In Identity, Minimalism, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships, Spiritual Life, University, Writing

Recalibrate

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Recalibrate

My word for the summer has been recalibrate. Not in any scientific form, but a subtle yet intentional change to the way I function in the world.

The greatest aspect of this particular recalibration has been the decision to step back and allow the process to unfold organically. In previous versions of my self development, I’ve tended to force, cajole, urge and shame my change into being. I wanted it done now, dammit, and a specific way.

Not this summer. I felt inspired by a Facebook post from my friend in late June that said, “You have 18 summers with your kids. Don’t waste them.” I took these words to heart. I stopped looking at leisure time as wasted time. I mixed work with play and I felt a lot more relaxed and content.

This recalibration took the form of my general attitude shifting from something set into something more fluid. I tried to take things as they happened, as opposed to forecasting and planning too far into the future. I wrote in my journal a lot, without trying to be fancy or inspired. I just recorded what I was feeling and this practice helped me to slow down internally.

I’ve realized that the process of querying agents and facing a ton of rejection has tampered down my capacity to take risks and to write for the sheer joy of telling a story without thinking about whether or not that work can be published. I’ve just begun two university courses for the fall and both are centred on writing. I’m determined to challenge myself to grow in these courses and not expect that I’ll be the most stellar writer in the class.

Hopefully my spiritual recalibration this summer will offer me a fresh dose of grace and gentleness toward the writing that I do. In this season, I hope to simply be a better version of myself and write from that place with lowered expectations for jaw-dropping genius and a place on the New York Times Bestseller List.

One of my words for 2018 was enough. I can see how this word has been working on me over the last few months. I am enough, just as I am, and so are you. It’s easy to get stuck in a pattern of proving our worth, but this striving brings pain, shame and loss. Feeling like we are enough is a challenge, but it’s well worth the effort.

Part of recalibrating my attitude involves surrendering once again to the flow of this life. Forcing my hoped-for expectations on myself or others or situations is a fool’s errand. I long to swim with the current and not against it. Take it one day at a time, as the recovery movement teaches. Anything else is too uncertain and fraught with peril.

What we have is now. We have the people we love most. We have our own deep well of personality to excavate and mine. We have the chance for contentment, hope and peace. We have kindness, shown first to our fragile selves and then to the world around us. My soul recalibration this summer has given me a fresh perspective on all of these things. Knowing I am enough is a daily battle, but I will fight it, for these moments are precious ones and I want to be fully awake to experience them.

In Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

20 Years

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
20 Years

We are celebrating 20 years of marriage this summer. It reminds me of my parents divorcing around this milestone anniversary, and I also chuckle when I think about the neighbours we had when Jason and I were newly married. They were splitting up and the woman said wistfully, “We made it almost 20 years. That’s pretty good.”

No awards are given for simply lasting a long time in a marriage. What does the length of time even mean if both people are unhappy in the relationship? My parents did not leave me a very inspiring model to follow. When it came to my own marriage, I was determined to forge a new path toward a joint entity that satisfied both of us.

When I look back on the months preceding our wedding, I remember a cold sense of panic that I might be making a mistake. Jason seemed like a solid choice for a marriage partner, but so few marriages seem genuinely happy. I didn’t want to make a mess out of it and I was consistently worried that the alcoholic patterns from my childhood would carry over into my own marriage.

And of course they did. Every unconscious pattern we experience as children will inform our adult lives unless we confront it and change it. Thankfully, around the twelve-year mark, through intensive personal counselling followed by Al-Anon group counselling, these dysfunctional patterns were faced and we built new coping strategies in their place.

What a difference that painful season made to the quality of our relationship. We always had a low-grade marital satisfaction as our through-line, but this personal growth work I jumped into made everything look different because Jason responded enthusiastically to my changes. He didn’t demand that I stay the same. And since that time, when he has made significant personal changes, I have responded in the same encouraging manner, giving us both the freedom to grow into who we always wanted to be.

I’m so incredibly grateful to be married to this man. Without a doubt, choosing him as my husband has been the single best choice of my lifetime. Nothing about marriage is simple and straightforward. It’s full of peaks and valleys; happy times and sad ones; losses and gains so slow and steady they can’t be measured while they are being experienced. Only after can you look back and see just how much you’ve survived and changed.

