Showing all posts in Personal Growth

In Culture, Identity, Movies/TV, Nurture, Personal Growth

Accepting our Bodies

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Accepting our Bodies

I’m working on accepting my body, exactly as it is. We live in a world where it’s all too easy to pine for a thinner frame where clothes hang a certain way and where we feel like we are winning at the game of healthy eating and exercise.

One way I’m pushing myself toward body acceptance is through the background work I’m doing as an actor in film and TV. I recently took Ava in for new headshots for her acting and I booked myself in at the same time. Choosing her new photos was fun and easy for me. Choosing mine were more challenging.

These were some of the thoughts that came up as I scrolled through my images: Do I really have that many wrinkles around my eyes? Why does my face look so puffy? I thought my skin looked smoother than that! And my arms…what the hell is going on there? They look so bulky. 

And in the few full-length shots with Ava and I together in case we get called on for mother-daughter work? Forget it. She was lovely, vibrant, healthy. I looked, um, rounder around the middle than I’d prefer to imagine I look.

I’m determined to love myself through these pictures (and updated measurements for wardrobe on the last feature film I was on). I’m not 14 like Ava is. I’m 44 and I’ve birthed two rather large children. I am worthy of love and care when I’m thinner and when I’m pleasantly plump.

Sure, these experiences could motivate me to up my game in the exercise and eating game. I am making small changes that I hope will be sustainable. I lost 30 pounds five years ago and kept it off until last fall, when the stress of my appendix rupture followed by a provincial move seemed to jettison my good habits and get my weight back to where I started. But I love the idea of being gentler and kinder to myself this time around.

Body image is a thorny issue in our world today. We seem to have polarizing views on the subject with obesity on the rise in our culture. I think the key is to cultivate love and generosity towards ourselves and others. The goal is to feel beautiful and sexy in our own skin, no matter how the number fluctuates on the scale.

It’s hard. I know it is. I’m being deliberate about working in the body-conscious film world and pushing myself to accept what I look like in photos and onscreen. I’m doing my best not to compare my arms or thighs or belly to anyone else’s. We are all different and aren’t meant to be carbon copies of each other. I have no interest in starving myself to be a size 0. But if I’m a size 14 or 16 instead of a 12, I don’t want to beat myself up over it or feel less-than in some way.

How do you manage to accept and love your body exactly as it is? I’d love to hear from you and keep the dialogue going.

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Speaking

Autumn

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Autumn

Well, here we are again at the end of summer looking towards autumn. I feel melancholy when transitions are upon us. I’m learning not to sweat this, but instead to allow it to have its way, for this is the process of change.

Ushering in a new season reminds us that nothing in this life stays the same for long. Perhaps this understanding is at the root of the sadness I feel. We cannot hold on, no matter how sweet the experience has been. We have no choice but to allow it to pass, to learn what we can from it and then give ourselves permission to move on. Anything else holds us back.

This fall Jason has a new job, I will be returning to university and increasing my hours as a speaker and background actor in film and TV, Ava will be starting grade nine and William is moving on to grade six. September tends to be a time to embrace new adventures, which is probably why I have a love/hate relationship with it.

Deep down, I know that I am capable of handling whatever is coming next. And I have no doubt that my husband and my children will be fine, too. And whatever you are facing, dear reader, I believe that your abilities will rise to greet the challenges in front of you.

I think it’s just the actual transition that really sucks. It’s hard, plain and simple, the process of moving from one known stage into an unknown one. We can only envision and imagine for so long. Eventually, the calendar page is turned and we must leap, with our best foot forward, into the next adventure. I hate the waiting, but it’s all part of the process.

Autumn is nearly here, with its cool breezes, return to sweaters, pumpkin spice lattes, crisp leaves, school buses, apple pies and other delights. I find it difficult to let go of this summer, because it has been so peaceful and happy compared to the chaos of last year. My natural inclination is to hang on, to remain where I am safe and secure, to refuse to press on.

Life is a long march forward. To stagnate is to eventually die. We must all challenge ourselves by boldly facing up to our fears and limiting beliefs. We only grow when we are challenged. Resting is a divine blessing and an important one, but if we are in leisure mode forever we’ll never achieve anything. The healthy balance to strive for is a teeter-totter of activity/stillness, people/solitude, challenge/security.

Fall is a prime opportunity to re-examine our boundaries, priorities and the way we spend our precious resources. Are we being invited to attempt something new? Will we need to sacrifice an item on our schedule to make room for another person or experience?

It’s normal to feel lost at the point of transition. It’s nothing we need to fix. If we let this sadness have its way, with a little luck it will pass right through us, opening the door to the next season, ripe with adventure and promise.

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth

Hope and Rage

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Hope and Rage

If hope is a balloon, light and airy and free, right now it’s firmly attached to an anchor of rage for me. I feel so fucking mad right now, angrier than I can ever recall being, at the state of our world and the sheer madness of what some people are thinking, doing and saying.

As a woman, I’m tired of staying quiet. Remaining calm, stable and gentle. NO. Not now. Not with this lunatic American president spewing hate, misogyny, racism and fear-mongering on a daily basis. Not with the evangelical Christian community I came from (and left in 2014) still supporting these dangerous rantings from a man unfit in every way to hold the office of president.

This tsunami of rage has threatened to take me over completely. I know I have to feel it, to let it have its way, for the purpose of anger is to cleanse and to prepare us for a new stage of positive action.

We are all in for a fight. It’s beyond time for the patriarchy to die, with its failed notions of male hierarchies grasping the power structures of the world. I’d love to believe that we can resist our way to a healthier society with no blood being shed or lives being destroyed, but history tells us this is not how the process works. The arc of social justice is long, messy and deadly.

