Relationships Archives - Page 18 of 24

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Suspended Between Two Worlds

Julianne HarveyJuly 19, 2016July 18, 2016Leave a comment

Do you ever feel suspended between two worlds? It’s an uncomfortable sensation; one that stretches you and asks you to be flexible.

Going with the flow is not my strong suit, but fighting against the river’s current is a losing proposition. It seems to always come back to surrender. Acceptance, optimism, courage: elements that make our lives easier if we agree to stop fighting for the outcome we desire and just let it be.

We are quite suddenly moving to the Vancouver area because my husband has taken a new job there. “Sudden” is a tough concept for a Type A planner like myself, but my chief goal for this move is to stay calm, to proceed in an orderly manner toward the red exit sign instead of causing a panicky stampede.

I’ve experienced some success with this serenity and also some serious failure (accompanied by swearing, tears and generalized rage). We met with the realtor and the stager, then worked flat-out for four days before the appointment with the photographer. Our house went on the market less than a week after we discussed it with the realtor.

This accelerated timeline has left me breathless and off-balance. I leaned on friends for help, a spiritual practice good for my overall health, but that sensation of being between two worlds is uncomfortable and stressful. It’s a growing place; one that asks you to summon forgotten reserves of strength and grace.

The key is to refuse to give in to the fear and the “what ifs”. What if the house doesn’t sell, what if the timelines don’t match up, what if the endlessly shifting dates get too crazy and I can’t count on anything? All useless questions, driven by fear and anxiety.

Every one of us has uncertainties to face. We can either panic or remain calm. We can be paralyzed by fear or choose to trust that we are going to be okay. I keep thinking about the 2010 movie title The Kids Are All Right. I’d rather put my faith in that idea as it brings me peace.

Change is beautifully invigorating. It’s also hard and filled with unknowns. Like so much of this life, those two disparate concepts work hand-in-hand. You don’t get inspiration without risk. You don’t get love without pain. You don’t get adventure without fear.

I’m determined to take this move one task at a time. To try to remember that I cannot see the finish line from my starting position. I just have to keep moving, completing lap after lap, knowing that as I inch nearer to the end I’ll gain the experience I need to complete this particular race. And then there will be another one to suit up for and run.

All of life works this way – for me, for you, for everyone. The bitter right alongside of the sweet. The sad goodbyes and the joyous hellos. One person, with a foot in two different worlds, doing his or her best to stay calm enough to survive the challenges of each particular transition.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Stay the Course

Julianne HarveyJuly 12, 2016July 11, 2016Leave a comment

How we handle stress reveals us on a primal level. We have nowhere to hide when the pressure builds. Do we blow up, retreat, soothe with food, shopping, alcohol or sex, or do we face it head on with grace and calm?

Very few of us do the latter, but it’s a new goal for me. I know that the time to prepare for stress is when the seas are still, not wild with uncertainty. We prepare for hardship in the peaceful times, by developing skills that will see us through the bumps that are sure to come in the future.

Confidence is always an inside game. We are sunk if we hinge our self esteem on any outward achievement or praise, for these are fickle and will certainly fade. Our surest hedge against internal or external disaster is to stoke the fires of our belief in ourselves on a regular basis. Waiting until the stress arrives means we are too late.

I’ve been living this out lately, after a turbulent period of suffering. Those old demons that hunch on my shoulder and plague me with taunts of being less-than, not good enough and worthless have finally quieted down. I simply waited them out and in time they got bored and went on to irritate someone else.

Half of this life is just outlasting what tries to defeat us. It’s important to stay busy with other pursuits to minimize the dark forces working to pull us under.

I’m loving this season of internal calm. It’s that dewy, clean feeling after a hard rain. It’s less a triumph than a relief that this particular storm has ended and patches of blue sky are visible once again.

All I know is that it helps to do our internal work each and every day, especially when we see no obvious evidence of it. If we stay faithful to our soul, when the tough times mysteriously end we will see the benefits of this devoted attention.