The key to our strong relationship has been laughter. And loyalty to one another. Plus a liberal dose of courtesy when we speak to one another or about one another. We certainly don’t always feel gooey and mushy toward each other, but we endeavour to keep the respect and dignity front and centre. We also value the space between us and don’t let others into it, for it belongs to both of us and our unique marriage.

Happy Anniversary, my love. Here’s to the next two decades of growth and commitment.

Look at these kids!

 

In Minimalism, Nurture, Parenting, Relationships

Summer

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Summer

About this time of year I usually feel conflicted. I’m excited about the leisurely pace of summer and a break from the usual school year routine, but I also hate the idea of giving up my solitude when kids are home every day.

For her grade 10 year, Ava has made the decision to try online schooling instead of attending every day. She’s a motivated student who wants to be able to work more in film, TV and theatre so hopefully this path will be a good one for her to try. This means that Ava will be working at home with me when she’s not on set or auditioning. I’m realizing that I will need a bit of time to adjust to this concept.

I know I’m not alone in feeling melancholy at the end of June. I’ve spoken to many other parents who also experience this catch in the throat when you consider just how fast the years are flowing by. We had dinner with friends this weekend who have two kids the same ages as ours, and around the table we exclaimed, “Can you believe the girls only have 3 years of high school left?”

As parents, you know somewhere in the back of your mind that the day is coming when you will put yourself out of a daily job. But it arrives so slowly and with such cunning sneakiness that it still takes us by surprise. We can imagine our kids at every single stage, from a newborn in our arms to a mouthy preschooler then a twiggy elementary student and now a grown-but-not-yet-grown teenager. To them it has taken a long time. To us it has not.

Oh to love our kids enough to let them grow into who they are most meant to be without trying to force our own agendas on them. Letting go is not my strongest suit. I want to remain necessary to my kids; to continue to be vital to them. And yet they grow more independent with each passing year, sprouting wings that will one day take them far from me.

Perhaps all we can do is feel the sadness and the melancholy, and then allow a stealing sense of joy to inch into our being. To see these beloved children grow into healthy teens and then adults is the fulfillment of a dream that some parents don’t get to see, for a variety of reasons. If the goal of successful parenting is to turn a dependent baby into an independent adult, then watching that child mature over the months and years is something to be celebrated, not mourned.

All of the feelings belong. None of them are wrong or shameful. It’s important to bring them out into the light, to care for them and notice what’s working and what’s hurting. I’m going to take this summer to be aware of how fast the time is passing and to squeeze as much as I can from the time I get to spend with my kids while they are still living full-time in our house.

More card games and impromptu evening walks or swims. More laughter and hugs. Really looking at one another and listening when my loved ones are talking to me. Not just this summer, but always, for these things are the ones that really matter and will endure in our memories.

In Books, Culture, Movies/TV

Choose Hope

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Choose Hope

Lately the state of the world has me in despair. The overt signs of fascism being normalized sends darts of fear down my spine.

Last week I had to order myself off of Twitter and Facebook. What I read there about missing children and legalized border atrocities was too horrible to wrap my mind around. It’s impossible to understand how this type of poisonous hatred has taken hold and why more “decent/moral/truthful” people are not doing anything about it.

I intentionally shut down the angry, terrible, cesspool internet and went for a long walk in the spring sunshine. I wrote on my deck, chapter after chapter of my novel with scenes of hope and beauty to combat my abject anxiety and despair. I went swimming in our lovely townhouse complex pool. I re-read old John Grisham thrillers. I hugged my kids, kissed my husband, texted my friends, petted my two cats.

We all have to do what we can to inject love and compassion back into our damaged world. If we truly believe that love will win out in the end, as the Allies believed in the darkest days of WWII, then it’s up to us to live each day like it’s reasonable to hope for decency and kindness to prevail over racism, bigotry and patriarchal abuse.

