Showing all posts tagged peaceful

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Politics, Relationships, Writing

Farewell 2025

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

In December, I like to take some time to look back over the year and reflect. Normally, this feels peaceful and inspiring. This year, not so much. It feels like searching through shit, hoping to find a bit of elusive gold to make the process worthwhile.

I wish the news weren’t so bleak. I find myself longing for a pre-fascist world, one where common sense, intelligence, kindness, and decency are valued again. Where generative AI is a pipe dream, not the digital asbestos we have now that infects everything and costs a fortune and makes cheating easy and weakens our human connection to art and creativity.

But there are good things, too. My kids coming home from university to spend a couple weeks under the same roof as Jason and I again, after spending this entire fall grieving for the end of the beautiful stage that was raising our family. William has a new girlfriend, so we’ve been getting to know her, and experiencing that unique phenomenon where your heart can stretch to include someone who wasn’t there before.

For 2025, I decided to not publish anything. I made it a year to focus on a new writing project, my murder mystery novel A Body at the Fair, which I hoped to finish by December. I haven’t finished, but it’s okay. One of the best things about being an independent publisher is that I can be flexible with my scheduling. I don’t have an agent asking when I’ll be turning in my book, or an imprint setting a date and holding me to that deadline.

When I watched the limited series Task this fall and did a rewatch of Mare of Easttown, by the same creator, I remembered that good work takes time. Our culture has become obsessed with speed and commerce—the endless rush to market so someone can make money. But I’d prefer to invest in work that will outlive me, that has a chance to stand the test of time, and offer hope or inspiration or meaning to others for generations to come. That type of vision takes time and intention, so I’m offering those gifts to myself.

My overall word for 2025 was space. I think I worked hard at this, trying to make space for myself in my relationships, and in the wider world. I offered myself space to simply be human, instead of rushing around trying to check items off my to-do list. I also worked at giving space to others, especially my young-adult kids. My counsellor helped me see that if days go by and I don’t hear from them, it’s not punitive like it was in my family of origin. It’s just a bit of healthy space. If and when we miss one another or need one another, we’ll reach out. This bit of important insight has literally changed my life.

My 3 words for 2025 were deeper, simpler, quieter. I wanted to slow down and catch my breath. Looking back, I can see I did exactly that. I wrote the first half of my murder mystery novel, writing using intuition like with Post Civ instead of outlining and planning, and I’m thrilled with how that book is developing. I got derailed from finishing, when America tilted precariously into white Christian nationalist authoritarian rule and I decided to process my feelings on this by writing a journal as a historical record, but I will return to it in 2026 and eventually finish the book.

I loved having my monthly Ruby Finch Books Substack newsletter and podcast to reflect on each of the words I had chosen. At different points of the year, it’s helpful to have a unique focus to live into. I plan to continue my commitment to living a uniquely human life that prioritizes depth, simplicity, and quiet. These are valuable qualities.

The farther I move away from social media, and the aggressive disinformation campaigns forced on us through open AI, designed to fracture society and spread intentional propaganda, the more human I can become. And I fucking love being human in this misguided and inevitably doomed age of artificial intelligence. What an act of resistance it is to simply lean into my messy flesh and blood existence.

I’m sad that I didn’t finish my screenplay for Jamesy Harper’s Big Break this year, nor did I set up Ruby Finch Pictures as a production company. But there’s time. I’m giving myself space, and an extra measure of compassion, and moving these goals into the next year or even 2027. There’s no shortage of interesting work to do, and I keep reminding myself that a dream I’ve had since I was sixteen can wait another year or more. Living now, through these moments, matters too.

Farewell, 2025. You’ve been a hard one. Maybe 2026 will offer a little more light and hope for my fellow human beings, as we continue to share this one and only precious planet of ours. May love, nurture, and reason become fashionable again next year. Let’s work together to make it so.

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

You are Safe and You are Loved

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
You are Safe and You are Loved

When my kids are scared, I tell them, “You are safe and you are loved.” In these frightening times I’m holding these words close, for we can either freeze in panic or move forward in the belief that we are safe and cared for.

Try rolling that phrase around in your mind for a minute or two. “You are safe and you are loved.” It calms something down that’s anxious in you, doesn’t it? It helps. Nothing outward will change, but if you are slightly more peaceful, it makes everything a bit easier to bear.

The problem comes when we forget that we are safe and we are loved. We begin to descend into panic, our palms sweaty, our tummies roiling, our minds racing ahead with all of the “what if’s?” that will never really go away. But for now, in this exact moment, we are safe and we are loved.

I’ve had a series of separate discussions with people in this last week about the situation developing in America. Some have said that they aren’t political and are just waiting for it to blow over. Others have expressed concern but have stated that maybe it’s all meant to work out this way and there’s not much we can do as Canadians to make our voices heard.

I have a few American friends who voted for Trump and I love these people and have a history with them, but I cannot bring myself to talk about this with them as his election is simply too fresh and upsetting to me. So I’m practicing making space in my heart for opposing beliefs. I’m summoning as much grace as possible, for me and for my friends and for those who are desperately angry, terrified and affected by his sweeping and unjust policies.

It’s hard. It hurts. I want a gentle, peaceful world and we are on the precipice of war, violence, narcissism, bigotry and the misogyny of a patriarchy I had hoped was becoming a thing of the past. And yet here we are, trying to explain these horrible headlines to our children when we cannot begin to understand them ourselves.

But this I do know: I am safe and I am loved. I will wrap it around me like a coat and wear it to keep warm. I will be excessively kind and attempt to encourage as many people as I can. I will march and protest when the availability arises and if it doesn’t, I’ll organize one myself. I can dream of the kind of peaceful world I want to live in and do my best to create it on a daily basis and then hope it will spread like wildfire to the hearts of the refugees, the innocent children, the marginalized and those who believe the U.S. is moving in the right direction.

Let’s join together, if we are afraid, and reassure ourselves. Let’s whisper, “You are safe and you are loved.” We need each other’s hope and assurance, more than ever before. None of us are alone. We are safe, we are loved, and together we are powerful.