and reflective for the rest of the day after the morning mass. I began to think about my own legacy—what I will leave behind when I die.

I grew up as an evangelical Christian. In that world, we talked a lot about death but the focus was on going to heaven. I was terrified that I’d die and be denied entrance to heaven for some arbitrary reason. I worried constantly about ending up in hell.

When I moved away from my evangelical beliefs a decade ago, my fear of death slowly lost its grip on me. I began the practice of daily guided meditation. Over time, I could imagine dying without feeling a choking fear that God would be angry with me and refuse to allow me into heaven, no matter how hard I’d worked at being good and worthy.

Now, when I imagine death, it feels like a hinge. And life is full of these hinges—areas where we finish one chapter and move into a new one. We all experience so many cycles of death and rebirth. We change, we evolve, we begin and end something over and over.

I had to catch myself from competitive thinking after the funeral I attended. I asked Jason, “How many people do you think will come to my funeral?” This question caused me to worry that I haven’t kept up with enough old friends. That maybe I haven’t given to people as much over the last decade compared to how social I used to be when the kids were small.

Some of this happens naturally as we age. We experience ebbs and flows in our social lives, depending on the season of life we are in. I wrote in my journal to process these feelings, reminding myself that life and death and funeral numbers are not a competition.

The lovely man who died this month won’t ever know how many lives he had touched to inspire hundreds of people to attend his celebration of life. But his family knew. And it meant something to them. Each person who came and who shared their memories helped the family to feel less alone. And the legacy he left will endure. His love lives on in his children and grandchildren.

It’s healthy at hinge moments in our lives to reflect on what matters the most. I realised while writing in my journal that I felt a sense of deep loss when I heard family members speak about this man’s death, because he was so warm and kind and loving. I didn’t experience a relationship like that with my own father, and even though he’s been dead for twenty-two years, I wish I had known that kind of support and care from him.

We can never go back. Only forward. I’m relieved not to feel a paralysing fear any longer when I imagine dying. I think we can practice this comfort level by being more intentional about the other endings and beginnings we experience throughout our lives. With each hinge that opens and closes, we move closer to the final one. We never know when it will come. All we can do is live and love to the best of our ability, and try to remain present and attentive to each day as it comes.

How do you feel about death? Does it cause fear when you consider your own mortality? What type of hinges help you feel more at peace when you think about the end of your life?

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Travel

Another Bridge to Take

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

In the song “This Ain’t Goodbye” by Train, there’s a lyric that brings me to tears. Every time he sings, “Another bridge to take on the way to letting go” I think about how hard it is to release my grip when I want something to stay the same.

But as we all know, life means change. Stages and seasons and growth and pain and learning to let go, over and over and over again. I really kind of hate this. You’d think we’d get better at this as we age, but some things give me a lump at the base of my throat, and keep me awake at night, and cause me to cry when I least expect them to.

One of those things is my youngest child graduating from high school. William has his school dinner/dance this weekend, and his commencement ceremony in a few weeks. This is a big bridge to take. When Ava graduated three years ago, I thought to myself, “William is only in grade nine. There’s lots of time left with a kid at home.”

And now the day is almost here. It’s a time to celebrate all that he’s achieved, and how bright his future looks ahead of him, but as the mom and dad, it’s also a time to grieve the end of his childhood. I’m really feeling the truth of the saying, “When raising children, the days are long but the years are short.”

With all of these significant life transitions (or another bridge to take on the way to letting go), I do my best to prepare emotionally ahead of time. I really do. But there’s anticipation, and then there’s experience. The two are never the same thing, which is another thing I hate because I have no choice but to walk through it when the time comes. Advance preparation only gets me so far, and then the only way out is ever through.

Another one of these bridges I had to take this month was when Ava decided to fly to New York City on her own and stay in a shared-room hostel near Central Park. We suggested she go with a friend, but after our family Europe adventure last summer she wanted to try a solo trip. In theory, I thought this was a fabulous idea, and very brave when you are only twenty-one. In reality, I worried about her until she arrived home safely—feet sore from walking the city at all hours and full to the brim with excitement and stories and joy from managing everything on her own.

These are important foundational experiences for our children to undertake. They have to learn that the world is a big place and they can be smart and travel safely within it. But for the parents, this involves a lot of letting go. Of being there when our kids need us, but not taking over every arrangement so they have their own chance to lead and to shine. It’s exciting. And hard. It requires us to give up some semblance of control, and to lean into trusting our grown kids.

I’m taking a lot of bridges right now, with both of my kids, and I’m slowly (so slowly!) learning to let go of them. Like so many parents, I’m proud, and I’m sad, and I’m a bit lost, and I’m celebrating at exactly the same time. We never stop learning how to adjust to these changing seasons.

Happy graduation weekend to you, William! Congratulations, and we love you.

In Books, Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships, Speaking

Emotion Tunnels

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I first learned the phrase “emotion tunnels” from the book Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. In the book, they explain that our emotions are tunnels and we must move all the way through them. When we get stuck in the middle of a feeling, because we are scared or anxious or try to numb it or distract ourselves from it, the emotion fails to complete and we get stuck, which leads to emotional exhaustion.

