In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth

My Son’s Gift

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
My Son’s Gift

William just celebrated his 11th birthday and I’ve been reflecting on how much our relationship has improved over the last 7 years.

I wrote extensively about the transformation in our relationship on my previous blog The Dream to Write (and some of it is covered in my essay collection Winter to Spring) but basically over a turbulent 6 month period when William was 4 and I was 37 we became restored to one other.

I just finished another edit of my unpublished manuscript Falling Backwards Into Grace and this section about William brings me to tears every time:

“William was the catalyst who forced me, kicking and screaming, to my knees. He eventually led me from performance to grace. My gratitude to my son is as limitless as the horizon of the sky; it goes on forever and will never reach an end, but of course I did not know that then.

In order to rebuild, we must first break down. When your faith and your worldview is built out of cards on quicksand like mine was, adding another flimsy layer will not address your mammoth foundation crisis. I had been adding more cards for so long that the whole structure was ready to collapse, and William’s personality was the match to light the flame and burn the whole useless thing to the ground.”

His refusal to bend to the pressure I placed on him saved me from my own invisible palace of denial, perfectionism and rage. He helped me warm up to my neglected personality qualities that had gone dormant but never fully disappeared. These qualities gave me back my authentic self.

I truly believe the best thing we can do as parents is to be open to truth, in any form, and be willing to let go of old ideas and fears that no longer add anything to our lives. This acceptance brings complete freedom, for it allows us to stop working for the approval of others and begin to finally own that right for ourselves.

William gave me this gift. It was the furthest thing from easy, but all lasting change brings agony at first. If you are in this kind of emotional pain right now, I urge you to keep going, for the only way out is through. Don’t retreat, longing for simpler shores. Keep trudging, for one day you will be different and so grateful you did not quit.

Happy Birthday, my wonderful boy. You’ve come a long way. I’m so proud of you. Marvellous things are ahead and I love that we will discover them together. I know that you can do hard things because I’ve seen you face them and conquer them already. It’s okay to be afraid. We are all afraid, but courage is your fear on the move.

If you are a parent, struggling with your beloved child, know that you are not alone. The meaning lives in the hardship and in the not knowing. Be open to owning your mistakes. Look for the truth beyond your limited interpretation of the events. Know that you and your kid are both good enough. You’ll make it through.

If you knew where William and I had once been – screaming at each other, fighting, fuming, accusing and blaming – you would be amazed at where we are now with our mother and son bond. Change and growth are entirely possible and I’m so thankful.

In Culture, Identity, Movies/TV, Nurture, Parenting, Uncategorized

Cultural Beauty Standard Madness

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Cultural Beauty Standard Madness

It’s time to change the way we think about women and weight in this culture. The entire fashion industry is built on the idea that being extremely thin is the gold standard. Our society literally encourages girls and women to starve in order to be considered attractive. Anything else is disappointing at best but more often disgusting and offensive.

I say NO MORE OF THIS MADNESS. All change starts with individuals, so I am no longer interested in allowing someone else to tell me what beauty looks like. I know for sure it’s not starving yourself so you can wear size 0 jeans.

What’s wrong with a nice, round tummy and thighs that jiggle a bit when you walk? This obsessive pursuit of a demanding beauty takes way too much of our collective mental energy and time, not to mention inciting a raging case of “not-good-enough-ism” in many women who are healthy and gorgeous at a size 12, 14 or 16 but feel gigantic and hideous because of the messaging in our unbalanced society.

I’ve been checking old movies out of the library on DVD to watch as a family, believing that classic cinema with its focus on character development and stellar writing can act as a balm for our cell-phone addicted, dumbed-down current media environment. Last week we watched Citizen Kane (okay, the first half of it before my attention wandered…not completely sure why this is AFI’s top movie of all time) and I was struck by the healthy appearance of the women dancing in one scene.

In 1941, apparently it was desirable and reasonable to have thighs bigger than delicate tree branches, gently flabby upper arms and soft bellies. It’s the polar opposite of what we see now on screen so it jumped out at me.

I’m determined to stop wishing for a flat stomach and perfectly toned arms and legs. It’s simply not worth it to me to put in that kind of time. But it’s not enough to make this decision – I also have to actively reassure myself that how my body looks is okay, DAMMIT. It’s more than okay. I’m strong and healthy and beautiful and thirty pounds over my doctor’s weight and I’m completely over feeling like shit about it.

