Julie E. Harman passed on her role to the new winner of Ms. America in August 2016, but her story of service did not end there. 

During her year as Ms. America, Harman shared her message of the importance of preparedness, responsibility and self-reliance. She made over 100 appearances across America to share her message and help others perform at their best. To commemorate her year, Harman was also awarded the Presidential White House Gold Community Award for her selfless service.

Harman, a former Midvale resident, said the reason she wanted to be involved with pageantry is because she loves serving people. Harmon has two decades of experience with helping others out of co-dependency environments and unlearning those tendencies and habits. 

“Becoming self-reliant is a message that is important to me as a single mom business owner,” Harman said. 

During her year-long reign as Ms. America, Harman said she could foresee many situations where schools and businesses could shut down and wanted to do her best to help people be prepared if that were to happen. A few years later, COVID-19 shut the country down, and the foreseen vision unfortunately came true, leaving a trail of health issues and heartache. 

After passing her crown to the winner of the 2016-17 Ms. America Pageant, Harman focused on her family as they went through many big life events in the span of just a few years. Her two daughters started middle school and high school and she found herself seeing the harsh reality those students faced. 

“My brave high school daughter gave me the opportunity to be on the inside of these students’ private lives and to be exposed to the many varieties of heartaches and hardships they faced without proper support,” Harman said. 

Harman was able to see how these students treated each other in a negative way and learned that some kids felt like they didn’t have a voice, that they weren’t listened to by their parents or school staff. If given the opportunity, Harman wants to be the voice and healing support for these kinds of situations still happening in schools today. 

“I love helping people’s hearts and giving them encouragement, hope, love, whatever they might need. I believe I have some answers and personal experience to aid with understanding,” Harman said. 

When COVID-19 started going around, the high school her daughter was attending was under construction, as were many other schools, and administration was not equipped to help the kids at the time with their mental health. Students were in and out of masks, in and out of school as virtual classes started being held, and their parents were already stressed out over the situation. Who did these students really have to talk to? 

It was a time of chaos and uncertainty, and Harman wanted to do what she could to help students, people, in this time of chaos. She helped by allowing them into her heart and into her home when they felt safe to be heard.

In 2021, when Harman’s oldest daughter graduated from high school, Harman saw that many of her classmates did not graduate with her. The “behind-the-scenes” reasons for this were mostly undiscussed and tossed aside. 

“Briefly, fewer students participated in the 2021 compared to the 2019 assessments and this drop was substantial for historically underperforming groups of students,” according to a report by the Utah State Board of Education. “Further, student performance was notably lower in 2021 compared to 2019.” 

Harman said she thinks a lot of the student engagement drops had to do with them feeling disheartened from the trauma they were experiencing. Students expect a certain level of care from the school system that they weren’t receiving, causing mental anguish and a polarizing effect on their overall health.

In the spring of 2021, Harman was inspired to open a metaphysical healing studio in Sandy, she called her “Starship.” She started working with students and other clients with heart healing. The type of healing Harman practiced is called Somatic Healing and Therapy as well as meditation and clinical hypnosis. This comes from her understanding of the energy fields of someone, connecting to that energy field, and being able to shift it and release it or move it through the body. 

“I would teach my clients, as well as myself, how to heart heal for mental health,” she said. 

Her metaphysical studio provided an experience for people to come in and be “reset” through a series of five different processes and “release” the trigger point of the mind. She’d help her clients release harsh emotions from their heart to their mind, out of their body. Before opening her studio, Harman helped clients go through addiction recovery, she helped with equine therapy, and with people going through or recovering from many levels of traumatic events.

This especially came in handy for her when her father went through a horrible emergency room experience in 2018. She had to be there for both her mother and her father, as well as her two daughters. Making that connection with heart healing helped Harman, her daughters, and her parents deal with mental conditions throughout tough years. Her studio helped her heal herself through a series of traumatic events, including dealing with long-COVID, which made her lose her voice from the end of 2020 and into 2023, and her father’s declining health in 2022. 

“My grief was just crippling my heart,” she said. 

Her father passed in early 2022, and Harman spent all the time she could with him until those final moments. She said seeing him in the state he was in was one of the most difficult things she’s ever had to do. As hard as it was to experience, Harman said going through that with her father helped her to use her heart to help others going through the stages of grief. Many people are afraid of death, afraid of their loved ones passing, and Harman has had the experience to help others make it through that process, in the various stages of grief. 

“There are a lot of hearts that are going to need to be healed, and helped, and supported through the grief cycle,” she said. “When your heart is healing and is relieved, your mind relaxes, but when your heart doesn’t feel OK, then it starts to make your head run and stay in a trauma cycle.”

Harman is currently getting her second bachelor’s degree and moving onto her master’s degree from the University of Metaphysics and the University of Sedona. Since she is so passionate about this topic and many others relate to it, she started creating the concepts for her International Self-Mastery Academy, which she plans on officially launching in 2025. 

“Self-Mastery, to me, is knowing yourself the best you can, which is your greatest power,” she said. 

While her studio in Sandy closed in 2022, she’s not done helping people. She held a heart healing event at the Utah State Capitol on July 1 flying kites with anyone willing to join her and many others. They accomplished something that has never been done, and it worked, many showed up and said they felt so much better flying kites like kids together. She plans on creating another event like this in October since it was so successful.  

Harman was double-crowned as Ms. USA Universe and Ms. Fitness USA Universe in Daytona Beach, Florida on Aug. 13. The pageant double crowned her to reward her for her own personal dedication and commitment to bodybuilding and natural health, and her heart healing message. 

Harman will continue sharing the message of teaching others about heart healing and mental health, and how to heal yourself, while she serves as Ms. USA Universe and Ms. Fitness USA Universe 2024-25 and as she prepares to compete for the International title as Ms. Universe in 2025. λ