Parenting Archives - Page 16 of 17

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 Books, Identity, Parenting, Personal Growth

The Gift of an Ordinary Day

Julianne HarveySeptember 1, 2015September 1, 2015Leave a comment

In my ongoing literary agent research, I came across a recommendation for a motherhood memoir called The Gift of an Ordinary Day, by Katrina Kenison. I just finished it, savouring the last fifty pages like a gourmet meal I didn’t ever want to end, and I feel profoundly stirred by Kenison’s heartrending observations on letting go of our beloved children.

The Gift of an Ordinary Day details her family’s journey to build a house as their two sons are reaching adolescence and growing away from their parents. It’s a familiar story of loss and change; a road I have yet to travel with my own children but can already sense, heavy in my bone marrow, for one day this metamorphosis from dependent to independent happens to all of us.

And what better time to face up to this fact than right now, the beginning of September, with the challenges and demands of a new school year upon us? We cannot freeze-frame the lives of our children, any more than we can halt the steady march of time for ourselves. The entire process of life itself is moving on: changing, dying, transforming. Nothing is static. Accepting this is better than fighting it.

But sometimes it hurts. We feel a deep ache, in the centre of our being, at just how fast our children are growing. We empty out drawers of pants that are too short and socks that no longer fit. We place pencil marks on closet doors until they are taller than we are. We love them at every stage, but we cannot hold them there. We must learn to let them go. It’s the hardest work there is as the mothers who fed them, rocked them, guided and nurtured them, until they have learned to do all of these things for themselves.

Tomorrow Ava begins grade 7 and William starts grade 4. We celebrate these milestones together, but privately I also mourn the ages that are now behind us, stored only in our memories. Parenting is one long lesson in letting go. It’s about transition, adaptation, surrender. Being a mother means loving with our whole heart, a process that opens us up to feel terrible pain and loss.

When we do our job well, raising kids who contribute positively to society and know how to look after themselves, by definition this means they will one day leave us to make their own way in the world. Each step they take in these school years is a step further from our warm, encompassing care. This is what we signed up for by having kids, but it’s important to acknowledge our own feelings around this process.

I’m so grateful to Katrina Kenison for holding up a light for me as I navigate the path of my daughter’s newfound adolescence. I do not want to overlook the beauty, healing and transformation available in each and every ordinary day to come.

In Identity, Parenting

Reconciling Kindness with Authenticity

Julianne HarveyAugust 18, 2015August 16, 2015Leave a comment

I struggle to reconcile kindness with authenticity. So often they seem like opposite ends of the spectrum.

In helping my daughter through friend issues, I feel as if authenticity is at odds with inclusion. Do I teach her to look after herself first, even if this means backing away from a friendship that tends to bring more frustration now than support? But if I also advise her to be as kind as possible, what is she supposed to do when kindness to this person means a type of sacrifice for what feels like authentic friendship for Ava?

It’s one thing to make these kinds of choices for myself, and another thing to watch my child suffer through them. William is quite naturally adept at this. He genuinely doesn’t care if someone wants to be his friend or not. He decides for himself who his friends are (it’s a small number of people) and doesn’t feel obligated to extend friendship to everyone. Part of this might be that he is a boy. Or it could be his introverted personality, where he’s just as happy to be alone as with peers.

But Ava is different. She’s extroverted, socially aware of how she fits into any particular group, and she’s in middle school, a place where belonging can be be a blood sport. I love that she feels ready to make certain decisions about her social life and is willing to accept the consequences of these choices. I think my fear enters in when I start worrying about how other people might perceive her if she stands up for herself when it comes to defining her friends.

I’ve lived through these friend choices and felt the pain of being labelled disloyal, cruel and full of myself. Over time, however, the anger fades away, along with the shame, and I’m left with a tighter, more intimate handful of friends whom I can trust. I had to prune away the negative in order to make room for the positive to grow and flourish. And my life is richer for it.

I want this for Ava, but I have to make my way through my own reservations and private anxieties to get there. It’s one thing to endure scorn and derision from others for yourself, and another to help your child through the same thing. When I talked to a friend about this, wondering aloud if Ava should stay quiet and not risk offending this girl or her entire circle of friends, my friend said, “It sounds like a leadership quality to not need a huge group of friends. Just one or two that you can really count on.”

This helped to soothe my fears for Ava. Perhaps kindness and authenticity can be reasonable bedfellows after all, but it comes down to listening to our intuition. When we feel like we’ve had enough, and we aren’t willing to endure a difficult situation a moment longer, then we honour our authentic self by communicating this with as much kindness as possible. Until that point, we watch and we wait, holding our tongue, which is also a form of kindness and generosity.

