Showing all posts tagged Peace

In Culture, Identity, Minimalism, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships, Speaking, University, Writing

3 Words for 2021

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Every year I choose 3 words to focus on. For 2021, I picked peace, priorities and potential (can you tell I’m in a poetry class in my final semester of my undergrad and we are focusing on techniques like alliteration?).

Living into these words looks different from year to year, but I like the process of noticing how they filter into my life month by month, and then reflecting on them at the end of the year. This is what I’m hoping to discover with each of these words:

Peace

I think of peace not as a permanent state of being but as a worthy goal to aim for. I long for peace in my relationships, within my own mind and heart, and for my words and actions to reflect peace toward others and the larger world. For me, peace is best achieved through controlled, deep breathing and meditation to slow my thoughts down. When I fail to achieve peace by speaking rudely to others or thinking violent thoughts, I try to centre myself, apologize, and try again to promote peace from the inside out.

Priorities

As Queen Oprah once said, “There’s no such thing as balance, only choices.” In 2021, I want to make better use of my time by better managing my choices. I try to remember Annie Dillard’s wise words, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Years ago, I practiced saying no to what I didn’t want to do in order to have more time for what I really wanted to accomplish. Now, it’s much harder than that, for I have to say no to things I like in order to make space for what I love. My key priorities this year are writing, speaking, graduating university, resting and nurturing those I’m closest to (and being nurtured by them in return).

Potential

Late last year, I heard Rob Bell say in one of his RobCast’s, “As writers, we have to make peace with unrealized potential.” I loved this quote so much that I wrote it down and stuck it above my writing desk. Potential has long been the bane of my existence. For decades, I felt like I wasn’t doing enough. The fear that I was wasting my potential dogged me every single day. I’m exhausted by fighting with my own “unrealized potential.” This is the year I’m determined to lay down this endless grudge match with myself. I’m going to struggle with this concept until I’ve made peace with it.

What are your words for 2021? What areas of growth would you like to focus on in the coming year?

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Feel Through

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

“You know how to push through, now it’s time to feel through.”

I’ve been seeing a new counsellor for the past few weeks, and in my last session she suggested it might be time to start feeling my way through instead of putting my head down and trying to power through like I usually do. The simplicity of the phrase “feel through” has been helping me slow down and stay in the moment more.

We live in the information age, where logic is worshipped above all else. My counsellor has this visual of a line drawn with her finger across her throat and then her hand raised to the top of her head. She does this when I’m processing a thought verbally but I’m staying completely in my head instead of moving down into the heart space where my feelings are stored.

She repeatedly says, “Stay quiet for a moment and notice what is happening in your body.” This is so new for me that I find it uncomfortable, but simply breathing and feeling gets me much closer to the breakthrough I’m looking for. Getting out of my head is critical for this process to work. Now, when I’m talking to her or to others, I’m likely to stop mid-sentence, draw a line across my throat and indicate my head, and then start again from a soul place rather than a brain place.

This feel through stuff is powerful. It’s the engine of our lives. The pain and grief I’m wanting to work with doesn’t dwell in my head. It’s in my body. Ditto for the memories I’m trying to access in order to understand where some of my faulty coping mechanisms originated from. I have to go below the line of my neck to find those, and I know I’m close when I start shaking or crying before speaking about them.

We’ve all been through quite a year in 2020. In these quiet days before Christmas I like to spend time with my journal, reflecting on what happened while looking ahead to a year with fresh possibilities. There’s a lot of sadness to feel before moving on to more pleasant emotions like hope or joy. The only way out is ever through.

I wish you peace and rest this December, along with space to feel through instead of simply pushing through. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships, Spiritual Life

Struggling

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

How are you doing this fall? I’m struggling.

I keep telling myself it will be better when I get some space to relax. When I have less to do and fewer deadlines to meet. But that never seems to happen. I finish one “must-complete” project and there’s ten more after it. The space to process my feelings doesn’t appear, so I remain sad and frustrated.

I’ve been working with a new counsellor for the last few weeks. It’s helping, in that I feel less alone and it’s lovely to hear new coping strategies from her, but it’s also not helping, because I feel like I’m only two steps in while attempting to climb Mount Everest.

In these challenging seasons, everything feels much harder than it should. I’m sick of only seeing shades of grey where I used to see vibrant colour. I’m bored of feeling sad and flat where once I felt hopeful and at peace.

I know this will pass. But that doesn’t really help on the shittiest days. It’s too far away to count. It’s an idea, not a reality. Asking for help in the form of counselling was difficult for me, because it meant admitting that I’m lost and don’t know where to go from here. I kept telling myself that I’ve had loads of therapy and I should know better. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.

This pandemic is dragging on forever. Not just for me, but for everybody. We all long for some kind of certainty and normalcy, if for no other reason than to just feel stable again. It’s exhausting looking into the future and only seeing a long series of question marks. Part of me knows there’s no real certainty, but in a pandemic this fact becomes crystal clear, with very little to hide or obscure it.

It’s so easy to tell someone else that the struggle is where the growth is found. No cost is associated with saying those words, but in the Mondays and Tuesdays of our lives it just plain hurts to feel you are in the dark. We set up our Christmas trees last week and when the lights come on in the late afternoon, I feel a tiny dart of joy, because for a few hours the darkness is pushed away.

The only way out is through. It’s one foot in front of the other, with additional grace and kindness to get me through these days. I’m tired. I miss my cat, Little Rose, who died in September. I feel adrift and sad. I think the key is to say it out loud; to let these emotions bloom in the dark instead of trying to pretend they aren’t there. Reaching out to other people helps. So does making space to journal, meditate, walk, breathe, create.

It’s a hard season, friends. What are you doing to look after yourself at the end of this pandemic year?

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, Identity, Minimalism, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships, Spiritual Life

The Spaces Between

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

This holiday season, as we reflect on the year we leave behind and think about the one about to begin, my hope is that we find peace in the quiet of the spaces between.

So much of our culture revolves around hustle. Be busy, achieve success, look great, do a lot but make it seem effortless. For me, this is not a path to happiness. My heart longs for less. Smaller. Quieter. I’m interested in the spaces between the accomplishments, where the buzz recedes into the distance and you can hear the echo of peace.

This may sound easy, but I assure you it’s not. Living an intentionally quiet and small existence at the end of 2019 takes a lot of focus and effort. I have to endlessly remind myself that I’m good enough, just as I am, and I’m here to pass this message along to you.

The spaces between things is where the interesting stuff resides. It’s the pause after the heartbeat that makes the human body function. The rest in the music is why we can distinguish one note or lyric from another. The space is where we settle down so we can see what we actually have to be grateful for.

Right now, before the holiday season is upon us, seems like a beautiful time to find peace in the spaces between. Notice how much you love the people you spend your time with. Pet your cat or dog and appreciate their warmth on these long winter nights. May the Christmas lights remind us that not everything is dark after all.

The only permission we need to rest and be grateful comes from ourselves. We don’t need committee approval for how we choose to spend our time. These important decisions of renewal and gratitude come from inside of us. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

May we settle into the spaces between and wrap the silence around us like a blanket. Be here, in this moment, and know that this is what really matters. Let’s find peace in the quiet, to end one year and purposefully begin the next one.