Estranged … Now what?

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Estranged … Now what?
By Bernadette A Moyer

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Knowing what I know now and after my own experience and hearing from thousands of mothers and fathers who are estranged from their adult children, I would do things differently!

I should not have wasted my time, my heart and my tears over someone who was already so far gone from me. Today I would say that yes you will be hurt and yes you might be shocked but what you really need to do is get over it and get over it as quickly as possible.

It is okay to love the child that you had and to reflect fondly on them but it is also necessary to let them go in peace and in love. When it is over, it is over. Some situations will allow for a reboot and another chance, some never will.

Today I believe that adult kids that estrange enjoy the satisfaction they receive in knowing how much they hurt their parents and their families. It is all about control. It is all about being selfish and all about them. It is the choice that they alone have made.

And the stories they will tell is that they were the victims. Think about it? A nice son or a nice daughter wouldn’t cut mom and dad out of their life. They will need to justify their actions and that means making mom and dad out to be the bad guys. And the more they can paint themselves as a victim, the more they can manipulate others and command support for their cause and position.

Don’t play along and don’t play their games. Find things to do that will occupy your time and utilize your talents. Go to a therapist or go to the gym but keep moving. Life is all about forward movement. You can think, hope and pray that they return, but whatever you do, do not compromise the quality of your own life in the process. Remember if they do return you will have grown and changed and taken better care of yourself. And if they never return you will be healthier, stronger and better able to manage and enjoy your life.

Because if you compromise your life away you will eventually regret it and you won’t get those lost years back. Our response should be one that says I hold myself up in the highest. I will not allow you or any other to destroy me or my joy. My life with you or without you, matters. I am important and I deserve to be happy.

Back then so much of my life wasn’t even mine. Maybe that was a huge part of the problem? I had given so much of myself away in being a wife and a mother, a career woman and a friend. The last person who received my time and attention was me.

Learn to retreat in healthy ways. It is okay to be alone with yourself. It is okay to grieve and to process. It is okay to feel the loss and the pain. But don’t stay there and don’t get stuck there. Being a victim is never attractive no matter how it comes about. Fight for yourself. You are worth the very best!

There will always be up and down days. Some days you will have stronger and better coping skills. Some days will be tough. It takes time. It takes time to acknowledge this, to accept this and then to learn how to live with it. In our disbelief and in our shock we tend to want to fight it. Very little is resolved in hanging on to that which has already left us.

Where it may seem so unnatural and so unkind, remember it is happening in record numbers and in families around the world. You are not alone. This month marks 18 years since the trauma of estrangement entered my life like an uninvited guest. I have been through all the stages from denial, anger, hurts and trying everything and anything and to finally arriving at pure total acceptance. My life is so great right now and I don’t think I could be happier or be surrounded by more love. I am so lucky to have survived it.

I thank everyone that reached out to me and shared their stories and supported me through all my writings. I would not have made it through without the love and support of so many people.

My best advice is to try and build an even better life. All those things that you wanted to do but never took the time to do; make the time and do them. Life goes on. Life is lived by looking forward and not from behind. You are worth so much more than to have the child or children that you gave your life for and invested so heavily in, discard you.

Remember it isn’t about you. It is all about them and their choices …

In God’s peace and love … Bernadette

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
All books by Bernadette A Moyer available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble

The Car Ride

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The Car Ride
By Bernadette A Moyer

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The car ride our last best place to be alone
Together we share space to explore and to roam
No lines no wait and no airport fuss
Just gas and go and there is no rush

We ride, we stop, and we eat here or there
We sing, we talk, we sit and we stare
In silence we think then engaged we share
Together we go here together we go there

We get up and we drive just about every where
The car ride our last best place to be alone
The car ride anonymously we move from here to there
Miles marked miles and miles driven sights to see nothing is hidden

So often it is just you and me
Alone and together out there we can explore and roam
Then we turn back around and head for our home
The car ride our last best place to be alone

What We Leave Behind

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What We Leave Behind
By Bernadette A Moyer

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There is nothing that I have ever had and lost or grieved over that I would welcome back in my life. Isn’t that funny? We cry so hard. We want another outcome. But once we have the time to process it becomes so clear that what we thought we wanted and what we thought we needed was never intended to stay in our lives. It could be a relationship it could be a job, it could be almost anything that was once so valued and later becomes just what we leave behind.

