Showing all posts tagged fear

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

Patience

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I’m not a patient person by nature. Frustration settles hard and fast in my soul when things go wrong. I get brittle and testy in a hurry (yes, I see the irony of using hurry when I’m writing about patience).

Something in me longs for security. For safety. For peace. And in our pandemic days and months, these entities are in short supply. Where patience is required, I end up spinning my wheels in a state of fear instead. The fear builds, looking for a release, and I realize that I’m far too tense.

I know I’m not alone in these feelings, which helps. When I talk with friends, I hear a similar note of frustration and uncertainty. It’s hard on all of us to peer into the future and see a series of question marks with no ability to plan due to the unpredictable nature of the virus.

And I know that we were never really in control, however, that’s cold comfort right now (nothing is actually cold as we are in a heatwave, but I digress). Control itself is an illusion, but oh how I miss that illusion. My insides are like sandpaper these days, rough and tight. I’m tired but also restless, irritated and somewhat paranoid.

Which brings me back to patience. I need to find my way back to it. When I feel the most stable, I take time every day to stretch my body and do a guided meditation to calm my mind. I’m still stretching, but meditation seems to have disappeared. I also write in my journal, as it’s a safe place to explore my fears and emotions, but lately it doesn’t seem to be helping.

Not one of us knows what’s coming. A vaccine would be great, but this outcome is not guaranteed. For now, we all struggle along in our brave new world of masks, social distancing, increased cleaning protocols and uncertainty about school and work reopening (my God, how I miss our townhouse complex pool in this 32 degree weather!). Over all of it hovers a sense of fear about the virus – will I stay healthy? Will my loved ones continue to avoid getting sick? Is this get-together an acceptable risk or is it reckless?

I’m not sure of anything right now. I know this is a growing place to be, and six months from now I’ll likely have learned something. But I can’t understand or predict that growth right now. This is the survival stage. It requires patience and gentleness, two areas I’m weak in.

Just writing this has helped me to breathe a little bit deeper. I’ve recommitted to the idea that I need to meditate each day to try to counteract my rising fear. It’s always better to swim with the current and not against it (not that I’m doing a lot of swimming but the metaphor still works). For today, I am safe and secure. I can move toward being at peace. And if I continue to feel unsettled, I can attempt to just make it through this stressful time to see how I’ve changed at the end of it. Maybe I’ll develop a bit more patience.

How are you at the 4.5 month mark of this Covid-19 pandemic?

In Culture, Nurture, Politics, Relationships, Uncategorized

Community Care

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

For the last few months, I’ve been leaning into the phrase community care. Now, with a COVID-19 global pandemic stirring up fear and uncertainty, it’s a critical time to examine what it means to move beyond self care and into a broader sense of helping one another.

If you’re like me, logging onto Twitter multiple times a day causes your anxiety to skyrocket (Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau all have the virus??!). This week, every couple of hours we faced a new coronavirus cancellation or announcement. Uncertainty is the order of the day (will schools close, should we go to this event, how much toilet paper is reasonable to buy?).

One of the biggest downsides of the internet is constant access to information, particularly when what we read or watch may not be accurate. We are all informed, but not necessarily qualified to speak knowledgeably about complex medical, economic or political issues. I’m trying to listen to actual experts in these fields instead of someone spouting opinions. I’m hoping this will keep my fear level a bit lower.

Over the last week, my panic cycle went like this: This is the end game and we’re all going to die, go stock up on food and supplies, never leave the house again, cry over our tanking investments, lose all hope. (Overall, not very pleasant or helpful.)

Thankfully, these last few days I’ve been more careful about the articles I’m reading. I’m going for more walks and looking at Twitter less. The positive side of this is slowly taking shape for me, like a Polaroid photo sharpening into focus. A global health crisis can show us the worst of humanity, but also the best. This is the opportunity for community care: for us to take care of one another.

I’ve been developing a novel about a post-patriarchy world, where capitalism as we once understood it is destroyed and something new is built in its place. Perhaps this crisis is what we need to address rampant wealth inequality and profound selfishness. Maybe it’s an opportunity to hit the refresh button on our modern lives, where busyness and status are the insubstantial goals we strive for. If we want a fairer, kinder world, the old one must disappear so that we can imagine something better.

Our world is in a true crisis. It’s definitely scary and I’m not attempting to minimize that. But stories of people helping out their neighbours who are quarantined bring me so much joy. Our reliance on technology has isolated us from true connection with one another, but now we are seeing just how much we need each other when we are facing life and death issues.

