Showing all posts tagged covid

In Books, Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Speaking, Uncategorized, University, Writing

Fallow

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I’ve just completed my final semester of undergrad. After four years of classes, I’ll graduate in early June with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Due to our never-ending super fun pandemic, instead of walking across the stage in a cap and gown as I’d planned, I’ll be mailed a box containing my degree.

I’m 48, and at times I’ve felt ancient next to my twenty-year-old classmates, but overall it’s been an excellent experience to complete the higher education I began thirty years earlier. So enjoyable, in fact, that I’ve decided I might like to teach creative writing at the university level in the future, so for that I’ll need an MFA. I applied to UBC for grad school and I’ve been accepted, attending in-person this fall for their two-year program.

Completing any big goal is satisfying, but I also feel strange. For so long I dreamed about having additional time on my hands. To have five months off with no school seemed impossible to imagine, and now it’s here. I want to rest, to daydream, to read novels for pure pleasure and not feel like I’m supposed to be doing something else. To write, for myself and not for a grade.

I just finished a round of counselling, and in my last session I talked about the need for a creative break to let the soil of my mind rest. “I think that’s called letting the land lie fallow,” she said. The more I turned this word over in my mind, the more I fell in love with it. For me, this season between April and September is designed for intentional inactivity, a state that doesn’t feel naturally comfortable. But it is necessary.

Other than a few writing projects and some conference speaking, I’m going to prioritize a fallow state for my creativity. I’ll need to go into grad school as a full-time student with a sense of renewed purpose and energy. For those things, I require rest and rejuvenation.

Our culture likes to whisper in our ear, “You’re only valuable if you produce something, earn money, and work hard all the time.” But I’ve been fighting against this messaging for quite a long time, offering myself permission to slow down, simplify my existence and clarify my priorities. My 3 words for 2021 are peace, priorities and potential. They all fit well into this season of my life, where one big goal has been completed and another one has yet to begin. I’m in the liminal space, where I’m not quite sure of anything, except that rest is required so I don’t burn out.

We’ve all had a hellish twelve months. This time last year the whole world was turned upside down by Covid, and a year later we’re still fighting to stay healthy and carve out a tiny bit of novelty and fun wherever we can. It’s a long haul on a boring treadmill of sameness. For me, right now, the answer is the word fallow, which means “land plowed and left unseeded for a season or more.”

What does the word fallow look like in your life right now?

In Nurture, Parenting, Relationships, Uncategorized

Goodbye Little Rose

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

A few weeks ago we made the painful decision to put our beloved ten-year-old cat Little Rose to sleep.

She’d been sick since late May with what we hoped was only a bout of pancreatitis, but over the summer her health continued to deteriorate. Her appetite decreased. She spun in circles, shaking her head, and eventually falling over. Her skittishness increased. She hid away more and more.

We brought her back to the vet when she lost her balance and rolled down the steps to our basement. That’s when we got the news that her pancreatitis was likely caused initially by lymphoma, some form of cancer which had now spread to her brain. The merciful thing to do was put her to sleep.

I’ve had a lot of pets in my forty-seven years of life but I’ve never had to put one down. Our other pets have been outdoor cats, so nature ended their lives long before they reached the age of ten. We adopted Little Rose and Flower as kittens, when Ava and William were seven and four. They’ve never gone outside (other than on our deck or on a leash), and they’ve both been in perfect health until this May when Little Rose began to hide under Ava’s bed.

When other people told me they had to make end-of-life decisions for their animals, I felt sad for them in a general way but not in a specific way. Now I understand the sorrow they were experiencing. Our pets are so precious to us. So vulnerable when they are sick and in pain.

The kids were at school when I met with the vet and heard about Little Rose’s brain cancer. Telling them was hell. Ava’s sobs tore violently out of her throat. William made little mewing sounds, like his heart was breaking in tiny increments. The four of us held each other and cried until we were exhausted.

We spent one final night at home with Little Rose, cuddling her, taking photos, telling her how much we loved her and thanking her for being such an amazing cat for the last ten years. She had us wrapped around her dainty paw. Silent for the first five years of her life, she made up for it in the last five, by meowing loudly at us when she wanted something. After we moved back to BC, she developed a taste for vanilla ice cream and Pringles, pestering us until we gave her a lick.

