Showing all posts tagged love

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships, Speaking, Travel, Writing

Recalibrating Identity

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I just returned from a trip to Kelowna, BC where I was speaking at a teachers’ conference. In previous years, Jason has come with me on this work trip, but this year I decided to go alone. I listened to music, and some episodes of the Smartless podcast, but realised partway through the 5 hour drive that being alone in the car helped me to recalibrate a sense of my own personal identity.

As women, and mothers, so often our identity becomes intertwined with the identities of those we love and nurture. It can become challenging to separate out our individual needs and desires, because we exist in a context of our other relationships (and identities).

While driving to Kelowna, I found myself weeping for no apparent reason. I decided to let the storm of feeling pass through me, so I cried on and off while I drove. This continued even after I checked into my hotel room and ordered myself dinner.

As the evening progressed, I started to realise what was causing this storm of tears. I pulled out my journal and began to write. I worked through some things that had been building up during the summer. Questions about this new stage of life we’re about to enter as parents and as a family when William leaves for university in January.

I’m certain these feelings would’ve made themselves known whether I was at home or in Kelowna, but there’s something powerful about prioritising our own solitude from time to time. Over the two nights I was away, by myself, I could feel my identity recalibrating back into something I could recognise as my own.

Earlier this summer, we did a family driving trip down the coast to Los Angeles, one of my favourite places on planet earth. We had days of sun and soft sand and salty ocean air and palm trees and In-N-Out milkshakes. It was glorious. But it was a family trip, which meant all of our decisions were made together, with everyone’s needs and interests considered.

In the middle of August, I had a work trip to Alberta to speak at a writers’ conference and teach classes at a number of different libraries. For that trip, it was just Jason and I, which meant I left my Mom identity behind but remained in my Marriage identity. We had a wonderful trip, and I’m glad we went together, but I needed the alone time in Kelowna to understand the difference between solo trips and together trips.

When we give a lot of ourselves to others, it’s important to take time out for ourselves. I’ve been teaching this over the last six months in the form of nurture classes for writers and Nurture Starts with You sessions for teachers. But sometimes I fail to give it enough attention for myself.

It felt strange to say to Jason that I wanted to go to Kelowna on my own this time. He had loads of work to do and was happy to stay at home to look after Ted since William happened to be visiting his sister and some friends on the island when I was gone. But during my trip I realised how much it mattered that I listened to my own intuition. I gave myself time to feel things and a little bit of space and distance to better understand some relationship dynamics that were challenging to see up close.

This solo trip restored me to myself. It gave me time to reflect, and to cry, and to plan for the coming months. It helped me recalibrate my own sense of who I am.

How about you? As we say goodbye to summer and approach the brand new fall season, what steps could you take to recalibrate your own identity?

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

3 Words for 2024

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Every year, I pick 3 words or a phrase to focus on. In 2024, those words are savour, intentional, and receive.

With savour, I’m determined this year to notice more of my life as I’m living it. I read somewhere that when we plan for the future, thinking about something that has yet to arrive, we are missing our life as it’s being lived in the moment. This resonated for me, because I do it so often.

Savouring goes hand in hand with slowing down. I want to notice my delicious food as I’m chewing it. I want to pay attention to the person I’m talking to when we’re having a conversation. I long to stop fixating on my to-do list or some future event. My life (and your life!) is happening right now, at this present second. I’m determined to revel in it more. To cultivate appreciation for the life, career, and relationships I’ve built. To be here and now and to savour it all, no matter what, for this is what it means to be alive.

My second word, intentional, is designed to help me triage my biggest priorities. I’m 51 now, which means I have a lot of decades to look back and reflect on, while also hopefully having decades still to go in front of me. I want the way I spend my time to matter. I want to be more decisive about it.

I’ve been focusing for a few years now on rhythm. I work, and then I rest. I’ve learned to stop seeing leisure as wasted/non-productive time. It’s just as important. If we don’t choose to rest, eventually our body will choose for us, but there are times when I worry about the hours I’m spending chilling out (especially when I’m under a deadline or have a lot of moving career pieces on the go). This year, I want to be intentional with my time, whether I’m working or resting.

My last word is the hardest one for me. I do not know how to receive from other people. I’m unskilled and unpracticed at it. I know how to give to others – I can do that blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back – but receiving?? It feels foreign and strange and brings up all sorts of insecurities about how I don’t deserve it.

The subject of care has been a big one this past year for Jason and I in our marriage. I kept telling him that I wanted to feel cared for by him the way I would imagine he feels cared for by me. For ages, he couldn’t understand what I meant by this. My counsellor really helped me understand that I know how to give, but not how to receive. For Jason, it’s reversed.

We set these patterns up in the early years of our marriage, and now, at the 25 year mark, we’re trying to create more balance in how we function as a couple. It was really helpful for me to understand that I’m not good at receiving care, help, and love from others. I protect myself from it, and then become resentful and angry that no one is loving me, which isn’t exactly fair to the people closest to me.

With Ava moving out last year to go to university, I began experimenting with the changes in my parenting relationship with her as a grown-up child. Her love felt different to me, with her not living in our house. I was able to practice receiving some love, care, and nurture from her in a way I’d never experienced it before. This helped me open up to the love and care Jason was offering as well.