Clearly, the time for wealth and race to dictate who holds authority is over. Finished. We are watching the death throes of the rich white man wielding power by blaming minorities, women and the poor for everything that goes wrong. It’s time for the evangelical church to perish right along with this male-centred structure of abuse, so something new and inclusive can form instead.

But the question remains, how violent is this clash between love and decency versus hate and supremacy going to get? How many lives will be lost? Exactly how brave are we going to have to be to stand up for what’s right?

Perhaps the fury I feel, together with many other women, people of colour and all who have been oppressed and humiliated for too long, is the fuel we need to move our resistance forward. To say “Hell no” and “Fuck you” with spirit and courage. To fight, but never to hate. To build the type of world that we’ve long believed was possible – not one with faulty top-down ideas of success that hinge on being male and white, but instead one that embraces everyone who has been marginalized and says, “Let’s work together.”

That’s where the hope comes in. And maybe, after a ton of work, time and acceptance, we can cut the string on the balloon and watch it soar into the sky, knowing that the future can be brighter than our distressing and unfair past.

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

Pick a Side

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Pick a Side

We can no longer afford to theorize about what we might have done if we’d been alive during the second World War. With the events of this past weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, the time to pick a side and stand up for what you believe is RIGHT DAMN NOW.

Recently I read an article on Twitter about the defining factor between those who helped Jewish families and those who did not. The biggest difference between the people who risked their lives to save others and those who refused was their upbringing.

The people who were raised in an authoritarian setting, with punishment looming if you didn’t obey, stood by and did nothing while others were jailed, humiliated and murdered. Those who hid people persecuted by the Nazis at great risk to their own safety did so because as children they were taught to think for themselves and to question authority.

I can’t stop thinking about that article because the evil of “us versus them” is not just in the history books. It is happening now, in 2017, and it forces each one of us to pick a side. Not with our words, because we all know talk is cheap. Now is the time to prove with our actions whether we will stand up for the rights of all people and live with a sense of inclusion and compassion.

No middle ground exists here. This isn’t about left and right, conservative and liberal, fake news and real news. No shades of grey can be found in this argument. It’s time that every one of us looks deep into our own prejudices and sense of privilege. Unless we get really honest and brave about these topics, no true healing can take place.

The right response to the images and the rhetoric from Charlottesville is rage and disgust. This is the correct moral and ethical response to symbols of hate and bigotry. But as time moves on and these feelings fade, the next step is honest, reasoned conversation about the dark depths of our own hearts. When we get honest, we can start to heal and then to rebuild. It’s time now to create a healthy, inclusive, female-led world. We can’t possibly do a worse job of it than then men who have been leading for centuries.

No more grand theories. Now is the time for action. To stand up and say “NO” to hate, racism and supremacy. Now we need to work together, with love and generosity in our hearts and our words, to bring healing to such a divided, angry and lost world. It’s always darkest before the dawn, but we must build this new dawn. To make it better and more inclusive and compassionate than anything the world has seen before.

Pick a side. Neutrality does not work here. Silence is complicit agreement with the current power structure. Resistance speaks up, no matter what the personal cost, for what is right and decent and moral. It’s our time to rise. To heal. To extend our hands to those who need our help, whose very lives are threatened by this rising tide of hatred and fear.

Our weapons are love, truth, inclusion and courage. Who is ready to stand up and be counted? To speak up for what is right and to refuse to be silent and terrified. I have chosen my side and I will use my voice. This fight is too important for anything else.

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Lessons Learned from my Appendix Rupture

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Lessons Learned from my Appendix Rupture

One year ago my appendix ruptured and my whole life changed.

With the most significant events and milestones in our lives, we need time to truly understand and appreciate how these tragedies define and alter us. My surgery and complicated eight-day recovery in the hospital taught me the beautiful art of surrender. I had the chance to practice letting go of what I wanted in order to embrace what was actually happening.

This deliberate act of remaining present has changed the trajectory of my last year. It taught me to recognize what really matters to me and to stop stressing over the little annoying parts of daily existence.

Measured from August to August, we’ve had massive upheaval as a family. We sold a house in Alberta and bought a townhouse in BC. Jason started a new job. We lived with my in-laws for two months. Ava and William changed schools and left their friends behind. Nearly everything looks different a year later.

But it’s my internal changes that have shocked me the most. Fundamentally, I am different. The specific insecurities and fears that I have wrestled with forever have been sublimated and conquered. Surviving those long, lonely days in the hospital when I was getting worse and not better showed me what I’m truly made of. I proved something to myself that I couldn’t talk myself into; I had to live it out, minute by minute, under adverse circumstances in order to put this worthiness garbage to bed once and for all.

I didn’t get a choice about how sick I was last summer and how shitty the timing was, with Jason working in BC and most of my friends out of town for the August long weekend. But I can honestly say, one year later, just how grateful I am for what I learned in that dark corner bed at the Peter Lougheed Hospital in Calgary.

Deciding not to feel less-than and unworthy of love any more was lesson number one. Recognizing that Jason, Ava and William are the most important people in my life was lesson number two. And finally seeing that I am capable and strong was lesson number three.

Each of these lessons has drastically improved the daily quality of my life. I’m no longer lost in a fog of longing for what I do not have or regret for what I cannot go back and change. Now I’m choosing to stay present, with those I love and with the exciting possibilities present in each day I’m alive, knowing that I am enough for any challenge or setback that comes my way.

This confidence is foreign and yet so welcome and inspiring. I am enough. And so are you. 

Living as if anything else is true is to waste precious time. Let’s stop doing that. It’s as simple as making a decision. Decide what is most important to you, who is most important to you, and know that you are competent for any task that comes your way. It’s life changing.