When You’re Feeling Like the Only One

There are times in life when you just feel like you’re the only one who is enduring (insert whatever it is that you are experiencing).  You may feel as if nobody understands your situation.  You may even feel alone, untethered and grieving.  It happens to all of us.  It is a normal part of the ebb and flow in life.

But to reach beyond and out of the moment is where your lessons in life school challenge you to search within and to look up and all around you to connect with yourself, God, the Divine Universe and with others of like-mindedness.  To find the positivity in any situation, to allow yourself to be present with the pain/hurt/disappointment and to find a sense of peace even while chaos swirls in one of life’s lessons is the key.  It is in human eagerness the need to smooth the rough edges, to bypass the grief at all costs, to hide away the disconnect from ourselves and others and to make everything okay as soon as possible.  Sure, wallowing in sadness cannot be limitless, but to experience what we are feeling, as we are feeling it and to connect with whatever we are feeling is beneficial.  The choice to move beyond that to a place of peace no matter the circumstances is the lesson here.  And as you know, for we have all had our trials and tribulations, it is not an easy task at times.

But it is possible…and it is your choice for you have free will.

Cloistered in self-pity, does not serve you, nor the world.  It isolates people, disconnects them from reality and from those who want to help.  But it takes courage to connect with others and to connect with our own hearts.  It takes trust in the soul’s knowing that we can open up and be with whatever is happening.  That’s the tough part which many of us find distasteful as we lack the trust within ourselves and therefore, lack trust in the Universal Truths of Life.

I have been there dear friends.  I understand how you feel no matter if our circumstances are not the same.  The bare fact is that the similar feelings join us in ways unbeknownst to most of us.  Universal Healing happens when we connect through hearts and souls on this life path.  The simple act of connecting with another soul, hearing and feeling that someone else understands, makes all the difference in the world.

So today, no matter what you are enduring, please know that I have my hand here for you hold.   My heart is here to connect with yours and my understanding is available to help you to continue on this life path of healing.  I have learned that in reaching out, we also benefit in our own healing and through connecting, we raise our vibrations, enthusiastically joining and reverberating peace throughout the world.

Shine your heartlights.  Join together in peaceful presence.  I see you shining!

Shine On!

xo

What Is Strength?

“The strongest people are not those

who show strength in front of us,

but those who win battles

we know nothing about.”
~ Anonymous

Happy Saturday!

Shine On!

xo

 

Help When The Rug Gets Pulled Out From Under You

When the rug gets pulled out from under you, when you fall off the horse, when you feel like you’ve been sucker-punched, when you fall down, when you’ve been side-swiped, when you’ve been dumped, when you experience failure, when you’ve lost it all, when you fill in the blank, ~ there are so many quotes to explain when life knocks you down and throws you for a loop.  I am sure you can think of many others.  But it’s the answer to the question that leaves us hanging.

What is the solution?

We’ve all experienced changes that we’ve seen coming and also have been blinded by when we least expect it.  Changes can be in any part of our lives ~ finances, health, love, relationships, family, jobs etc.  Some of the lessons I’ve learned when the proverbial rug has been pulled out from under me (which it has in many aspects of my life) is this…

YOU need to find peace and a new normal for yourself.

Nobody can or will do it for you.  It’s only up to you.  Sure you may be able to count on friends  and perhaps family to help, but the bottom line is that the only one who CAN do it, is YOU!  And it’s hard.  It’s changing the way you look at your life and at your choices.  It’s taking responsibility for your part in the whatever the situation is and moving forward.  It’s giving YOURSELF your full attention and then deciding how to deal with the enormity of the change in your life.

To do this, you must be honest with yourself.  Nobody wants to hear about it after awhile, so it’s up to you.  You can seek advice from those who have experienced the same situation.  You weigh what you know, what you learn and you incorporate the best parts into your new normal.  The best advice I can give you is to find peace, however you need to find it.  You need to not give up or give in.  Re-find your balance.  Get back on the horse.  Put yourself back in the game.  Find a new job.  Begin again.  Grieve for what you feel is lost and then find peace within you.  Connect with yourself again for somewhere along the line, you’ve lost yourself and your power.  Use your power for bettering yourself and those around you.  Look up to God and the Angels for help if you are spiritual/religious.  Look inside yourself for strength that you have, but maybe haven’t tapped into yet.  Stand on your own two feet (after getting up).  If you must, walk away, crawl away and take baby steps towards your future.  Take time to honor your sadness and the changes in your life.  Weigh the pros and cons before taking any definitive baby steps.

But do it all with peace in your heart.