Many years ago I was involved with a guy and I will never forget his own father saying to me, “What is a girl like you who is so on the ball doing with a guy like him?” At the time I couldn’t see it but it turns out that he was right. That guy was never really intended for me.

Recently I was talking with a really good friend. He shared with me the first relationship that ever broke his heart. He talks about how much he wanted it to work out. Not that long ago he looked her up she had more than 50 court cases where she was the defendant. She is a drug addict and eventually pled guilty to prostitution. Now all he can think is thank God that didn’t work out. Or maybe it did work out exactly as it was meant to be, she was never intended to be a lifelong friend and partner. Her time in his story was short and it was over. It was what he left behind.

Today I look back on so many things that changed and things that I once grieved over and not one of them would I want back in my life. The following is one of my favorite quotes;

“There are people who can walk away from you … let them walk. I don’t want you to try to talk another person into staying with you, loving you, calling you, caring about you, coming to see you, staying attached to you. Your destiny is never tied to anyone that left. And it doesn’t mean that they are a bad person, it just means that their part in your story is over. And you have to know when people’s part in your story is over.” T.D. Jakes

It is so freeing to just accept that we will leave people, we will leave places and we will leave positions behind. Nothing is meant to last forever. We learn from all that we leave behind. If something or someone was meant to be in our lives, they would be in our lives, period.

There is so much to love and so much to do and experience in our lifetime. When one door closes, truly another one opens.

“None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an afterthought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.” Richard Gere

Here is to living the good life and to appreciating all that we have all that is yet to be and knowing that it is perfectly okay to leave somethings and some people behind …

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
All books by Bernadette A Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Three Stories of Three Unattractive People

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Three Stories of Three Unattractive People
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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The ugly side of humanity that I witnessed this past week, it has stayed with me so like any good writer I must write it out to share them and to purge these stories. Here they are …

The first story …

My husband and I were headed out to Walmart to pick up some pool chemicals. We parked by the garden shop and were just a short distance from the entrance when we heard what appeared to be an argument. It seemed like two men were fighting. My husband started ushering me to his left side and then I heard the sounds of crashing merchandise to the ground and security detaining two guys. They wrestled the shirt off one guy and there on the ground went about 10 to 12 video games that he had stuffed into his pants. ”Get off me man, get off me man” he screamed.

Security escorted him into an office and we watched a cashier ring up all the game totals to get the price of the robbed goods. Later the police arrived. By the time we left there were five police cars there. Another lady who showed up after the fact and after seeing all the cop cars said, “This isn’t Dunkin Donuts!” Normally I ignore people like her but I felt compelled to answer, “No this was a robbery.”

I have a vision of that guy who stole video games from Walmart and all I could think was “Was it worth it?” Now you are a criminal” And for what?

The second story …

Last weekend was spent in Williamsburg Virginia and for the most part the people were so nice. Small chatty conversations, holding doors open and just southern charm was our experience. After a nice breakfast on a Saturday with temperatures that rose to over 80 degrees we headed out on Colonial Parkway driving from Williamsburg to Yorktown. We had the convertible car and were driving top down really appreciating the nice weather after days and weeks of rainstorms.

When we arrived in Yorktown they were having a street festival and had blocked off parts of the road. The covered parking area was closed off from the access that we drove in on and normally we would make a left turn but it was closed. We drove a short distance and happened upon another parking lot. It appeared almost full when we noticed a car getting ready to leave and we were next in line and pulled directly forward. I was driving.

