Identity Archives - Page 23 of 28

Gender Equality Progress

Julianne HarveyMarch 22, 2016March 21, 2016Leave a comment

I think it’s time to talk about Hillary Clinton. This isn’t a political post, but it is a discussion on gender roles, which feels like the best part of the U.S. election process so far.

I grew up in a conservative, evangelical Christian environment. I was taught that the husband is the head of the home and that the wife’s role was to submit to his authority. This seemed unacceptable and unhealthy to me then and I feel exactly the same way now as a forty-three-year-old woman.

It simply does not work. Most of the women in my childhood model said all the right and demure things about being submissive while finding inventive ways to manipulate, control and manage the outcome of any situation. It was a system that bred resentment, distrust and outright abuses of power.

When I fell in love as a twenty-three-year old, I made damn sure to find a man who did not subscribe to this “the man is the head of the home” dictate. Jason was (and is) open-minded and flexible in his worldview; a fact that has led directly to a more balanced way of life for our two children.

Ava just turned thirteen and is a budding activist for gender equality. My heart swells with pride when I watch her stand up for the rights of girls and women to be anything and anyone they choose – rights that boys and men have taken for granted for centuries. Ava says all of the words I was too timid to express when I was her age. She inspires me to speak up and be braver now.

This “Smile for Joe” hashtag gets me all riled up. The idea that a man believes he can tell a woman what to do with her face when she delivers a victory speech (in 2016 for shit’s sake) simply demonstrates how deep this unconscious bias runs in North American culture. Why should a woman have to smile? Is it to demonstrate how easygoing and sweet she is so that men feel more comfortable. No way. Not any longer.

Then there are the young women who decided they won’t vote for Hillary because she’s a woman and they feel they are “expected to.” This baffles me. Don’t vote for her if you don’t like her politics – I can respect that. But to say it’s too obvious because you’re a feminist shows that you don’t understand just how hard women have had to fight for their rights to get you to this point. And we are still fighting. We all still have work to do.

I’m hopeful that we are making progress. The little things matter when we are talking about gender equality. Language is important. I love that Hillary is running so these issues are front and centre. If no one would criticize a man for saying or doing something (i.e. not smiling in a speech) then the same must go for a woman.

We are all in this together but I do think we are moving in the right direction and that makes me happy (even if I don’t smile in public over it). Let’s keep going. One day these posts won’t be necessary at all.

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

Self Care and Pride

Julianne HarveyMarch 15, 2016Leave a comment

I’ve noticed something in the last few literary salons I’ve facilitated: a link exists between self care and pride. Both words make people uncomfortable but in total different ways.

As a culture we have work to do in these areas. We’ve sped up the pace of our daily lives, causing the concept of self care to fall to the bottom of our to-do list. And we’ve also begun to define pride as selfish, egotistical, shameful.

Why do these two words (okay, three words but let’s lump “self care” together into one) make us squirm? I’ve heard women and men deflect away from questions centred on these ideas. In the two salons I ran yesterday in a high school, male and female students in grade nine and eleven shied away from anything involving pride and self care.

I find this fascinating. Like the brilliant Brene Brown’s research linking shame and vulnerability (not that I’m in the same league as my hero…see, there I go, qualifying what I’m about to say so it doesn’t sound too boastful), I am beginning to see that self care and pride are somehow connected.

I don’t understand it yet, but my Nurture is Valuable project ties in here (I’ve now interviewed 9 women on my way to my goal of 100 – please get in touch if you are willing to answer 5 short questions via email) and I want to pursue this further. We seem to feel afraid of our own strength. It’s uncomfortable to stand up and say, “I’m good at such-and-such. I’ve worked hard. I made/wrote/raised/cooked/organized/cold-called/created/cared for/succeeded at this.”

Why is it so challenging to own our abilities, work ethic and outcomes? When I wrote the question, “What is one thing you did last year that you are proud of?” I assumed it would be hard for women to answer but easy for men. WRONG. So far its stumped almost anyone who has drawn it randomly from a bag of questions, including straight A students and those with solid careers.