Yes, you can blame others for your situation and the blame could be correctly placed on them, but what good does that serve you?  It only makes you resentful, angry and operating at a low vibration.  I’m not saying to be a doormat by any means.  But to use up your precious life with negativity hurts only you.  It dims your heartlight.  It destroys your soul.  It hurts you in more ways that you can even begin to imagine.  And haven’t you already been hurting enough?

So today, dear friends, is your day.  Take a few minutes to concentrate on you ~ begin a plan that includes a little me time everyday.  It can be as simple as a bubble bath or a ten minute meditation.  You can write in your journal, plan for 2016, take a heart-healthy walk, talk to a friend, get some fur therapy from a favorite animal, sing, dance, walk outside and commune with nature.

Be kind to you…be kind to others.  Lead with the love in your heart.  Shine your heartlight for all to see and goodness comes your way.  But it’s up to you.  Take my hand.  Walk with me.  We will take baby steps to the new you!

Shine On!

xo

 

 

 

When You’re Down and Troubled…

reach out, for you’ve got a friend.

I’ve not been posting recently, but I’m back and trying to catch up with my blog reading that I’ve missed.  As I was wandering through your posts dear friends, I noticed that some of you are having major troubles of your own.  In your posts, I read/hear/understand that illness/stress/dementia etc. have got you down.  I’ve been there.  To a few of you, I suggested baby steps, positivity and gratitude for what we do have right at this moment for those are what have helped me through my journey.  But what if you are spinning and simply don’t know how to deal with the mess you’re in?  It’s easy to read suggestions, but harder to accomplish them when you are not able to muster the energy to begin.  Sometimes you need a friend to walk with you, to hold your hand, to praise the baby steps as you begin again.

I understand.

But, you also need to inspire yourself in little ways that work for you.  Nobody wants to be around someone who is complaining, crying all the time and not trying to help themselves.  Throw the pity party when you need to, but realize that if you continue to want to party that way, there will be fewer in attendance.  Also realize that everyone has their own messes that they are working on, so it’s not necessarily that they don’t want to help you, but that they simply can’t at this time.  I think we get caught up in the web of nobody cares, when the truth is that they do care and they are also doing the best they can under their circumstances.

It’s hard, I know.  It takes patience, kindness (to ourselves and others) to heal.  It takes effort on our own parts to change our lives and it’s not an overnight fix.  It’s taking baby steps towards the goal.

For those of you on a rocky road right now, let’s work together.  Reach out and we can support eachother’s efforts right here.  Anyone want to share this period of time in their journey?  If you are interested, I can make up a simple course for us to do together.  Let me know!

You’ve got a friend.

Shine On!

xo

Rule Your Mind

“Rule your mind or it will rule you.” – Horace

Need I say more?  Giggle Giggle!  You know what I mean don’t you?  Stop worrying!  Stop fretting!  Stop allowing chaos to capture your mind!  You are the ruler of your mind.  When chaos enters, show it the door out!  Worrying about situations that we cannot or even those that we can control does nothing to help you, only to harm you for as you worry, your body reacts.  Your body gets agitated, cells become nervous as well, giving off negativity and allowing dis-ease to integrate itself into your healthy cells, thus making your healthy body sick.  The degree of sickness often correlates with the amount of stress/worry/upset your mind has been carrying.

I realize that there are situations that are worrisome.  I have endured plenty, as have we all.  But if you can take a few moments here and there during the day to simply allow peace to enter your brain, relax your body, hand over the worries to the Divine, to God or to your Higher Power, then you allow the cells in your body to calm themselves as well, in order to find a tidbit of peace in which to heal and to hold that place of health.

Worrying does not change the situation at all.  There is no amount of worry that will change any type of situation you are enduring.  Worry simply put, works against your health and your wellness of body, mind and spirit.  This is something that you can control dear friends.  You can show anxiety the door and shut it tightly.  Do not open the door when worry knocks.  Ignore it.  Stay on your path of health.  Keep your mind at peace.  Continue to see the good in your situation (and it may take work), but you can do it.  It’s possible to change the way you look at your situation simply by feeding it gratitude for the gifts you already have.

Problems with health, wealth and relationships can change when you change the way you are looking at them and reacting with those situations.  The changes happen in your mind and soul and then goodness can spill out into your body, your vibrational energy and your whole life.  What you give out, comes back to you.  The caveat is that if you are focused intently on the worry, the anxiety or the sadness, you are blinded to recognizing the opportunities for light, love and happiness.  In short, you may miss out on the health, wealth and connections you have in your life.

We are not all islands.  We are connected as energy to everyone and everything in our lives.  As I’ve been quoted before, “use your power for good,” and the rest will follow suit.  Be bright, be your innate good self and allow your essence of happy to perfume the air around you.  Raise your vibrations, release the anxiety and worry.  Embrace the peace which comes from within when your mind is tranquil.