A lot of this relates to the undercurrent of sexism still very present in our modern world. Most fashion magazines are not aimed at men. The expectation that women have to be beautiful, thin, expertly made-up at all times with their hair bouncy and freshly coloured at a salon is real and pervasive. And you better have a strong sense of self-esteem to go out of the house in anything other than a carefully-designed outfit because in sweat pants you run the risk of feeling marked, lazy and judged.

I really think it’s time for us to stand up against this tyranny. Nobody gets to make us feel inferior without our consent. I thought our cultural beauty standards didn’t bother me but it turns out that they really, really, really do. I’m going to work on actively loving myself through this by reassuring my own rounded body that I’m okay, exactly as I am.

My daughter just turned 14 and is pursuing a career in acting. The pressure to be so tiny that you almost fade out of existence is immense, but I want her to be confident in the body she has and the unique beauty that she possesses. The best way for me to help her love herself and refuse to compare herself to others is to walk this out in front of her.

Who’s with me?

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Relationships

So Much to Celebrate

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
So Much to Celebrate

My daughter Ava is turning 14 and like most parents, I’m feeling nostalgic. It’s so easy to get lost in the memories of her big baby grin, how cute she looked in white Osh Kosh baby shoes and a pink-and-white striped dress, or fresh from a bath, snuggly and warm in her fuzzy footy sleepers.

All of these memories are good, but nostalgia is a fairly useless exercise. When we wallow too much in it, we miss what is right in front of us. A 14 year old is a radically different creature from an infant, or the eager 5 year old starting school, or the 10 year old crying about how mean some girls can be.

Ava is, of course, made up of every age she’s ever been, the way all of us are, but the job at hand is to celebrate her 14 year old self instead of pining for what’s now in the past. And there is so much to celebrate.

She was such an easy baby, toddler, young child and older child that many people said to me, “Just you wait until she’s a teenager. If they are easy when they are young, they will be a handful when they are older.” It’s not true yet and I know anything can still happen but all signs point to Ava continuing on this responsible path.

It sounds banal to say how proud I am of her, but the bottom line is that she has always made the whole mothering gig look easy for me. She is her own true self while still being generous to others. She is a fierce feminist with way more courage than I ever had in my teens to speak out about what she believes in.

Helping her reach for her acting dream has been immensely satisfying to me. I feel as if I’m picking up a thread that began to unravel in my early twenties and now Ava is sewing it into something meaningful and worthwhile. Nothing in this life is wasted. It comes back to us, when we least expect it, in a different form. It means so much to watch her find success in this beautiful pursuit of performance art.

As parents, we must continually practice letting go of our beloved children. We do not own them. They are not ours. They have their own lives and dreams and passions. We facilitate, we advise, we stay close for when they need us. But we also practice launching them into their own independence and refusing to be afraid of how it will all turn out.

Mistakes are how we grow, no matter what age and stage we are at. Learning to risk and accepting that failure is tied to success is an important part of the parenting journey. I can’t wait to see where Ava goes next. I love the person she is and is becoming and I’m proud of the relationship we’ve built.

It’s hard to wrap my brain around only having another 4 years where she will be living under our roof for sure. But the goal of parenting is to take a dependent baby and turn them into an independent adult. I feel like we are on our way to seeing this goal be a reality and that is worth celebrating.

In Identity, Movies/TV, Nurture, Parenting

When Dreams Don’t Die

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
When Dreams Don’t Die

Some dreams don’t die because they aren’t supposed to. They live on, growing silently in us until one day they bloom again and we remember how exquisitely we once longed for this particular wish to come true.

I’m learning acceptance right now. It’s one of my three words to focus on in 2017 and it’s a beautiful experience simply to practice accepting what comes without forcing it or coaxing circumstances to go my way. What happens is what is meant to happen, or so I finally believe in my experience as much as my verbiage, and the freedom inside of this discovery is as sweet as nectar.

This week I worked as an extra on a big TV series shot in Vancouver. All day, from my brutally early 6 am call until I was wrapped in the late afternoon, I felt like I was waking up to a dream that had become dormant but never really went away. I was able to access a much-younger version of myself through the experience, waving at her through the years to say, “I see you and now I can reach you.”

