Identity Archives - Page 26 of 28

In Identity, Personal Growth, Relationships

Brick Wall

Julianne HarveyNovember 3, 2015October 30, 2015Leave a comment

Do you ever find yourself going along your merry way, fairly happy and peaceful, when suddenly BAM! a brick wall comes out of nowhere and smacks you in the face?

I could do without this. I’m doing my daily soul work: holding important relationship boundaries, looking inside to see where I might be veering off course or doing too much for others, checking in with my feelings, handling the mundane busywork of living. And then, that brick wall. It could be an email, a piece of unexpected news, a distracted spouse, a schedule that doesn’t allow for rest or reflection, a word or a look that is easily misinterpreted.

Emotional brick walls are land mines – you never know when they are going to trigger an explosion. When my reaction is ten times bigger than the situation calls for, I know I’ve stepped on some unhealed wound from childhood. The further back it goes, the deeper its hold on our psyche.

The pain is similar to what you would get if you ran full-tilt into a brick wall or if a bomb exploded under you. It causes panic and fear and chaos. The crappy part is that no one can see this. Only you. And most of the scabs that get torn from our childhood hurts involve our biggest questions around identity and value. We feel internal agony, and pretty soon we are asking, “Am I good enough? Do I matter at all?”

When I was a kid, I walked on eggshells, all day and all night. Under these broken eggs were many undetonated land mines. Most of this had nothing to do with me – it was my parents’ garbage, brought in from their damaged childhoods and given to me as a legacy. But I didn’t know that then. My coping mechanism was to disappear into other people. When an issue came up, I took responsibility for it and fixed it, even if I wasn’t even involved in it.

This destructive habit of caretaking has plagued me for my whole existence. Deciding to shed it was both the best and worst thing I’ve ever done. The best because it finally meant I could look after myself. It gave me options; the choice to let another person manage their own life instead of me doing it for them. But it was the worst because it stripped me of everything I hung my value on. It hollowed me out. If I wasn’t fixing everyone else’s problems, what in the world was I good for? I was nothing, no one, utterly useless without this stressful busy work of bleeding into everyone else’s pain.

I have better skills now. But every so often, that brick wall materializes and I am terrified of all those unexploded land mines. Am I really enough, just as I am, or do I have to hustle harder to prove I deserve a spot at the table? This endless longing to be loved for who I am and not for what I can do ties me up in knots every damn time.

It boils down to this: does unconditional love really win or am I searching for more gold stars for my behaviour chart? I must feel the pain of everything I cannot control, absorb the sadness of the losses I have sustained, and then bravely decide to get back on my feet and keep going. There are no shortcuts in soul work. We have to keep walking, even when it’s dark and scary and we are all alone, and hope that soon we’ll be on the other side and can finally understand the lesson we were meant to learn.

In Books, Identity, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Unfinished Business

Julianne HarveyOctober 20, 2015October 19, 2015Leave a comment

I’m almost done reading Unfinished Business by Anne-Marie Slaughter. She’s given me a lot to chew on in these pages, about the true nature of equality between men and women and what is required from all of us for the next great cultural wave of change to occur.

Chapter five, entitled Is Managing Money Really Harder than Managing Kids? was particularly moving for me to read. I was trying to wind down before going to sleep, but so many light bulbs were going on in my brain that I was afraid to keep reading in case I stayed awake half the night considering her ideas on how we need to place a higher value on caregiving in our society.

Slaughter writes, “The broader understanding of caregiving also includes teaching, discipline (holding the line even in the face of tears, threats, and curses), coaching, encouraging, problem solving, character building, and role modeling. Often caregiving is about reliability: simply being there when being there is important to your child, your parent, or your spouse. And it’s about support: focusing on someone else’s needs and figuring out how to meet them, whether finding a lost sock, book, or cell phone or offering a genuinely attentive ear.”

Allowing these words to sink into my brain was like applying Polysporin to an infected wound that has been festering for the last twelve years. I despise this endless need for permission to validate the specific choices I have made, along with Jason, about what’s best for our family, but clearly I still have work to do in this area.

I planned to return to work after Ava was born, for I am a feminist, dammit, and ambitious to boot. I was not going to stay home and waste my decent brain on nursery rhymes and homemade play-doh. If this sounds judgmental, that’s because it is. One of Slaughter’s recurring themes in her book is that we must all face up to our cultural stereotypes, gender biases, and faulty perceptions. I certainly possess my share.

But once Ava was born, I didn’t want to leave her to go back to my office, so Jason and I made a series of sacrifices so I could stay home. I started a successful home business selling rubber-stamping products so I could help close the gap between what Jason earned and what we needed to live on.

Fast-forward twelve years. Many things have changed but one thing hasn’t: I’m still the one at home, managing the myriad of day-to-day arrangements and catastrophes. I’m the one caregiving. How could I ever hope that anyone else will value this role unless I model what that looks like for myself?

Jason has an excellent job and he is terrific at it, but a huge part of why he is so successful is the contribution I make at home. I am here, day in and day out, working my writing and speaking around the kids’ schedules so that when Jason needs to travel for his career, he has the flexibility to do so. The competition of the workforce only succeeds if someone is taking care of the details at home.

