Relationships Archives - Page 19 of 23

In Culture, Identity, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Roar Gently

Julianne HarveyApril 26, 2016April 25, 2016Leave a comment

Do you ever feel like you’ve been silenced? In one way and another, incidents have been piling up for me and in a flash of insight, I realized that I’ve been staying quiet when perhaps I should’ve been speaking up.

To right this, I put Katy Perry’s Roar on repeat and cranked the volume up while I was driving. Just letting the words wash over me, “You hear my voice, you hear that sound, like thunder gonna shake your ground” tightened my resolve to let the world (or at the very least, a few select people) hear me roar.

As women, this can be a tough sell in our culture. We often feel the pressure to be nice, to get along, to not rock the boat, to avoid being labelled as difficult or bitchy. Facing conflict head-on can cause many of us to panic and retreat.

I struggle to find a balance between speaking up when something affects me or my kids and choosing to stay quiet when it’s none of my business (even if I may have strong feelings on the subject). I long to be as kind as possible, like most women do, but to also demonstrate courage by going boldly into tense situations without backing down. This is not an easy line to walk.

After feeling pumped up by Katy Perry’s beautiful and strong anthem, I wanted to simply say whatever came to mind to several people. But this didn’t seem right either, as we need to practice discretion so we aren’t abusive or cruel in our self-expression.

I’m trying now to think in terms of Roaring Gently. I have every right to use my voice, as every person does, but in order to stay true to my values and integrity, I also desire to choose gentleness in my delivery. Both of these words together give me a better framework for this important process.

Practicing new skills is hard. We should expect setbacks. We’ll bite our tongue and wish later we had spoken up. Or the opposite will happen: we’ll be stirred up and pissed off, so we’ll push our filters aside and let the person have every one of our nasty, unvarnished thoughts. This might require some apologies in order to keep our relationships healthy, but we can offer ourselves grace and love as we work through these normal bumps in the path.

Feeling voiceless gives us a sense that we are not in control of our lives. We can slide into victimhood, lashing out in a passive aggressive manner instead of bravely asking for what we need. This is not a healthy long-term strategy. But neither is saying hurtful things in the heat of the moment that can never be unsaid. Roaring is critical to our health, but a gentle roar is preferable to an angry one.

Let’s roar gently together – women who aren’t afraid to step up and be heard, but who value kindness as much as we do honesty.

In Personal Growth, Relationships

The First 20 Years are the Hardest

Julianne HarveyApril 5, 2016April 4, 2016Leave a comment

Being in a long-term committed marriage is hard. If you are both open to change and growth (which is a prerequisite if you want to have a healthy, mutually-satisfying relationship), you will have periods of calm interspersed with turbulent weeks and months of upheaval and uncertainty.

Jason and I are in one of those uneasy stretches of our path right now and we have been for a couple of months now. Over the course of our almost 18 years of marriage, we’ve made our way through many of these rocky patches so I know if we persevere, we are likely to make it through to a place of strength and encouragement. That helps in a vague, otherworldly sense, but day to day it’s not much damn good.

I really hate the rawness of these relationship struggles. Where my brokenness meets his brokenness, it all feels broken. And yet day to day we make it through. We laugh over silly little things, we cook meals, we make plans, we parent as a team.

Trying to be real with each other has its rewards when the sky is blue and the sun is shining. When the storm clouds roll in, that same level of honesty and authenticity can be terrifying. It leaves you feeling alone, naked, vulnerable and small. It’s agonizing, but this is always where the growing happens. I want the growth. I just don’t like the pain that precedes it.

I’m glad we fell in love and chose each other all those years ago. Thank God the tough times are mixed in with the happy ones or no marriage would succeed. I think it’s important to get honest about the real struggles and hardships that every couple goes through, especially now when we live in such a shiny Instagram world. The pretty pictures don’t tell the whole story. There is more going on than we can see in photos and glib status updates on social media.

The point of commitment it to be committed. To walk as partners through the darkest sections of your lives. To confront the fear head-on, with as much bravery as you can muster. To own your own words and actions and allow your partner to own theirs. To do your best to collaborate with kindness, riding out the scariest times and trying to remember why you love each other and decided to hitch your wagons together all those years ago.

The easy days don’t teach us much. They are there to enjoy as memories to keep us warm and safe, but hardship is where the greatest lessons reside. One day we’ll look back on this season and it will make more sense to us. For now, we will keep moving forward, together as a team, doing our very best to ask for what we need and learn what we can when the dice doesn’t roll our way.

As a favourite pastor told us many years ago when we were newlyweds, “The first 20 years of marriage are the hardest.” Now that we are close to that milestone, I think I finally know what he meant. But the only way out is always through – so we continue to walk together, whistling in the dark to bolster our courage, reaching out for the other person’s hand in the blackest sections to remind yourself that you are not alone.

In Culture, Identity, Personal Growth, Relationships

The Tension of Opposing Forces

Julianne HarveyMarch 29, 2016Leave a comment

Where is the line between strength and kindness? Or authenticity and respect for the dignity of others who behave radically differently than you? What about using your voice versus choosing to stay silent?

The tension that exists between each of these dynamics can be a real bitch. Relationships can become thorny in a hurry when we are deciding between these options, plus you add in a charged emotion like outrage or hurt and suddenly nothing is clear cut.

Recently I stumbled on a picture that said, “Do no harm but take no shit.” This helped to soothe and calm my restless spirit. It doesn’t help with clarity for each individual situation I find myself in, but it’s short and punchy and in the midst of stress it offers a basic framework for what is acceptable or unacceptable for me.

Most of us long to be kind but we also want to speak up and be heard. Both of these things are noble, decent and worthy. Do they have to be at odds? I’m trying to reconcile them in my life and my relationships, but if I’m being honest (and I do strive to tell my truth), it’s a huge struggle.

Perhaps it all comes back to awareness. The key is to be conscious of any disturbance we feel in our own spirit – when something is off, it’s time to pay attention. I hate that so often I go along with what another person desires because I want to be nice or not be labeled as difficult.

It can’t be bad to try to be kind, but the tension exists where what I think is socially acceptable intersects with what I want or don’t want. Is every situation unique and a decision must be made in the moment for each one, or is there some magic formula that helps me feel true to myself while balancing out what other people might need or want?

I’d prefer a magic formula, but I’m starting to see that this is wishful thinking. This above all: to thine own self be true, as Shakespeare told us so eloquently in Hamlet, and it feels like sage advice. When it seems false to me, I must be on the wrong track.

Sometimes niceness to others masquerades as my own lack of courage. This is an area for me to work on. But it’s also healthy and right not to give in to every fleeting impulse that arises, for words spoken from frustration and temporary irritation can do a lot of lasting harm to others.

It’s important to come to terms with the tension between two opposing forces. Kindness and strength; authenticity and respect for others; speaking up or remaining silent. No “one size fits all” works here. As we deepen our understanding of the person we are in the process of becoming, new relationship choices open up to us.

We grow a little every time we practice these skills. We make mistakes and we learn from them, offering grace and forgiveness to ourselves and to those we love (and those we can’t stand). Nothing about this is easy, but we are not given any guarantees in soul work. Every single day we get a new chance to practice doing no harm but taking no shit.

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 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.