Part of choosing hope also means standing up to tyranny and evil. This involves using our voices publicly, while we can, to speak for those who are marginalized and oppressed. It means taking to the streets to protest. We need numbers in this fight, for democracy and freedom is what’s on the line here. If the news doesn’t frighten you yet, stream The Handmaid’s Tale season 2 and watch as they lay out the signs of democracy breaking down, step by step. Then, move away from denial, speak up and get involved.

Spread light and encouragement and hope and inclusiveness. When you see evil, hatred and cruelty, with someone’s dignity under attack, call it out (online or in person). Give your voice to those who struggle to be heard. There is no such thing as “neutral” in the political and social landscape we are in midway through 2018. You are either on the side of inclusive love or exclusive hate. A world war was literally fought to resolve this, and yet here we are again, seven decades later, facing similar and devastating threats to freedom and democracy.

I’m choosing hope. And love. And tolerance. I’m looking to the unshakeable optimism and energy of millennials and coming alongside them to offer my help. Hopefully they can achieve what us Gen-Xers have failed to do. Wringing my hands in despair is not going to move us forward into a new and better age. We need boldness, courage, grace, dignity, love.

And hope.

In Culture, Identity, Minimalism, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Space

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Space

Lately I’ve had one word front and centre in my mind and experience: SPACE.

Space to be human. Space to breathe. Space to exist, to think, to discover, to play.

In our modern existence, where so much of life is done behind a screen (or one of my biggest pet peeves, which proves we are living in the forecasted future robot age: people walking in public spaces while staring vacantly at a tiny glowing machine in their hand), anything that brings us back to our own bodies and offers space from machines is becoming an urgent priority.

At the beginning of May, Jason and I went to Seattle to see Rob Bell on his Holy Shift tour. We met up with 4 friends who flew in from Calgary for the evening and a marvellous time was had by all. Both Rob Bell and his opening act (the hilarious Irish author Peter Rollins, who introduced himself by saying “I sell existential despair for money”) mentioned the word space during the tour. I love that feeling of kismet, when you are pondering a concept and others are recognizing its importance at the same time.

We have to work harder than ever to build space into our lives. For me, minimalism is a helpful container for the idea of space, because minimalism is about stripping away what doesn’t matter so we can isolate what we actually do prioritize. Space facilitates this process, for we need to intentionally dial down cultural noise in order to arrive at what we are really on this earth to be or do.

Pete Rollins spoke about how we have to define ourselves by who we aren’t before we can figure out who we are. This has stuck with me. Space comes into this because we are in desperate need of room to explore and discover what matters most to us in a world that is constantly invested in selling us what we don’t require.

I’m working on creating space in several areas of my life:

My Schedule

I’ve never been happier than now, when I’ve cut so much out of my calendar. Saying no to things I don’t want to do feels bloody fantastic and gives me leisure time to enjoy the activities I do want to do.

My Relationships

Carefully curating the people I allow into my inner circle has radically shifted my peace of mind. I want safe people around me. Encouraging ones. Friends who make me laugh. Those I can count on to tell the truth and be there when the chips are down.

My Inner Life

This one is critical. It involves refusing to stop scrolling through my phone whenever I have a spare moment. I’m determined to allow space here for my soul to expand, breathe, heal and grow. 

Our world is a dangerous, unsettled place and we need every available person to wake up and stop numbing with distractions. We need to tune back in, to ourselves first, and then to other actual human beings. To listen to one another. This is the way back home, to better priorities and more meaningful values.

For the last few months I’ve been trying a “name tag” experiment where I refer to anyone in a name tag by their name. I attempt to start a conversation, even if it’s awkward (especially if it’s awkward). The amount of people ordering coffees or buying groceries while staring mindlessly at their phones is alarming. Real flesh-and-blood people are serving us and we can’t even make eye contact? I’m done doing that. My phone stays in my purse.

Space is a valuable commodity. Let’s build it in. The process of waking up to our own lives is profound. Everything has been here, this whole time…trees, sun, flowers, birds singing, cats sleeping curled up like croissants, mothers walking down the street holding hands with toddlers, the barista carefully preparing your specialty coffee while she is being ignored, the people we love most going about their lives while we’ve been too busy to dial in and notice.

Make the space. You won’t get chances forever. The good stuff is right here, right now. It’s time to wake up and pay attention.