It’s a time for community care. To stay home to contain the risks of spreading this virus too fast for our medical systems to keep up with those who are sick. To change the way we look at what’s happening; to see that our response to this crisis could make our society more compassionate and equitable. The way we save lives is by working together, not by panicking and attacking one another. Community care. We all need each other to survive.

In Culture, Nurture, Politics, Writing

Canada’s Federal Election

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Confession: I did not vote for the Liberal party in the 2015 Canadian Federal election. I voted Conservative because I thought Justin Trudeau was a spoiled brat who wasn’t ready to lead our country.

I was wrong. Over the last four years, Trudeau has changed my mind. With the exception of a few notable missteps (and who among us hasn’t made mistakes even when we aren’t in the public eye?), I believe he has taken us in the right direction when it comes to gender equality, the environment, human rights and the economy.

You may disagree with me and that is your right as my fellow Canadian. We live in a democratic country and the right to vote according to your conscience is part of what makes us the true north strong and free.

As a general rule, I try not to write about politics, but as my friend* Rob Bell says, “The political is personal and the personal is political.” It’s all mixed in together. And not speaking up has a different type of price tag in the divided world we are living in, so the time has come for me to write a political post. (*We are not actually friends, but I feel like we are friends.)

In this election, we have more at stake as a country than in previous elections. Voting Conservative in 2019 is a vote that echoes the far right-wing ideologies we’ve seen from a distance in the U.S. with Trump and up close and personal in Ontario and Alberta with Ford and Kenney.

These platforms on a Federal level mean tax cuts for the rich and slashed budgets for education and health care. A Conservative vote in 2019 means taking Canada backwards in civil rights, environmental protections and gender equality. We’ve seen in this election process that it also means fear, anti-immigration and bullying, not to mention outright lies.

When I was a teenager, I used to wonder what I would’ve done if I lived in Germany in the mid-1930s as fascism was on the rise. Would I have gone along with the patriotic fervour, believing the Nazi party was the best choice for Germany’s economy and choosing to turn a blind eye to their human rights atrocities?

I like to believe that I wouldn’t have voted for a fascist agenda, but wondering what we would’ve done 80-some years ago is no longer an idle conjecture exercise. We are living this choice right now. What you do now is likely what you would’ve done then, so we can all stop wondering. Now is the time to act.

Vote however your conscience leads you on October 21st. I choose forward, by voting for the Liberal Party. Please consider carefully which direction you want Canada to move in, and vote with great care and deliberation.

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth

Releasing Those We Love

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

When I practice releasing those I love, I think about Cheryl Strayed’s beautiful phrase, “Acceptance is a small, quiet room.” Those words soothe me, every single time.

Today I need to hold this idea close, as William left this morning with 70 over-excited grade 7 kids on an outdoor ed camping adventure. My son is not a person who enjoys rugged outdoor activities, new culinary tastes, sleeping away from home or doing anything remotely challenging or stressful. These factors all added up to why he desperately needed to go.

When I dropped William off with his sleeping bag, pillow and suitcase in the gym, one of the grade 7 teachers said to me, “These kids are anxious because they think about stuff instead of actually doing it.” I’ve been spouting a version of this for years and intellectually I know it to be true, but the emotional pull of our children’s fear is a powerful magnet for a parent.

When the trip was first discussed at a meeting early in 2019, several parents gasped audibly when the teachers said NO cell phones would be allowed on this outdoor ed trip. We’ve all become accustomed to reaching our kids to check in or help them solve problems. The concept of the kids being on their own for three days is a harder sell in our texting world than it would’ve been in my own childhood thirty-some years ago.

I know he’s going to do fine. They all will. At thirteen, kids need to practice building memories and skills apart from their parents. Jason was willing to sign up as a chaperone, but William insisted he wanted to go on his own. So we took him at his word, even as the trip drew closer and his anxiety began to bloom.

These next three days are a wonderful opportunity for me to release William. He’ll need to solve his own problems, create his own memories, confront his own fears. We’ve helped him get to this point, and we believe he’s ready for this step (even if he’s not entirely sure). I will continue to think about him, wondering how his activities, meals and bedtimes are going, but I will stay in that small, quiet room of acceptance.

As parents, we have to practice for the next stage along with our beloved kids. We cannot hold on, begging them to stay small and dependent. The job is to nurture a dependent baby and turn them into an independent adult. Each step the parent and the child takes toward this goal is important, so that when the day comes for them to pack up and move out, we have all improved at releasing those we love to find their own way.

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.