And self care baffles people across the age and gender spectrum too. I’ve had to define it over and over, and it still falls flat and lifeless among the different groups engaging in conversation. It seems to be arrogant to talk about our successes publicly and embarrassing to explore the topic of looking after yourself. How long has this been the case in our North American culture? Has it been brewing for years or for decades?

I’m going to dig deeper into this subject. Does anyone have thoughts that they would be willing to share with me? My work is taking me in this direction. Personally, I am longing for radical self care, anchored by strength and pride in who I am and what I can do in this world.

My heart aches for meaningful connection and intentional conversation with other like-minded people, which is the birthplace of the literary salon. I have identified my own need to learn to love myself, exactly as I am, so I can in turn offer this gift to others, for we can only give from our own overflow and not from our deficit. I have much to discover on this topic of self care and pride. Who wants to be part of this with me?

In Books, Identity, Personal Growth, Spiritual Life

The Untethered Soul

Julianne HarveyMarch 8, 2016March 7, 2016Leave a comment

I just read The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer (thank you, Pam, for the recommendation!). The book blew my mind. As I turned each page, I felt something in my cells and molecules shift and rearrange. Reading it was a holy, beautiful experience.

Singer’s basic premise is this: we are not our psyche. We should be sitting in the seat of awareness; observing what happens, but not being personally involved with it. He talks about how energy is designed to move through us, but we block this healthy process by storing unpleasant emotions and they remain trapped inside of us. This keeps us living in the past, bound up inside by negative energy and fears.

He offers a better way: to feel emotions or notice thoughts as they come, but then relax your shoulders, breathe deep, and choose to let them pass through you. It’s just energy, and not personal to us (even if it may feel personal). This practice helps us learn to live in the present moment instead of remaining fixated on events from years ago or anxiety about what could go wrong in the future.

I’ve been practicing this and I’m utterly amazed at the difference in how present I feel in any given moment. Life is not meant to be taken so personally. Shit will continue to happen to us. Small and large energy shifts will occur in us, where we feel unsettled, afraid, joyful, optimistic or angry. We can notice these feelings and name them, but the key is to let them go so they don’t stay trapped inside of us.

The same is true with thoughts. Our racing, fevered minds can get us into all kinds of trouble, but we don’t have to engage with the rabbit-trail our thoughts want to lead us on. We can simply observe the thought, “Oh man, I forgot to pick up the dry-cleaning and where in the world did I put that receipt I need for my taxes and the car needs more windshield washer fluid…” and then choose to let it go.

We are much more than our minds or our emotions. We have a higher consciousness, and it can only help to free us if we move beyond the confines of our frenzied thoughts and hyper-sensitive feelings.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself has offered me a new set of skills to practice. Whenever I start to feel worried or disturbed by the incessant chatter in my brain, I can observe from my seat of awareness and then allow the energy to pass through me. I don’t want anxiety about the dry cleaners or taxes or windshield washer fluid trapped inside of me for the rest of my days. No thank you!

I’m looking for peace and beauty and inspiration, not a prison of drudgery to whatever stress my mind or emotions can dream up for me. Making a conscious effort to be aware of my thoughts and feelings has anchored me to the present moment in an entirely fresh and real way. I love it. I’m so grateful for this brilliant book and recommend it to anyone and everyone.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Writing

A Season of Plenty

Julianne HarveyMarch 1, 2016February 29, 20162 Comments

I’m trying to believe that I’m in the right spot along my life’s path. Too often I waste energy and joy by convincing myself that I’m falling behind. I get online (likely my first mistake) and I start comparing my progress to someone else’s. This leads to a self-induced panic that boils down to one thing: scarcity.

I hate viewing success as a pie with a limited number of slices. This faulty perception breeds paranoia and an unhealthy drive to be better than someone else in order to get ahead. Either the world is an exciting place, full of abundant possibilities, or it’s not.

Why is it so tempting to lean toward scarcity as a worldview? It’s so small and limiting. Abundance is much bigger, wider and happier. My thoughts betray me when I long for them to set me free. As humans, we are not meant to stay cramped and afraid. We are creatures of infinite possibility, but why would we try out our wings if we believe we are going to fall to the ground?