It’s been humbling. And beautiful. I still have so much to learn. Giving comes naturally to me, but I can also attest to how satisfying it feels to receive care from others. I’m inching my way into it, reminding my scared child self that I deserve love and attention too, and I don’t always have to be the one to give it. Learning to receive is going to take me a lot more time, but it’s a project I’m happy to undertake.

What are your words for 2024?

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Speaking, Uncategorized

Loving our Bodies Exactly as They Are

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

“What if we decided to love our bodies exactly as they are?”

I read this question on Twitter a while back, and I can’t stop thinking about it. As a woman, I’ve been told my whole life that something is wrong with me and if I spend enough money and time on the problem, I can hopefully fix it. So I’ve put highlights in my hair every few months, bought new and improved makeup to cover my blemishes, tried various weight loss plans and exercised more, went shopping for new and more flattering clothes, and the list goes on.

A few months ago I went to a skin place to treat some of the cherry angiomas that crop up more frequently now that I’m in my late forties. The technician gave me a brochure for a laser place that promised to get rid of the redness in my cheeks and chin for treatments starting at $199. As I drove home, thinking about this new redness issue that had never occurred to me before, I thought, “What the hell does it matter if I have some redness to my skin tone?”

Then I read that quote: “What if we decided to love our bodies exactly as they are?” What if we chose not to worry about redness in our skin, or some cellulite in our thighs, or grey hair at our temples, or wearing clothes we like that are five years old and not the newest fashion? What if we simply decided that we were fine as we were, and didn’t need to stress about it or pay a lot of money to fix ourselves up to meet a standard somebody else set in the first place?

In my presentations I talk about how the decision to change is the hardest step of all. After the decision is made, the rest is easier. Especially when we are trying to deviate from a social expectation or norm that is so familiar it becomes like the air we breathe. We don’t even notice it, so the idea of challenging it often doesn’t occur to us.

Thinking I’m too fat or not fashionable enough or that my hair shouldn’t be gray or that my skin is too red is under my control. I can believe those things or I can choose not to believe those things. I can decide. If I want to spend money and time on certain things related to my body, that’s up to me and I don’t need anyone’s permission other than my own. But I can also be as counter-culture as I want and choose to love my body as it is, without feeling ashamed, and this truly does feel revolutionary to me.

I’ve been dipping my toe into this idea and liking what I find. I’m the one who decides if I need to change something about my appearance, not the corporations marketing to me so I’ll spend money on their products. Just because something is available doesn’t mean I need it.

The world looks different when we decide to love our bodies exactly as they are.

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 Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Messages of Love to Ourselves

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Messages of Love to Ourselves

Last week I went to a laser clinic for information on removing a raised red bump on my scalp under my hair. It’s been growing there for some time, since Ava was a baby, and I checked it with my doctor a few years ago and he said not to worry about it.

Lately it’s been itchy around the area and I’m weary of warning those cutting my hair about avoiding it. So I went to a laser clinic.

Apparently, what I have is called a “ruby point”. I’ve left this one so long that it will be expensive to remove, taking several appointments instead of just one. The technician pointed out several small rubies developing along my hairline and on my neck and chest.

I went home from the consultation utterly dejected. I hate spending money in general, but certainly dropping hundreds of dollars on cosmetic surgery offends my thrifty ways. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that I identified what my internal monologue was whispering to me after this appointment.

That persistent voice went something like this: Julianne, you are such an idiot. How could you let this thing grow on your head for over a decade without doing something about it? Anyone with sense would’ve known better. And what the hell is wrong with you that more of these ruby point things are growing all over you?

The voice was relentless, mean and forceful. I felt overwhelmed by a sense of shame and guilt. What was wrong with me? It was only when I finally sat down with my journal and tried to sort out why I was hurting that I could see how devastating this line of thought was. It’s not my fault I’m prone to these ruby points. And I did check the one on my head with a doctor who wasn’t concerned about it. Now it’s becoming an issue for me so I’m getting it removed.

Recognizing my unconscious nasty messaging to myself was so helpful, for it meant I could choose to mute those cruel words. I did not have to surrender my joy and peace to that angry noise. I am worth this money I must spend to take care of my health. I am not a burden to my family, like I initially feared. (Talking about this with Jason over dinner was so reassuring. He is usually kinder to me than I am to myself. He said, “Go for it, don’t worry about what it costs. You need to get this done.”)

I am loved and valued and it’s okay to prioritize my skincare. I made the appointment for this afternoon to laser off the big ruby point and after that I can make a plan to deal with the smaller ones.

It’s important to stop and look at what our subconscious is actually saying to us. Much of what we hear can be traced back to faulty messaging from our childhood or other critical points in our past, but the wonderful news is that we do not have to listen to that vitriol any longer. We can love ourselves through any hardship.

I’m grateful that this health issue is not a serious one. It’s pricey, but others are facing much scarier and more uncertain problems. I will hold that gratitude close, and work on making sure the messages I give myself are ones of love instead of scorn or derision.

How about you? What does your self-talk sound like?