As I was getting ready to put the top an orange Mustang came in reverse from about three cars up. When I first saw him I thought he was waiting for a car up ahead. As he reversed to get closer to our car he screamed “asshole” at me? I was stunned!

When you drive past a parking spot, in my view you gave up your rights to it? Clearly after his barrage of words he had an issue. His ilk stayed with me, I thought, you have a woman and a small child in the car with you and you talk like that? Not very attractive behaviors and all this over a parking spot?

The third story …

This one hits us little closer to home and it makes my mother’s blood boil. It started out to be a beautiful and a happy day. It was sunny and cool and a pleasant May Monday. Our son has many achievements but getting his driver’s license has eluded him. He tried and he tried and he just was not successful until yesterday. It was one aspect of the driving he couldn’t seem to get and in his defense the Jeep he has been driving it one of the largest vehicles I personally have ever driven. But he got it! Finally he had success.

A few hours later he interviewed for a new job and was immediately hired. More success and God knows he needed it. He is a really good person with a big heart, an artist with an artist’s sensibilities. He has had his share of struggles.

About a week ago he started dating a girl that he liked. Last night after the gym they went to see a movie together. Here is where the ugly comes in; sometime during the movie she excuses herself. When she doesn’t return he goes for his phone that was placed in the cup holder. It is missing. He goes to the front desk to report that he lost it.

It is not in his nature to think negatively of anyone let alone this girl. Again he liked her. What he doesn’t know is that she has been using his phone and texting from it to both me his mother and his father. Her text messages that appear to be coming from him since they are from his phone are not only disrespectful but antagonistic. They are weird not like him and later become sexual in nature. I am stunned and his father is furious. How could he speak to us like this? How could he treat us like this?

Well he was just as stunned when he returned home and read them himself. I don’t think he likes this girl now and I know he feels sad and badly that he trusted her.

Just another story of the unattractive people that live side-by-side in our society, normally I choose to ignore them but today I had to write it out and to share them. So what do you do when you witness firsthand the ugly behaviors of people in society?

We see a robbery we see rudeness and we witness dishonesty and deceitfulness in people, it can tear our heart apart or we can look and we can learn. We learn what we don’t want in our life we learn to appreciate all that is good in life.

Sadly there will always be ugliness in people, the unattractive ones, we can allow it to affect us or we can move closer to the good people, the ones who are naturally attractive because of their goodness. I am thankful that I know better, I know the difference between what is right and wrong, I know what good looks like just like I know what is most unattractive.

“Don’t let the behaviors of others destroy your inner peace.” Dalai Lama

Hang on to the good people in your life … there is some real ugly in this world … the darker side of humanity all I can think is that is it really worth it?

Stealing video games, cursing at people you don’t know in front of your own family and stealing a phone from a guy while on a date? And how do you live with yourself when you make such poor choices? How do you look into the mirror?

God Bless us all …

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
Books by Bernadette A Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Adjust and Adapt

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Adjust and Adapt
By Bernadette A. Moyer

 

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We must learn to adjust and to adapt as life is ever changing. To stay stuck in yesterday’s news is like living from behind. Most people hate change. It is like it throws their equilibrium out of tune. I have always embraced change. I love new things and I love to learn. We are all evolving.

History is great but that is exactly what it is, history, the past. Every aspect in our lives depends on how we adjust and adapt to change. Life changes when we leave home, when we get married, take on a new career job, purchase a home and have children. It changes when we embrace new relationships and when we let go of old ones.

We adjust to that new baby or new work place environment. We have to figure it out and to learn again. Many people will suffer a sort of “norms crisis” with their new environment. That new baby cries and disrupts our previous peaceful past. We work with new people that we instantly gel with and others that we may barely tolerate. But we learn from all of them.

I’ve always been the “change charger” in our family and my husband the “slow and steady one.” Together we make a great couple as a result. A guy that has worked for the same organization for 34 years and lived in the same house for 24 years is not a guy who easily embraces change.