If you are hurting right now, with no clear answers or insights, simply stay the course. Nourish yourself with the gentle sustaining routines. Wash your face, apply sunscreen, listen to happy music, drink water, eat your vegetables (and also chocolate). Pain doesn’t last forever. Neither does self-doubt, fear and worry. One day, you’ll wake up and feel contented, hopeful, a little bit more secure in your own brave identity.

You are likely doing better than you think you are. I say this to myself as a mantra when all seems lost. Life can be rough with many mountains to climb, but we can do it if we pack the right gear and we train for the trail so we are prepared.

Gentleness and courage are suitable bedfellows for the calm times and the terrifying ones. One day, in the very near future, you will experience a personal breakthrough. You’ll feel different, you’ll see the world in a new way, and all of that constancy in the darkness will get you to that unforeseen moment of light.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Help is the Sunny Side of Control

Julianne HarveyJune 28, 2016June 28, 2016Leave a comment

“No one mentioned until I was in late middle age that – horribly! – my good, helpful ideas for other grown-ups were not helpful. That my help was in fact sometimes toxic. That people needed to defend themselves from my passionate belief that I had good ideas for other people’s lives.

I did not know that help is the sunny side of control.”

This beautiful quote is from the great Anne Lamott’s Facebook page. When I read it, something vital and primal leaped to recognition in my own soul, like a light switch being turned on to illuminate a dark space.

In this life, we have to experience an idea to fully understand it. We must inhabit it by walking it out. Simply thinking through it is not enough to change us. We need to taste it, grapple with it, fight it and then eventually surrender to it.

I did not know that help is the sunny side of control. This tidy phrase encapsulates what I’ve been wrestling with for several years now. I feel like I’m finally ready to accept this bold truth: when help is mostly about me and what I want the other person to do in return, it is not actually help. It’s manipulation, expectation, control.

Learning to face ourselves honestly is a lifelong process. It’s far too horrifying to do all at once. We must take it in tiny stages, lest we be blinded by the outrageous shame of our dysfunction.

If you grew up like I did, help was not free. It was a transaction. For a people pleaser, this meant confusion and anger a lot of the time, because there were no words around this. The system was built on glances, silences, tense body language, raised voices, narrowed eyes and other not-so-subtle clues. You picked your way through this minefield, hoping not to be blown up while trying to earn love and gold stars from others by being so good and helpful that you ached from it.

I learned to control by offering help, while refusing it from others so I wouldn’t owe anyone and they would all owe me. Perhaps not so sunny, but true nonetheless.

Now I practice offering help with no strings attached. It’s new and radical. It’s also hard. I push myself to receive help, support and care from others without feeling that I must repay a silent debt. Unspooling these complex, dysfunctional behaviours is a lengthy job. I must remember that it’s okay to go slow. Many people never even try to face their unvarnished souls – it’s simply too shocking and painful.

Progress towards health is preferable to remaining in denial and darkness. I yearn for light, for beauty, for healing, for restoration. True help is freely given, not bartered for something else or held over another’s head as a ransom demand. That is control. Just because I grew up with that doesn’t mean I can’t change these patterns for my children and for the last half of my life.

I know there is a better way because I’ve seen it in action and felt its warmth on my skin. Love does not demand to be noticed. It is offered with no guarantee it will be returned. I’m going to lean in to this truth, to wear it like a coat and see where it will take me.

In Nurture, Relationships

Nurture is Valuable: Unconditional Love

Julianne HarveyJune 14, 2016June 13, 2016Leave a comment

Nurture doesn’t exist without unconditional love. Without it, nurture is a business exchange: I’ll give you care and attention and in return you will do the same for me.

I’ve been ruminating on the phrase “nurture is valuable” since January. I’ve thrown out a call to women to answer interview questions on the topic and I’ve received nine sets of answers so far. Not one of these answers has been identical, so clearly it’s a huge topic with a wide variety of experiences and nuances.

Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with the word nurture. Sometimes it sounds weak to me, and I grew up despising all forms of weakness. At other times the word feels soft, warm and approachable, but this is also foreign and uncomfortable in a vague, undefined way.