There’s no magic pill, my friends.  There are only gentle reminders of inspiration, positivity and loving light that heal you inside.  Release, rest and regenerate for we only have this moment.  We are only given this present of now for sure.  It’s what you do with that present that counts.  Do not waste your gift on idle worry.  Rule your mind with kindness and loving affection.  You are all in my prayers.  As always, I embrace your loving essence and I give you mine.

Allow the precious gift of calm to envelope your mind, heart, body and soul today and everyday.

Shine On!

xo

 

 

Benjamin Franklin Was Right!

“While we may not be able to control all that happens to us,

we can control what happens inside us.”

—Benjamin Franklin

Just a little pick me up reminder for us all ~ Happy Thursday to all of you!

Shine On!

xo

What’s In Your Toolbox? Why Me?

Normally, I think of a toolbox as a place to find something to help me fix whatever needs fixing.  It’s a tool, a hammer, a screwdriver or something of that nature that will fix whatever is broken.  Not that I’m really good at that type of labor or fixing, but that’s what I think of when someone mentions toolbox…until now.

Because I’ve been trying to understand why I’ve been experiencing such turbulence in my life these days.  Simply put, things just haven’t been easy.  But I’ve been using my experiences to gain strength for sure even though I’m sometimes feeling pretty weak.  Since I can only understand me, I figure that each experience, each time I have to go out of my comfort zone and each time I have to ‘fix’ something in my life or help someone else with theirs, I am adding tools to my life toolbox.  Later, I can simply reach into my life toolbox and pull out a memory of an experience in order to help them or me fix whatever is in front of us at the moment.  Does this make sense to you?

Using each experience as a tool in my toolbox of life in order to help myself and others.

 So today when you’re tempted to wonder, “why me?” take heart knowing that you are filling your toolbox with another experience that will help you and others down the road.

That’s ‘Why You!‘

Shine On!

xo

 *Photo by Todd Quackenbush

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

As with any illness, it’s the waiting I think that is the hardest part.  Don’t you agree?  I recently had my twice yearly oncology check up and I am now waiting for the results of my tests.  Honestly, I am a bit ill at ease until I hear the numbers of my tumor markers.  I try very hard to keep myself in check as the days go by, but sometimes that anxiety sneaks up on me in the most slippery of ways.  Does this happen to you?  Been there, gotten a bad diagnosis, so the rest of your life, you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop even though you are well aware that you should not be thinking this way?

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I think it’s when all the woulda/coulda/shoulda’s come out in the open and rear their ugly heads.  At least that’s how it is for me.  I get aches and pains and heart palpitations which I know are self-induced by my inner panic which I am trying very hard to avoid.  I don’t talk about it much because there’s nothing anyone can do about it except for me.  To speak of it, gives others the heavy feeling that they must buoy my spirits by speaking words of encouragement and reiterating that everything is fine when quite frankly, they have no clue and neither do I.

It bugs me.  I know it makes them feel like they are helping and I agree that they are trying to help.  But honestly, I’ve been down this road so very many times in over 12 years when I was diagnosed with breast cancer that I just keep it to myself now.  I hide away for a few days until the results are in and the anxiety blows over.  I know the anxiety doesn’t help.  I remind myself not to waste good precious hours with being preoccupied with what ifs and trying to plan for them.  Because nobody knows ~ that’s the bottom line.

And wasting these precious happy hours worrying about that darn ‘what if’ is unproductive and truly ludicrous because it won’t change the result.  It only mars the present.  Does that make sense to you?  It makes great common sense to me, but that doesn’t mean that there are moments when I don’t topple into the rabbit hole of doubt and despair.  Because I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t.  But what I do, is I find that repeating the mantra, “there are presents in presence” helps to change the channel in my brain and switch the activity focus on the now instead of the what if’s.

What do you do when you’re waiting for an answer?  For a diagnosis?  For the results of a test?

Do you succumb to the worry game?  Or do you have special way of not wasting precious time and keeping yourself in the moment of bliss?  I’d love to hear from you.  We can all help and connect by sharing our secrets!  We’re in this together.  We’ve all had to wait for something.  How did you handle it?  How do you handle waiting?

Please share!

Don’t Worry, Be Happy!

Shine On!

xo

P.S. Coincidence?  As I was writing this post, I got a phone call from my oncologist notifying me that my tumor marker numbers are high and over normal.  They are hoping it is a lab mistake but to be sure, I need to be rested.  Now the wait is increased by another week with the anxiety increase that there could be something brewing.  I guess I really have to walk my talk now.  Please send love and strength.

