struggle Archives - Julianne Harvey

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

3 Words for 2021

Julianne HarveyFebruary 1, 2021February 1, 2021

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 Books, Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships, Speaking

The Gentleness Cure

Julianne HarveyOctober 26, 2018

I had the privilege of presenting 3 sessions to BC Drama Teachers in Vancouver last week for their annual conference. We talked about building a moral conscience, what we can learn from risk and failure, and developing emotional resilience. These teachers inspired me. Every one of them was willing to dive in with both feet and whole hearts, offering up valuable insights and demonstrating what true courage looks like by being vulnerable.

The world is a dark place in the late stages of 2018, but this simply means our individual lights must burn brighter. When we make it a little farther down the path of growth and development, it’s on us to turn around and shine our flashlight so the next person knows where to step.

I’m working on something new in my own heart. It’s called gentleness. I’m intentionally trying to soften up my hard edges toward people I don’t understand and don’t like. In my conference sessions I talk a lot about holding the dignity of every person as a top priority in every interaction. I say, “Every person is worthy of love and has someone who loves them.” When a person drives me bananas, I work on seeing them as a vulnerable and defenceless child, trying to reach a toy on their tiptoes and accepting help from a caring adult.

In theory, this gentle approach works to dampen down my frustration and round out my harsh, judgemental edges. In reality, I often fail at this. I am meaner than I would like to be. We live in a polarized culture, where people take a position and hammer one another over the heads with it. I long to opt out of this cycle, but far too often I get on Twitter or Facebook and my heart begins to harden instead of soften.

Those teachers inspired me because they are in the trenches every day with students and parents. They walk a fine line of trying to mentor the students in a healthy manner while recognizing that their own lives and schedules need fine tuning. We are all struggling, in one way or another, and kindness is a better balm than criticism.

Perhaps it comes down to the oxygen mask philosophy (yet again). If I don’t look after myself, I cannot help you, because I’m passed out on the floor while the plane loses altitude. It feels a bit like our collective societal decency plane is rapidly descending to the ground, but the answer is not found in despair. It’s found when we commit to the tools we need to help ourselves, and then others, rise up.

I wish there was an easy way to manage this, but of course there isn’t. Easy doesn’t produce long-term, real results. Only struggle does that. Our fast-paced, wait-for-nothing modern existence has truly failed us when it comes to personal development and maturity. These things need time, failure, heartbreak, support and frustration. We have to change our expectations for immediate results in these areas. We need to wait, and hurt a bit, and these things are incredibly healthy for us.

I love speaking at conferences because it forces me to put my own fancy words into practice. Instruction is meaningless unless it is backed up with action. If I’m not living what I’m advising, no one should listen or care. But when we honestly live out our struggles, naming them to one another in a safe space, our authentic experiences provide a strong foundation to live from.

Gentleness, friends. To ourselves first, and then to others. Make sure you have enough oxygen. Rest this weekend. Read a good book (I recommend Dare to Lead by Brene Brown and Almost Everything: Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott). Turn off social media with all of its hand-wringing and doomsday predictions. Eat some Halloween candy. Hold the dignity of every person you interact with as a holy sacrament. Practice the courage of vulnerability and authenticity. Find a cure in being gentle.

In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth

To Struggle is Human

Julianne HarveyApril 19, 2018

This is a public service announcement that it’s okay to struggle. You are only human, after all, and not one of us is getting out of here alive. So try to keep your chin up. Eat the chocolate. Remember that another day is coming.

It’s always easier to accept mess and mistakes from others than from ourselves. Gentleness is the key, even when we don’t feel particularly competent or brave. Especially then.

What if it’s enough to simply try your best, even if the results are not as spectacular as you imagined? In fact, try not to aim for out-of-this-world amazing. Go for decent instead. Then you can lay your head on your pillow at the end of a long day and remind yourself, “I was good enough today.”

When we feel hollow at the centre of our being, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are missing something. It might simply be a signal to slow down, to get quiet, to become reacquainted with our authentic self by intentionally tuning out the noise all around us.

Happiness lies in acceptance. We won’t always feel triumphant and terrific. The reverse experience is also valid, as the lows must balance those highs. Sadness anchors our joy. Every emotion is an ingredient in the stew that makes up our human existence. It’s our expectations that repeatedly fuck us up.

Patience, grace, leisure. These matter as much as ambition, meaning and productivity. Some days we may not feel like our best selves, and this is absolutely fine. Try opening up your hands and holding loosely to the things that matter to you. Balance remains elusive, even when everything is clicking, but to quote the great and wise Oprah, “There is no such thing as balance. Only choices.”

Some seasons we give, others we receive. Allow yourself to feel what is happening to you and in you, even if it refuses to adhere to the script you’ve written. You are enough, for whatever comes your way. Take some time to just be human, with all of your unique complexities, frailties and fears.

We are here. We are doing our best. We are worthy, even in the midst of the struggle. We can eat the chocolate and refuse to feel guilty. Tomorrow is another day.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Intentional Vulnerability

Julianne HarveySeptember 6, 2016Leave a comment

I was twitchy all day Saturday because Jason and I had scheduled a date to “reconnect”. This meant intentional vulnerability, a state many of us love when it’s over and fear before it begins.

