Showing all posts tagged parenting

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Care But Don’t Carry

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I’ve had a hard time this summer with my nineteen-year-old son coming and going every seven days for his job. He’s been driving a huge truck in a copper mine, working twelve-hour shifts that alternate between days and nights, seven days on and then seven off, with a seven-hour drive each week to get there and to come back home.

It’s been a challenging time for him. The learning curve was steep to manage the trucks and the driving routes. It’s a remote location. He’s working with seasoned veterans who have been doing this job a long time. It’s a radically different world for William from his university student life and his previous employment as a barista at Starbucks.

On the plus side, his two best friends from high school are working with him. They travel together, live together when in the Cariboo region of BC, and faced the same stress when training on the trucks. And they are all making very good money to pay for their upcoming tuition and living costs as students.

When I was talking to friends about William’s experience this summer, and my frustration with listening to him complain about how hard the job is and how he misses being at home, I found myself saying, “The job for me here is to care but don’t carry.”

I liked that phrase so much I wrote it down in my journal. I’ve been mulling it over, considering how it applies to parenting and marriage and family members and friendship and lots of other relationships. I realised I know how to care and I also know how to carry stress for other people. But I don’t know how to do one and not the other.

I found myself trying to gently explain this to William. I said, “You are nineteen now. When you were younger, I would help you with your anxiety by sharing it with you. We would talk, and you would discharge some of those feelings onto me, and then you felt better. But now you are an adult. You’ve taken on a hard job, and I’m proud of you, but you get paid a lot of money for this work because it’s hard. And you’ll have to learn to manage some of that stress on your own without complaining about it to me.”

There’s no switch to flick to turn our kids into adults. I know it’s a long process, filled with ups and downs. But I also know that I don’t want to be weighed down by stress that isn’t mine any longer. I want to offer support and love when people around me are struggling, but I don’t want to carry their load for them because it doesn’t belong to me.

I’ve been exchanging voice notes with a friend who has kids the same age as mine. We’re both trying to navigate our way through the rhythm disruptions of having young adult kids leave home, then return, and then leave again. It’s a stage of parenting that won’t last forever, so we are both trying to enjoy the kids when we still have them living here, but it also requires a fresh commitment to our own self-care and nurture to manage the sense of whiplash with all the coming and going.

Care but don’t carry. I’m living into this phrase. I want my kids and my husband and my friends and family members to know I can be counted on for help and a listening ear. But I also want to free myself from the pressure I can feel to carry burdens for others that I haven’t actually incurred for myself.

What are some ways you’ve practiced care but don’t carry in your life and relationships?

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships, University, Writing

Hello Fall

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Last week I wrote in my Ruby Finch Books newsletter about how much I love fall, but I realised there was more to say, so I thought I’d do an update here.

Every single year, as the calendar changes from the loosy-goosy days of summer to the more structured routine of September, I feel a lift in my spirits. I know there are some people who feel joy when the temperature rises, but I’m a fall girl through and through.

The fuzzy pajamas and thick warm socks. Boots with jeans and long-sleeved shirts again. A light jacket with a pocket to hold my car keys. Using the oven to cook dinner without thinking about how hot the house will get. Survivor and The Amazing Race on Wednesday nights. School starting up, which means a quiet house, where most days I’m the only one in it besides our two cats.

William is starting grade 12, which signals the beginning of the end of children at home. It feels strange – both sad and freeing in equal measure. For the last fifteen years, we’ve done a back-to-school routine like many parents before us involving fresh school supplies, first-day outfits, new shoes, lunch kits, and posed photographs in the same spot every year, with tears from William and wide grins from Ava.

But now we are at the end of this predictable series of post-Labour-day events. Ava left home in mid-August for her two weeks of Community Leader training at UVic, where she’s starting her second year in the theatre program, and William is beginning his final year of high school. When he graduates, we will have two adult children, and be on the edge of an empty nest.

My friend Susan posted about this phenomenon on Facebook, saying that there’s so much support for new parents, and so little for those at the end of the journey. And of course it’s not the END, in any final sense, as our grown kids will continue to need us for years to come. But this transition – from parents of kids who live at home and are considered minors under the age of eighteen, to having them be grown-up adults – is a big one.

I felt melancholy about it for a few days at the end of August, but once school actually began last week, the sadness evaporated and became something suspiciously close to contentment. It feels like I’m nearing the finish line on a job I’ve done well, with a lot of highs and lows in equal measure, but I showed up and I gave what I could and now I can glimpse a future that involves Jason and me without two kids at the centre of our marriage and family life.

Around two years ago this thought scared me shitless. Some of those fears are what I’m exploring in the new book I’m writing on The Negative Space – all the things we didn’t get or cannot see that make what we do possess have meaning and value. It’s pleasant to consider coming to the end of the day-to-day responsibilities and stresses of parenthood, while recognising that this transition, like every change in life, costs us something. We give up something, and receive something different in return.