P.P.S.  I found this excerpt when I googled what Tom Petty meant when he wrote “The Waiting”  ~ Petty: “That was a song that took a long time to write. Roger McGuinn swears he told me the line – about the waiting being the hardest part – but I think I got the idea from something Janis Joplin said on television. I had the chorus very quickly, but I had a very difficult time piecing together the rest of the song. It’s about waiting for your dreams and not knowing if they will come true. I’ve always felt it was an optimistic song.”*

*Thanks to SongFacts

Don’t Quit

This one’s for me today…and for you as well.  My favorite poem and best reminder:  Don’t Quit!

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow –
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It might be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit –
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

 ~ Unknown

Shine On!

TGIF!

xo

The Right To Fight Like A Girl

Keep Calm and Fight Like A Girl

I wasn’t sure if I was going to enter the fray this morning, but I can’t help it.  I’m drawn, like a moth to flame today.  My heartfelt thanks to my dear friend Florence who wrote The Right To Fight as it has spurred me on to write as well.  For you see, it’s a touchy subject and although I’m not one to pursue it too much, I must today so please allow me to go on or you can choose to simply pass me by ~ it’s ok.  The post will be read by those for whom it is intended.

Death is a subject that is controversial as you can see by Bill Keller’s recent article in the New York Times click here to read.   It’s personal ~ the way each individual reacts to it and deals with it.  For breast cancer survivors (I, myself being a 12 year survivor), it’s emotionally charged when we read an article about how an individual deals with her diagnosis, her treatment and how she reacts to her disease.  Florence has written a great post which I will not repeat.  Please make sure you read how she has reacted to the recent article by Mr. Keller.

Instead, I prefer to focus on Lisa Adams click here to visit her site.   For when I read her About Page  I was stunned by our similarities:  we shared Memorial Sloan Kettering as our hospital, how our original diagnosis’ were much the same (although I had 6 lymph nodes with cancer) and it was my right breast and her left one which had the cancer.  We endured the same chemotherapy treatments ACT, yet back in 2002, my treatments were every 3 weeks and not every 2 weeks.  I endured 6 weeks of radiation, where she had 1 week less.  We both lost and regained our menstruation cycles after chemotherapy as we were young when diagnosed.  I was diagnosed at  34 years old;  Lisa was 37 years.  We both had salpingo oophorectomies (ovaries surgically removed) which of course, plunges young women, including Lisa and me, headlong into menopause ~ speaking for myself, since I’d already endured menopause as a side effect of the chemotherapy, only to have my period return which was hormonally hard to deal with let alone physically, mentally and emotionally, what was one more final round of menopause?  Heck, I’d already lost my hair, my dignity and my figure let alone my breasts.  What was harmful in losing one more thing that could be affecting my cancer prognosis?

But Lisa’s cancer, for whatever reason, came back and metastasized.  Mine didn’t.  It’s not that I still don’t have that possibility in the back of my mind because I’d be lying if I said that I don’t think about it.  Every 6 months when I’m tested at my oncologist’s, I’m reminded that cancer can still be lurking inside my body.  It doesn’t help when there are aches and pains which happen occasionally either as they tend to wither my resolve to stand firm in my thinking that I will live forever cancer-free.

Lisa’s public journey through metastasized breast cancer is new to me as I had never met her before nor visited her website.  But I highly applaud her perseverance, her integrity and her drive to lift the veil and to share what’s really going on behind the pink-ribboned spectacle of breast cancer.  Much talk is about prevention and early detection, but rarely do we read/hear about the women in the trenches who are battling death daily.  My friend Jenn was such a warrior who lost her battle a few years ago.  It was Jenn who told me through a medium that one must know her limits at the end of her life and to make sure that I knew what I wanted.  I never forgot that message nor the one that told me that my scans were clear, clear, clear and that I now walked for 2 ~ me and you.

I believe we all have a right to choose how we deal with our imminent death (if we are given such a gift) ~ we can choose like Keller’s father-in-law to go peacefully or we can choose like Jenn and Lisa to battle with a fierceness known only to few.  Whatever you choose, I stand for you and I fully defend your individual right to choose.  There is no right or wrong way to die, it’s a personal matter.   I heartily applaud Lisa’s courage in sharing her journey with us.  My heart holds a heaviness for all she is enduring as well as her family and all the others out there in our great big world who are dealing with dis-ease and the ending of life as we know it here.

Shine On!

xo

P.S.  See below for posts about Jenn…Happy Birthday Jenn (Jan 13 she would have turned 38)

Bonding-with-strangers

Spirits-and-Music

I-walk-for-two