I’ve loved the film industry my entire life, writing screenplays since I was in my teens and sort of hanging around on the fringes of this life I dreamed of but couldn’t quite access. Now, somehow, I’m 44 years old and my almost 14-year-old daughter is pursuing an acting career and I’ve found myself back where I always wanted to be.

Our biggest dreams are always worth pursuing. But at certain times in our lives, other people and circumstances take priority and we don’t have the time or the resources or the abilities to go after our heart’s desire. No matter how many years go by, however, the flame is still burning inside of us for those things we are meant to do, and when we find ourselves touching that dream again it’s like a bit of pure magic.

I felt that this week. I remembered how much I loved filmmaking in my student days and for the glorious six days I worked on the TriStar lot in Culver City as a Production Assistant on a feature film. A lot of other worthy pursuits have occupied me from those days until now, 25 years later, but the profound joy of walking out this beautiful dream has never fully left me. It burst back into life when I was on set doing my part to make the scenes we shot sparkle and shine.

As Ava and I move through some exciting steps in her growing career, I feel a deep, abiding peace and gratitude. Big dreams are for everyone. They are not for a select few with talents beyond the rest of us. They are for anyone brave enough to simply go for it, no matter what the end result turns out to be.

The journey truly is the reward (as so many people have said to me but I never really understood until this year). When you choose to live in the present moment, refusing to forecast the future or stress out about what’s done and finished, you get to absorb each day as the fresh gift it is. Anything is possible. Your dreams are not as far away as you thought.

So if you have a big dream that you’ve veered far away from, remember that the pilot light for that hope is still burning in your soul. When the time is right, it will be there for you again, and you’ll recognize its warmth and light. You’ll be flooded with joy and renewed optimism. Suddenly you’ll be certain that it’s not too late. As long as you are alive, you can make your dreams come true provided you believe that you are worth the effort and you don’t give up.

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth

Be Bold for Change

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Be Bold for Change

Wednesday, March 8th is International Women’s Day and the theme for 2017 is Be Bold for Change. My almost 14-year-old daughter Ava spent time this weekend creating a poster for her school for this important day. The slogan she came up with? I’d rather shatter a glass ceiling than fit into a glass slipper.

BOOM. I’m so proud to be her mother. Frankly, I’m pissed right off that we are still talking about how women should be paid the same as men and receive the same basic human rights as men. We are 17 years into a new millennium, and yet as a world we continue to struggle when it comes to equality, inclusivity and justice for those who did not happen to be born as white men.

This year, I plan to be bold. And when my courage falters, I will look to Ava and her friends, for they will carry this torch on far beyond me. They will not accept the double standard that I’ve seen far too often. They will speak up and be bold and call out the hypocrisy they witness. I’m convinced they will finally get us a fairer world.

Women have issued a challenge on Wednesday to go on strike, in an effort to prove that a Day Without a Woman has a huge impact. I’m all for this concept. I hope it works. As a continuation of the global outcry after the U.S. inauguration that resulted in enormous women’s marches in cities all around the world, I’d love to see this strike concept fly.

But I also know that real, lasting change comes slowly and it starts in individual hearts. Rob Bell recently spoke about the need for a counter narrative to unite those marching and protesting. This message struck a resonant chord for me. What is our counter narrative?

It has to centre on love and peace, the way the women’s march did. But it also needs a bit of fire and boldness to it, like this strike is calling for. I’m grateful that smarter people than me are involved in these matters. Something is crying out in my heart and I don’t yet know exactly what it is.

When I watched Ava hunched over her poster in her bedroom, I felt like weeping. From pride but also an intense grief, that this world is such a damn broken mess for her. I yearn for beauty, kindness, understanding, intelligent discourse, friendship and acceptance. And yet what we are mired in this year is anger, misogyny, racism, cruelty, ignorance and bitter division. I want to believe we are better than this.

Let it begin with me. All change comes from this place. We do not see the world as it is, we see it how we are. So I must be love, peace, gender equality, authenticity and warmth. I must choose hope in spite of my fear and sadness. I must seek out light, for a few brave candles can light up the darkest night. Now is the time to believe that goodness will prevail, especially when we see little evidence of it.

This Wednesday, let’s reach out to one another and say, “I see you and I support you.” Let’s be generous with our kind words and our smiles. Let’s be bold for change and shatter glass ceilings instead of slippers. Let’s do it together, for as a group we are more powerful and effective. Let’s build our counter narrative. We were born for such a time as this.