I realized while reading Unfinished Business that I must continue to define my own contributions as valuable. I have to reframe them, and so does anyone who has built a life on those skills that Slaughter lists in the earlier quote: teaching, discipline, coaching, encouraging, problem solving, character building, role modeling, reliability and support. These things matter. Just because they don’t usually have a dollar value attached doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be sorely missed if they were gone.

This is unfinished business for me in my own personal value system. I’m grateful to Anne-Marie Slaughter for continuing this important cultural conversation with her new book.

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 Identity, Personal Growth, Writing

Disconnect from the Outcome

Julianne HarveySeptember 22, 2015September 21, 2015Leave a comment

Disappointment sucks. Not one of us is immune to it. We want something, so we begin to hope for it, predicting an outcome not guaranteed to occur.

The longer we wait, the further our imaginations nose ahead, daring to believe that this time, our long-held desire will bear fruit. As a writer, this is the seesaw edge I live on. Submitting work, then waiting for one of two outcomes: rejection or acceptance.

The other day, I heard someone utter these wise words, “I’m trying to do my best and then disconnect from the outcome.” I’m wretchedly awful at the second half of that sentence. Trying my best is easy; accepting whatever results from that is difficult.

But I know it’s good for me to keep trying. We all have to. Value plays a sizeable role here. When I tell myself I’m a decent writer because someone else confirms that by praising what I do, advancing me in a contest or offering a contract instead of a form rejection letter, I’m sunk. My confidence recedes, my stomach drops, and I feel worthless.

The key is to hinge my worth on my own unique identity and not to anything I produce. My work is not who I am. This goes for every one of us. No matter what our culture may tell us, success at work does not equal success as a human being. We will fail and we will succeed, but these markers are outside of us. They are not levers on our identity, shifting us ever higher or lower.

It’s funny because one of my slides in my It’s On You seminar is called “Expect Failure”. Another one is “You Own Your Value”. I’m teaching these concepts to students and to adults, and receiving a beautiful opportunity to practice them in my own experience. These philosophies mean nothing if I’m not living them out myself. Example is king. I don’t listen to fancy words any more, when it’s clear that the person uttering them is not modelling the skills they espouse.

Rejection is another chance to practice disconnecting from the outcome. I cannot afford to hitch my belief in my abilities to the opinions of other people. I have to feel the sadness when rejection hits, then dust myself off and move on, creating what only I can do. Even if it’s just for myself.

We do our best, and then allow the consequences to unfold as they will. We can only control our end of the deal. Beyond that, we have to believe that when the time is right, we will see small measures of success. Until that time, we’ll keep on going, affirming to ourselves that we are not the work we do. We are worthy of love and care, whether we win or lose. If we keep walking up to the plate, one day we’ll connect with the ball as we’ve dreamed of doing.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Writing

Claiming Creativity

Julianne HarveySeptember 15, 2015September 7, 2015Leave a comment

Where does an idea come from? I have no clue, but the mystery of the process is one of my favourite parts. About a week ago, I was pleasantly watching a Seinfeld episode with my kids when BAM! an idea dropped into my head for a new writing project like it had parachuted in from behind enemy lines.

One second, nothing but relaxed laughter at George Costanza, and then, an idea that made my heart pound with excitement. This sense of wonder and surprise is what I love most about living a creative life. And I don’t accept it when people say, “I’m not creative.” That’s 100% bullshit, not to put too fine a point on it.

We can all create, whether it’s with words, paint, wood, instruments, food, paper, fabric or a zillion other things. If you are human, you are creative. It’s simply a question of how willing you are to engage with it.

Lately I’ve been ruminating on the word “claim”. I’m attempting to claim my work as a writer. To feel entitled to own that this is what I do. To once and for all slough off this hideous less-than scrambling for a seat at the artist’s table. I must do what I most want to do in this life. This is true for every one of us.

The world is not likely to beg you to write a book, start a business, bake a loaf of bread, make a fancy card or grow a vegetable garden. People are busy with their own lives, so if you want to create something, the responsibility falls on you to dive in and try it.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s new podcast, Magic Lessons, has helped me in my pursuit to claim my own artistic stake in this life. She encourages us to go for it, no matter what the end result is, because the art of creating is its own reward.

I used to get bogged down in, “What if it’s no good, what if no one likes it, what if it doesn’t turn out the way I want it to?” Five years in on my writing career, I finally know that those questions are useless and debilitating. The answer to every one of them is, “Who the hell cares?”

Now, when I get a fresh idea, I give myself permission to pursue it with no expectation on what it will end up as. It might be genius or it might be shit. I’ll never know unless I invest a bit of time in it, and when the magic starts to happen and it sings and dances for me on the page, I’ll remember that the act of creation is the reward. Even if no one sees the finished product and it’s just for me.

Being invited to create is more than enough. The higher the value I place on my own self-worth, the more I feel entitled to claim the word “writer” as my creative identity. It’s freeing, exciting and knows no limits. For a little while, it gets to be all mine, and that is a worthwhile reward.