She never handed out her affection haphazardly. We all had to work for it, which made it sweeter when she chose to sit with you or allowed you to kiss her velvety head. Little Rose would wait at the top of the stairs for us to go down to watch TV after dinner, meowing if we took too long, then staring at Jason from the coffee table until he said, “Sorry, sweetie” and put his feet up as a bridge for her to walk to his lap.

We all loved her deeply. Our vet broke the Covid rules and allowed us to stay together in the room with Little Rose right until the very end. We were all sobbing, but thankfully we were together, seeing her off into her long and final nap.

I listened to a guided meditation on grief and the woman leading it asked me to tell the source of my sadness what I still wanted to say. I pictured Little Rose’s sweet face, with her tiny pink nose, and I told her, “I’m sorry we couldn’t fix it. You were our responsibility and we tried to save you but we couldn’t.”

Mourning a loved one is an isolating experience. Life goes on for everyone else. People smile, laugh, make chitchat at the grocery store. I feel raw and irritated, with every nerve ending exposed. I know that this will pass. The gaping wound will heal and the scar will remind me of the pain, but it won’t be quite so acute. But for now I’m still devastated and likely to burst into tears with zero notice. Grief is like walking through waist-high mud. It’s exhausting.

It doesn’t seem possible that we now have to live in a world without Little Rose in it. And yet we do. Everything feels colder, harder, more improbable and remote. Coming home to Flower, who has spent a lot of time these last two weeks searching high and low for his sister, didn’t seem real. As William said the first night she was gone, “I miss her every minute.” So do I.

Goodbye, sweet Little Rosie. You were the best. In time we’ll add a kitten to our family to keep Flower company and pour this leftover love into, but we will miss you and love you forever.

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Politics, Relationships, Speaking, University

Fall 2020

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Deep breath, everyone. Here we go, into a back-to-school season shaped like one ginormous question mark. We haven’t experienced this exact landscape before, one fraught with endless decisions to make, while wearing a blindfold.

Is full-time, face-to-face instruction safe? Is a hybrid face-to-face/online method better? What about full-time online at home for learning? My answer is: I don’t know. We are all whistling in the dark here, exploring the options our school districts are offering, while watching the news to see what’s working and not working against Covid in other areas of the country.

It’s a strange time. Usually I feel a surge of optimism when I turn the calendar to September, but this year the key feeling I have is uncertainty. I’m entering my second last semester of my Creative Writing BA, and I’m wondering why it’s not safe for me to return to in-person university classes and yet it’s okay for my high schoolers to have face-to-face instruction starting next week.

Part of me wants to move on and get back to some version of normal, but another part is anxious about BC’s rising Covid numbers and what that means when thousands of kids and teachers return to classrooms. The public health guidance for months has been around small bubbles, hand-washing, mask-wearing and extreme caution, which feels like whiplash when we contemplate returning to school, even with a number of new precautions in place.

The one thing I know for sure is that this is going to be a school year like no other. It will be disruptive and unpredictable. We will all need to practice patience and grace for one another as we try to navigate these choppy waters. It’s helpful to refrain from judgement when someone else’s Covid plan looks different from yours. We are all doing the best that we can in the midst of trying circumstances.

I spent time last week doing virtual Pro D sessions for some fabulous teachers in Kelowna. Most of them were feeling anxious and concerned. I did my best to remind them that you cannot pour from an empty cup. We have to put our own oxygen masks on before we can assist others in an emergency. Self-care first and foremost. Walk in nature, take deep breaths, journal, draw, meditate, stretch, sleep.

The prescription for Fall 2020 is flexibility, kindness, caution and self-care. Prepare for plans to shift and change with very little notice. Let’s take care of ourselves and each other. Check in with those you love. Acknowledge the fear but don’t let it take over.

We are going to need all of our resources for the challenges ahead. Six months have passed since the pandemic began in Canada, so we know more now than we did at the beginning. The best way to get through this challenging time is by caring for one another.

Deep breath. Here we go, with our fingers crossed.