When our kids started leaving home, I had the hardest time. The number one job that meant the most to me was in being a mother. I soon learned to take my career and my writing more seriously. These things are what makes me, me. Being a mother was only a part of me not my total being.

Adjusting and adapting to letting my kids go wasn’t easy but now that I have I love my freedom. Less responsibility after decades of being responsible for so many others feels great. Life is easier with less people to please.

I never thought I would be so happy with less people in our home and I am. I think you get to an age where all you really crave is peace. It is so easy to fill our lives up with everyone else’s drama and issues but often at what cost? Perhaps the cost is in denying ourselves and our own needs and wants.

My husband is newly retired and I don’t think I have seen him smile so much! At the end of his career he had reached the highest level that he had wanted for himself, as a General Superintendent. At that level the demands were great and time was a commodity that he often didn’t have. You could physically see what that job was taking out of him. Meetings and meeting and always on24 hour call back for the past 6-years, every waking moment checking his communication devices. He was needed and worked hard to fill the needs.

But the truth is that if we drop dead today, life goes on, not one of us is irreplaceable. So he gave it is all then one day he declared, “I am done, I am not going back. It hasn’t been fun for a long time.” Today we have raised our kids and worked our careers. With two pensions between us, no mortgage and adult children we are free from decades of responsibilities and it feels so new and so good too.

Together we are adjusting to living with less by choice and in spending our time together and doing the things that we love to do. What a blessing! Who knew that during all those grinding it out years that this day would arrive and we would still be young enough to enjoy it.

What is next in retirement? Sleep, sun and some fun! It is time for travel and some classes at our local college, things like Chinese cooking, meditation and ball room dance. All those year we grabbed at responsibility and embraced it and yet today for the first time we are both being very selective about what and who we want to be responsible for, having kids, a home, a career is all about being responsible. We have been there and done that.

We are embracing our future and looking forward to making all the necessary adjustments and adapting to the newness of what comes next.

Adjusting and adapting, that is both the beauty and the secret of life. Adjust and adapt … it makes everything and all of life’s many changes just so much easier.

Updated May of 2016
Once again more adjusting and adapting as my husband has accepted a new position with local government. So it is bye bye early retirement and hello to new challenges … here we go again as life is good and all about learning and growing and doing …

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
All books by Bernadette A Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Five Fingers Five Toes

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Five Fingers Five Toes
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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Parents want their children to be healthy and happy. The first thing a parent does is count the fingers and the toes of their children. They want to know that they are healthy and that they were born as perfect as possible. But the truth is every single child born is as perfect as possible. They are all gifts from God.

I don’t know of any parent that doesn’t want a healthy and happy child and to see that child grow to become a healthy and happy adult. Yet not every single person will be healthy or happy hard as we try and as much as we hope and pray.

My husband and I have raised three children and one child is a gifted and talented artist. He has also taught us how to raise an upside down child in a right side up world. He is different. He struggles socially and he struggles with the “norms” placed on many young adults. We could continue to fight him and push him or we could let go in love and accept him as he is … I just finished reading Love That Boy.

Love That Boy was written by Ron Fournier and is about a father that had to learn about love and parental expectations. Parents often have a vision of how a child should act and how they should behave and how they should look. Many parents put their expectations upon that child and sometimes that child is unwilling or unable to meet those expectations. The child in Love That Boy is a child on the autism spectrum. His father was often concerned about his son embarrassing himself or his dad.

Let’s face it every single well baby visit measures by “norms” on size and weight and developmental skills. There are charts on where a child should be to be considered “normal” we do measure our babies and our children.

Our kids go to school and they learn math and English and all kinds of text book learning but they also learn social skills and they too measure on what is “normal” and what is “different” or problematic. The parent’s job is to give their children what they need and not necessarily what they want. Sometimes knowing what a child needs is difficult to discern. We never really know what goes on in another person’s mind.