In my heart, I’ve always been naturally drawn to nurture but it took me a while to build up the courage to admit this. I’ve longed to cultivate it and see it grow, even when I didn’t have many examples of it to learn from. I think it was a seed, hard and unwatered, that took decades of dormancy before it could bloom.

When Ava was born thirteen years ago, like many new parents, I began to understand for the first time what unconditional love might actually look like. I only glimpsed it in fits and starts – it would take me another seven years to finally put it into practice with the help of my counsellor.

I needed to allow my perfect facade to fall to the ground and shatter before I could embrace the messy agony of my own vulnerable humanity. For me, this was the start of unconditional love. It was awful at first; isolating and uncertain. It required me to offer so damn much of myself – initially to my children, then to my husband, my friends and some extended family members.

True nurture doesn’t allow us to hide who we really are. Its price tag is steep for a reason: we have no guarantee that our affection and care will be returned in the same measure it is given. The key is to replenish our own tank by offering unconditional love back to ourselves so we can continue to pour it out to those we love. Without self-care, nurture is a temporary proposition. You will burn out if you don’t know how to refuel.

Nurture has so many elements. I look forward to diving in deeper to this topic over the summer. I’d love to hear from more of you on this. If you consider yourself a nurturer in any way at all, please get in touch to answer five short questions for my research project.

I do believe nurture is valuable and that it only succeeds from a place of unconditional love. This makes it risky and powerful. We give without any assurance that we will receive it back. We must look after ourselves in order to nurture others. My dream is to build a community of nurturers who can encourage, support and care for one another. Without nurture, our world is a cold, terrifying and desperate place.

Would you like to be involved? Get in touch and let’s unpack some of these ideas together!

In Culture, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

5 Minutes of Encouragement

Julianne HarveyMay 31, 2016May 30, 2016Leave a comment

I’m planning to offer a service at our local farmer’s market this summer called 5 Minutes of Encouragement. The idea is me sitting in a lawn chair under a small white tent, talking with anyone who is interested for five minute slots.

I plan to ask what the person would like encouragement for and then offer it the best I can. This experiment feels vulnerable, unusual, outside-of-the-box and highly unpredictable. I think of those things as strengths, not weaknesses.

Lately I’m tired of living small. I want to swing for the fences and try things that I would’ve been terrified of a few years ago. What if no one comes to my tent for encouragement? What if I draw a blank and can’t think of anything helpful to say? What if the whole shebang is a massive embarrassing flop?

Who the hell cares?

I’m done waiting around for the right conditions to exist before I take risks. “What if” is not a helpful exercise. I want to follow my curiosity, as one of my mentors, Rob Bell, advises me to do.

Life is about much more than our net worth, our fears, our preoccupation with personal safety and our addictions to smartphones and busyness. I long for connection on a deep, true level. I love encouragement, appreciation and kindness, both giving these things away and receiving them back. If I want more of this, then I have to pursue it, without fearing the consequences.

5 Minutes of Encouragement could be a beautiful social experiment. It could also be a flaming turd of a failure. I won’t know unless I try. I’m grateful for a friend at our town office who is willing to gamble on this venture with me. When I pitched it to her last week, I said, “I’ve got this crazy idea – any chance you want to try it?” Bless her heart, she said, “I like encouragement. Let’s give it a shot!”

Part of being alive is pushing ourselves beyond the predictable. When we commit to staying true to our interests and convictions, wonderful surprises await. Risk is a large piece of the equation. We have to be equally prepared for failure as for success.

We live in a world where almost everyone is shouting. Social media posts, selfies, blogs, tweets – most of it screams, “Look at me!” I’m desperate for some one-on-one interaction, driven by kind words of encouragement. Often I just want another flesh-and-blood person to tell me I’m doing okay and that I’m going to make it through.

With my 5 Minutes of Encouragement tent, I’m hoping to give this away to others. I’ll be sure to report back. Would you come to hear 5 Minutes of Encouragement from me (or from anyone)?