Sharing our soul openly with another person is an act of sheer courage. What we say can be misconstrued, rejected, lost in the other person’s point of view or belief system. Even when we sit down for an enchilada dinner with the person we love most in the world, practicing intentional vulnerability is a risky proposition.

I’m happy to say it went remarkably well. I shed a few tears, asked him to keep driving when we arrived at the restaurant because I was in full flow (and it’s easier to pour out my heart when I’m not making direct eye contact), said more than I had rehearsed but somehow it was better that way.

We’ve had a turbulent summer. New job for Jason, appendix rupture for me, far more question marks than exclamation points when it comes to where we will live and how we will solve a host of complicated problems. At the end of the day, none of that matters as much as who we are in our relationship together.

Are we kind to one another or do we take our stress out on each other? Are we considerate of what the other person needs or are we lost in our own sense of entitlement? Do we compete for who has it the worst or do we support each other in the hardest moments?

The answer, of course, is somewhere in between these extremes. To be married is to be in a constant state of flux. When one of us is calm, the other is tense. When one is confident, the other is a mess. It’s a seesaw where we do our best to balance out each other.

Jason has proven, again and again, that he is trustworthy when I open my heart to him, but every time I still feel afraid. Vulnerability is a powerful force to unite people when it works, but when it fails it feels terribly isolating and scary.

By the end of our delicious Mexican meal, we both felt closer, happier, more united. We want this season of struggle to mean something. We prefer to allow it to change us, from the inside out, so we are different as a result. Neither of us want to return to normal life without acknowledging that a significant shift has occurred.

Every time intentional vulnerability works the way it’s meant to, I’m a convert all over again. I long to grow all of my relationships in this way, but vulnerability is a two-way street. Both people have to buy in to this soul-to-soul spark.

If you tend to hold back, find a safe person and give it a try. Let yourself truly be seen for who you really are. Bring up your big fears, regrets, pain. If the other person proves worthy of this gift, you will experience a true connection that will go far above and beyond anything that skims along the surface and you’ll see how valuable intentional vulnerability can be.

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

Laser Focus

Julianne HarveyAugust 12, 2016Leave a comment

An interesting thing has happened since my appendix ruptured two weeks ago: I’ve developed laser focus. Before I got so sick and spent a week in the hospital recovering from post-surgery complications, I would look at my life with a long-range lens; fretting over this or that and always planning way out into the future.

Laying in a hospital bed alone changes all that. You are poked and prodded at all hours of the day and night. You fight for your very dignity as a human being, grateful beyond measure for the kindness of specific nurses and doctors. Your illusions of control melt away, water under the bridge of your own failing competence.

I learned in the hospital to take my recovery minute by minute. I’m not throwing up violently at this second? That’s a win. Five days of an awful NG tube, rubbing my throat and nose raw and meaning I can’t eat or drink until every vile, trapped thing in my stomach is vacuumed out so my nausea abates? The morning the doctors finally say it can be removed, I cry with the kind of joy I thought was only reserved for my wedding day or the births of my two children.

Life is chock full of wins and losses. Ups and downs. Strengths and weaknesses. In these last two weeks, arguably the most challenging of my life so far, my line of vision has become intensely small. Focused and specific, instead of generalized and broad.

When you don’t eat or drink for 7 days, that first taste of apple juice is the greatest sensation on earth. That spoonful of vanilla pudding that doesn’t come immediately back up. The Arrowroot baby cookie, consumed at 2 am in the milky darkness of the acute care ward with soft snores of other patients filling the air around you, was like the finest of gourmet meals to me.

My senses are awake again. Thoughts of digestion and standing up to get more water and planning out my next snack consume my day. I don’t kiss my children while thinking about my to-do list any more. Now they are so precious, standing in front of me in their summer pajamas with their hair wet from a shower, and they deserve every ounce of my attention and focus.

How many times have I heard the saying, “If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything”? I truly didn’t understand it before, but I do now. I was a person who needed to learn to slow down, and I don’t do anything by half measures. I have been brought low by this burst appendix, the “lazy bowel” that followed surgery, then the large blood clot in my wrist from my last IV once I returned home.

Each challenge must be faced in turn. Everything else falls away. The big picture shrinks to the next hour: what I will eat, if I’m sleepy enough to have a nap, what do the kids need. I’ve learned that this is more than enough. My gratitude rises, as if on a float, to the level I allow for it. My blessings, in the form of family and friends, the ones you can really count on, become crystal clear.

The rest fades away. It truly does not matter. I am changed, from the inside out, from this hard-scrabble season of pain and struggle. I am enough for this challenge and the ones that are sure to come after it. I can endure the toughest experiences and so can you. I’m not interested in fixating on some pre-set idea of success in some far-away future anymore. What I have is this day, this moment, these people; this ballooning, expanding, growing love inside me that spreads into every corner of my small but significant world.