This simple and brilliant definition made so much sense to me. But over time, we forget helpful things like this (or at least I do). Thankfully, my Burnout presentation (loosely based on the Nagoski sisters’ amazing work) got booked for an Alberta teachers’ conference this month, and when I reviewed my slides I realised that I hadn’t been completing some emotion tunnels.

One morning a few weeks ago, I was partway through eating my bowl of Shreddies, when I felt an overwhelming tidal wave of grief. I counteracted this experience with my usual defences: focusing harder on the novel I was reading to ward off any sad feelings, logically approaching the situation by saying to myself, “There’s no reason why I should feel teary right now,” and attempting to ignore it.

An image rose up in my mind of a tunnel, the photo I use in my presentation, and I placed my cereal spoon into my bowl, laid my head down on my kitchen table and WEPT. It was like a storm went through me. I shook, I cried, I grieved, I scared both of my cats.

When it was over, I raised my head and took a few long, shuddering breaths. Immediately, I felt different. Lighter. Less tense and stressed. I still didn’t know why I was suddenly overcome by sadness. But it didn’t matter. This was beyond knowing. What happened to me that morning at the table was simply feeling, and getting out of my own way to allow that particular emotion tunnel to complete the work it was trying to do.

Way later, I realised why I was grieving. But the key was to allow the emotion to have its way, in a safe space, alone in my kitchen. We live in such a cold, cerebral world, where we try to figure out our feelings and experiences rather than actually feel them. Sometimes this helps us to survive, when we are in pain, but mostly it gives us a spinning wheel inside of our soul, that’s desperate to complete.

I just listened to Rob Bell’s excellent and inspiring podcast called This Must be the Void. He echoed so many of the same things I’ve been going through, and it was lovely to imagine that this feeling instead of thinking process is actually in the air – that something cool and interesting is happening on a more collective level. He quoted a phrase from a song (I’m sorry that I can’t remember the musician!) that said, “I’m wired for the new world.” I feel like this phrase is doing something in my very bones and marrow. It resonates and rings utterly true.

In the last few weeks, I’m allowing myself a lot more freedom to complete my emotion tunnels instead of blocking them or attempting to understand them. The understanding comes later. First, there’s a lot to feel, and that feeling happens in the body, not in the mind. What a ride it’s been. I feel utterly changed by this process.

What emotion tunnels do you have to complete? Are there any feelings that have come up for you that you’ve been trying to avoid? Let’s discuss!

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

3 Words for 2024

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Every year, I pick 3 words or a phrase to focus on. In 2024, those words are savour, intentional, and receive.

With savour, I’m determined this year to notice more of my life as I’m living it. I read somewhere that when we plan for the future, thinking about something that has yet to arrive, we are missing our life as it’s being lived in the moment. This resonated for me, because I do it so often.

Savouring goes hand in hand with slowing down. I want to notice my delicious food as I’m chewing it. I want to pay attention to the person I’m talking to when we’re having a conversation. I long to stop fixating on my to-do list or some future event. My life (and your life!) is happening right now, at this present second. I’m determined to revel in it more. To cultivate appreciation for the life, career, and relationships I’ve built. To be here and now and to savour it all, no matter what, for this is what it means to be alive.

My second word, intentional, is designed to help me triage my biggest priorities. I’m 51 now, which means I have a lot of decades to look back and reflect on, while also hopefully having decades still to go in front of me. I want the way I spend my time to matter. I want to be more decisive about it.

I’ve been focusing for a few years now on rhythm. I work, and then I rest. I’ve learned to stop seeing leisure as wasted/non-productive time. It’s just as important. If we don’t choose to rest, eventually our body will choose for us, but there are times when I worry about the hours I’m spending chilling out (especially when I’m under a deadline or have a lot of moving career pieces on the go). This year, I want to be intentional with my time, whether I’m working or resting.

My last word is the hardest one for me. I do not know how to receive from other people. I’m unskilled and unpracticed at it. I know how to give to others – I can do that blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back – but receiving?? It feels foreign and strange and brings up all sorts of insecurities about how I don’t deserve it.

The subject of care has been a big one this past year for Jason and I in our marriage. I kept telling him that I wanted to feel cared for by him the way I would imagine he feels cared for by me. For ages, he couldn’t understand what I meant by this. My counsellor really helped me understand that I know how to give, but not how to receive. For Jason, it’s reversed.

We set these patterns up in the early years of our marriage, and now, at the 25 year mark, we’re trying to create more balance in how we function as a couple. It was really helpful for me to understand that I’m not good at receiving care, help, and love from others. I protect myself from it, and then become resentful and angry that no one is loving me, which isn’t exactly fair to the people closest to me.

With Ava moving out last year to go to university, I began experimenting with the changes in my parenting relationship with her as a grown-up child. Her love felt different to me, with her not living in our house. I was able to practice receiving some love, care, and nurture from her in a way I’d never experienced it before. This helped me open up to the love and care Jason was offering as well.

It’s been humbling. And beautiful. I still have so much to learn. Giving comes naturally to me, but I can also attest to how satisfying it feels to receive care from others. I’m inching my way into it, reminding my scared child self that I deserve love and attention too, and I don’t always have to be the one to give it. Learning to receive is going to take me a lot more time, but it’s a project I’m happy to undertake.

What are your words for 2024?