Process takes time. I’m convinced that the immediacy of the internet has given us outlandish expectations that everything we want is just a simple click away. Why wait for anything? As a culture, we’ve been sold a pack of lies about how entitled we are to success without actually working for it.

The natural world is about process and always has been. Our seasons last for months and you don’t get to skip ahead just because you want to. New growth takes time to unfold. Our modern on-demand world has set up impossible standards for us. We are looking for a shortcut to what we desire. Waiting and working hard feels like it’s for suckers, but it’s the only way there is. I’m recognizing that my perception is what needs to change.

I am on a path to something and so are you. It’s often slow and methodical. It winds on us with no advance warning. We follow our curiosity and sense of wonder to see where it will take us next. Roadblocks pop up and we must spend valuable time, money and resources finding a way around them. All of this matters and it’s all part of the journey. It’s our path to walk.

Comparing our road to another person’s is a waste of time. Our hard work is leading us where we want to go. The key is to disconnect from the fantasy of overnight success. No such thing exists. I have to believe that I am where I need to be. Perseverance is slow and long, but it gets us where we long to go. I’m choosing to see the world as abundant and optimistic, instead of scarce and competitive.

I’m on my journey and you are on yours. It will likely help us both to cheer each other on and hope that together we can accomplish more. I’ve done the small and cramped worldview, and it hasn’t given me good results. It’s time to open it up: to go deep and wide and bountiful; to move away from scarcity and into a season of plenty.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Relationships, Speaking, Writing

I Am Enough

Julianne HarveyFebruary 23, 2016February 21, 2016Leave a comment

I made a list of things I wanted to let go of in 2016. At the top of the list was this: my deep-seated fear that I am not enough.

I had no idea when I wrote that how massive the reverberations would be in my psyche from the earthquake this would cause. We’re seven weeks in to this new year, and expressing a willingness to work on this hidden area of shame and being less-than has cratered my life.

The explosion is the worst. It blows all of your security and coping mechanisms apart. You are left with nothing safe or familiar. You feel naked, exposed, stupid, alienated. You think you cannot survive what just happened, but then something miraculous occurs: you do.

Getting at wounds that feel primal takes a herculean effort at courage. We want to scatter, like rats or cockroaches, as soon as the light touches the poorly-healed scar. Our deepest and darkest secrets reside in these places. The pain is staggering, fresh, overwhelming. The first instinct is to run; to put as much distance as possible between you and the hurt, to throw everyone else off the scent by summoning every trick in our arsenal to show that we are the opposite of our greatest fear.

But if we don’t run, something remarkable happens to us and in us. We stare it down. In my case, I saw that over the course of my life, I’ve developed healthier skills that helped me face the anguish I’d been running from.

Just because I felt less-than doesn’t mean I am less-than. I could prove, to myself, that I am more successful than I’ve been allowing myself to take credit for. While staring into this stinking abyss of not being good enough, I saw that I already had what I needed to be happy, fulfilled and optimistic. It was already there. Now the task was to claim it, to hold it in my hand, to cease striving for someone else to give it to me and simply be enough exactly as I am in this moment.

It all had to fall to shit before I could see it clearly. I had to risk losing everything and everyone to see how much I already had. This one has been a muddy, long slog. No one else was responsible for my own sense of worth. This was on me. I had to feel the sting of the shame and the fear in order to stare it down and come out safely on the other side. And damn, was it a solitary and terrifying journey, but the other side is as wide open as the prairies.

I’m free in this new landscape. I own my choices, my value, my soul, my fresh belief that I am enough and always have been. But worrying about what came before is a fool’s errand and I’m done being foolish. I can only move on from here and live out of this place of truth and beauty, where forgiveness finally exists for myself as much as for anyone else.

It will be less lonely now, for I can choose whom to invite into this new reality – the one where I am enough, simply because I breathe, and not because I’m terrified to show you just how hard I’m working to prove my worth to you. Those days are gone and it all looks so different now.

Our inside reality determines how we experience everything. I’m not setting my value now in a hypothetical sense. This is finally real, part of my daily experience, and I’m not handing this gift to anyone now. It’s mine, I own it, and I’m going to treat it much better from this point forward.