This is also the first September in 6 years that I haven’t been a university student. Like the parenting changes on the horizon, being free of student deadlines and homework and classes is both unmooring and exciting in equal measure. I’ve started a publishing imprint and I’m busy building a company, offering online writing classes, launching a YA book next month, planning the publishing of my thesis novel in 2024, and writing a new memoir. It’s exhilarating to be doing work that isn’t designed to impress professors or agents or editors, but is something I can do simply because I believe in it myself. Having this be enough is like pure oxygen. It’s invigorating and restoring.

Well, I planned to write about our 3.5 week Europe trip this summer and what I discovered about myself, but this fall post became something else. And I love that. I’ll write again about the trip, because I’m still working through how I feel and what changed for me while travelling abroad, but for now I’m leaning into my Ruby Finch Books motto – intuitive courage – and trusting that where my intuition leads is worth following.

How are you feeling this fall? Any big changes on the horizon?

In Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships, Uncategorized

Happy 18th Baby Girl

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Of parenting, Gretchen Rubin said, “The days are long but the years are short.” This was a guiding principle for me when my kids were young. Now that they are both teenagers, I find the days to be as short as the years. Once they were out of the preschool season, time seemed to speed up, like it was set to fast forward.

Now Ava is about to turn 18. I’ve been sad about it since September, when I found a new counsellor to work with as I attempt to prepare for her to move out of our house. It takes me a long time to manage change. When she leaves for university in late August, I want to be past my own complicated feelings and into excitement for her as she launches into her own life. I can glimpse this possibility, but I’m not there yet, so I’m glad I started a year in advance.

All I know for sure right now is that I will really, really miss her. We all will. On the weekends, I listen to her and William laughing from the basement as they play Jedi: Fallen Order on his Xbox. Each interaction with Ava feels more precious now. Sharper, more defined, and meaningful. Our house will have a gaping hole in it when she’s not here every day. I find it really hard to even imagine.

At the same time, because life is endlessly complicated and nuanced, I’m thrilled to see Ava inching into her own independence. It’s an exciting time, with university acceptances and academic excellence scholarships and a new driver’s license and a sneaking sense of pride that maybe we haven’t done too badly after all in raising her. My best friend’s mom always said that the goal of parenting is to take a dependent baby and turn them into an independent adult. By that measure, I’m incredibly proud of Ava on this milestone 18th birthday.

She’s fun, warm, smart, responsible, goofy and empathetic. Our lives are so much better because she’s in them. I try to remind myself that she’s not going into outer space, only to university, but it’s still a massive sea change for our family. And I know that many other families have done this and survived it, but thinking about your child moving out one day in the future and walking through it are two different things. But we are right on the edge of this change, peering out at it, and I feel so many things at once.

You are so loved, baby girl. Watch out, world. Ava’s finishing up grade twelve, in this never-ending groundhog day pandemic, and then she’s jumping into her adult life with intense enthusiasm and spirit. It will be a fascinating adventure, and we are here for you always. Happy 18th birthday!

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

Content

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Content

It’s no small thing to be content. To stop pursuing happiness in order to recognize, just for a moment, that you are already happy.

Everyone’s life is made up of seasons. Some are sweet, and others are agony. One month can feel like a year, slogging through shoulder-high mud, and the next can fly by in a blur of ordinary days. And yet some seasons are special in undefined ways, where we are lucky enough to see that it’s all going to plan and we laugh quite a bit and our days and nights are mostly smooth sailing.

I feel like we’re in one of those sweet seasons right now. We are out of the demanding little-kid stage and the teenaged years have not brought the promised wreckage others predicted in doomsday tones. We enjoy spending time with our kids and I love seeing the daily fruit of our number one parenting motto: Don’t Be An Asshole.

To me, contentment means not longing for something other than what you have. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, with practices like daily meditation to help me stay anchored in the present moment along with careful boundaries in my relationships making a big difference to my calm state of being.

Some of this is just a decision. My pursuit of happiness was never-ending and exhausting, so I decided to simply be happy instead. To want less instead of having more. To go simpler when the rest of the world is complex. To create beauty inside of myself and cultivate it so that it blooms. To need less from other people and ask for more from myself.

It’s really damn good. We are capable of so much more than we think. When we push past fear, a whole new existence is on the other side. For a lifelong people-pleaser, to truly not care what others think of me or my parenting or my friendship choices or my work or my weight or my fashion is unbelievably liberating. It’s a kind of freedom I couldn’t have conceived of a decade ago. And now I’m living it and not interested in asking for anyone’s permission or approval.

When we can live as ourselves in a world that works hard to get us to be something inauthentic, we have traveled a great distance toward contentment. Anything that takes you further from your intuitive self and invites negative energy into your safe space can be abandoned. I’m learning not to put myself in so many uncomfortable situations. Life is precious and important and sacred. I make my decisions with that in mind now.

Trying to make other people happy is a dead-end road. It’s not a good goal. Figure out what you need, first and foremost, and design your life around that. The people you love most will benefit indirectly from your contentment and healthy choices. Simplify wherever possible. Your time and energy is valuable. Don’t spend it on people who give nothing back to you but stress and frustration. You simply do not have to live that way. All you need is the word “no” and you’ll be free.

Contentment is a worthy goal. Invest in whatever gets you closer. If you are moving further away, look at your decisions and see where you went wrong. And it’s okay if not everyone is happy with you, as long as you are happy yourself.