At the end of the day, it’s critically important to know that we all have choices. We are not stuck in painful situations. We must do what we believe to be right for us, and then learn to live with the consequences of our decisions.

In Identity, Parenting, Spiritual Life

Perfect Peace

Julianne HarveyJuly 28, 2015July 28, 2015Leave a comment

My relationship with my dad was thorny, messy and difficult. It didn’t start out healthy and then deteriorate, nor did it flounder initially and then improve later. It was simply a brewing storm from the day I was born until the day he died halfway through my twenty-ninth year of life.

He’s been dead for thirteen years now. This May, I went to a friend’s house for a workshop on intuition. At the end of this perspective-shifting day, we did a group meditation where my dad appeared beside me. He handed me a note that read, “I’m sorry.”

Those words did not pass between us when he was alive, at least not in any meaningful way, but to hear them in that meditative setting seemed entirely right. They sewed up a wound that needed attention since I was a very young girl. In that quiet, contemplative place, something special, healing and transformative occurred for me.

I came home from the workshop and allowed myself time to let it settle. Soul work has its own rhythm and schedule. Thirteen years is nothing when it pertains to the soul. When we are ready, healing comes to us, with no amount of cajoling, forcing or urging on our part. I didn’t know it when I walked into that workshop, but I was now in a place to reconcile with my bipolar, alcoholic, lost father. And he was ready to return to me.

In one of his final letters to me, a few years before he died, he said that he would like his tombstone to read Perfect Peace. This request seemed at odds with his turbulent life, but I’ve come to see that my dad never stopped searching for peace. It may have eluded him while he was alive, but a part of me feels at rest when I dream about him finding it at long last through death.

It’s always bothered me that there is no physical marker anywhere of my dad’s life and death. In the last few years, I have come to understand that most of my core character attributes passed to me directly from my dad. It was hard for me to claim these while he was alive, but now, with a daily reminder in the form of my son, I see evidence of my dad’s DNA in me and around me. And I feel so grateful.

The older I get, the less I demand of myself or of others. We are all doing the best that we can, on any given day. I think it would be quite different if I could sit down with my dad today and have a conversation. After my profound experience at the intuition workshop, I wanted to give something back to my father; to show that his time here on earth was valuable and important. It mattered. He mattered.

Because of him, I am who I am, and those same character qualities exist in William. We are a chain of DNA, stretching out into the future, and I wanted to say to dad, “Look at what you have done. I love you, I have no more hard feelings, and I think you would be proud of me, my husband and my kids.”

I ordered him a bench plaque and chose a picturesque spot in our hometown that holds special meaning for both of us. It was a healing experience to visit the bench with Jason and the kids on a beautiful summer day. I cried when I thought about dad, in that beautiful spot, and I experienced the perfect peace he spent his whole life pursuing.

In Identity, Parenting, Personal Growth

Unicorn Expectations

Julianne HarveyJuly 21, 2015July 20, 2015Leave a comment

I’ve had a rough start to my summer. I couldn’t seem to figure out why I was feeling so tightly wound, irritated and falling behind until I had a conversation with a friend about it.

“Like most moms, I get so tired in June and just attempt to limp over the finish line,” I heard myself saying. “As each commitment wraps up, like music lessons or board meetings or school events, I heave a sigh of relief and think, ‘now I’m done and won’t have any more stress for the next two months.'”

As soon as these words left my mouth, I started to laugh. How ridiculous is that? But it was a revelation about my own secretive messed-up thinking – the kind that lurks in the basement of my psyche and trips me up again and again.

“An expectation is a premeditated resentment.” I love this wise tidbit from the recovery movement. When we establish a set of expectations, especially impossible ones like having a pollyanna summer where everything comes up unicorns and rainbows, we are ensuring defeat before we even get going.

I’d like to think I know this by now. Magical thinking is a hallmark of growing up in an alcoholic home. It was sewn into my DNA along with good manners and a raging inferiority complex. I have trouble shaking this iron-clad belief that some future “there” is easier/better/happier than this present “here”.

I know with certainty that “the grass is greener” is the road to doom. It doesn’t work. It’s never worked, and yet I fall for its seductive charm time and again, like the badass in the leather jacket who catches your eye in spite of your many and reasonable misgivings.

Falling into magical thinking is a child’s response to a set of very adult circumstances. Unicorn expectations are not compatible with a vibrant, healthy, responsible life. When we want everything to be clear-cut and easy, and it’s anything but, we are pissed off and disillusioned before our foot even leaves the starting block.

I”m really grateful for the conversation I had with my friend. It opened my eyes to why I have spent the last two weeks sullen and resentful. Real life doesn’t match up to fairy-tale expectations. It’s better to expect some bumps and roadblocks than to assume it will be smooth sailing because the calendar turns to July.