The single greatest challenge is to love that child regardless what they say and what they do, we learn to separate the words and the actions from the person. Real love transcends it all. There are always gifts and talents if we are willing to look for them and to appreciate them. Each child born is a gift from God.

Our son acknowledges his difficulty with social skills and yet I personally don’t notice them, we have an easy and loving relationship. I’ve had to learn to stop measuring my children, they are who they are and they are what they are and very little or any of it has to do with me. They are their own unique and individual person.

Where five fingers and five toes are important, what is most important is what is in someone’s heart. Our son has a huge heart and a conscience and always tries to right his wrongs and learn from his mistakes. What else could any parent hope for?

Today is Mother’s Day and this mother is both proud and pleased, we celebrated our relationship yesterday with breakfast out and a movie, we had fun and he planned it all! So although he struggles with several developmental markers, in my book he is still learning and growing and trying and therefore doing just fine …

We may not get the child we think that we want but we definitely get the child that God alone intended for us. And that is good and good enough …

Happy Mother’s Day! Celebrate what you have and what you had and what you learned well beyond five fingers and five toes!

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
All books by Bernadette A Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

At Peace

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At Peace
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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“Do I need to be right or do I need peace?” Oprah

What does it take to arrive at peace and then to maintain that peace? Life changes, people change and we change.

Today as I write this I am totally at peace and yet there have been numerous times in my life when I was not living in a peace-filled state. So what has changed? I did.

I know when I am right and that is good enough for me. I don’t need someone else to bless my truth or to fight my truth; it’s enough for me to know it. And like most people I know when I am not right too. Experience is always the greatest teacher.

I no longer get sucked into other people’s drama and their story. Older and wiser, it probably is some of that but also life experience. Knowing who we are and standing in our own truth allows the insults and judgements of others to just roll off. People will love you and hold you in high regard and others will find fault, if we allow others to judge us we will live in a constant state of shift, swing and change. It can be painful to have someone that we love or loved judge us harshly, but most often when we take that healthy step back, it becomes clear that it isn’t about us.

The people that need to make another look badly do so to try and elevate themselves. This is a sad truth. Love yourself today! Taking care of yourself helps you to feel as good can and maintain inner peace, regardless of what may be going on externally.

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Protect yourself and protect your peace. Not every situation is one that we should engage. Sometimes knowing where to side-step a situation will in the end help us to maintain our peace. There will be conflict, there will be noise; there will be situations that test our peace. But we have a choice and our choice is what we do for ourselves and what we do to remain; at peace.

Peace be with you …

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

Along The Way and Another Way by Bernadette A. Moyer available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

No Money No Mission

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No Money No Mission
By Bernadette A. Moyer

 

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It doesn’t matter how good your mission or your ministry is, if you are out of money, you are out of business. Far too many in the nonprofit arena have this way of thinking that 1) money and abundance are bad things and 2) if they do good work that will be enough to carry them through the day.

The problem is that money isn’t a bad thing and that you can do excellent work but without proper funding you will not make it very far. I’ve witnessed it time and time again. The “do gooders” the people with the vision to help others or teach or supply and support a very real and valid cause are often lacking the piece that marries their mission to the necessary funding.

How about the term “struggling artist” let’ s say that an artist creates wonderful pieces of art but doesn’t have the understanding on the marketing skills necessary to bring their art to the marketplace, what happens next? And many artists do not fully appreciate that the business pieces are just as critical as the making of the art. There has to be a symbiotic relationship between the creator of the art and the selling business in order to succeed.

Years ago in ministry the nuns would meet with money people, the successful businessmen in the community, the scenario went something like this; serve weak coffee and stale doughnuts in a stripped down environment as they plead their cause. Who could say no to that sweet little old Catholic nun? They might even have been successful and received some small donations.

But then … many other religious and nonprofits began to understand the mindset of those that are most successful in the community; successful businessmen. They learned that the most common trait shared was the desire to be part of a winning team. The most-needy didn’t need to start by being successful but they had to be in a position to communicate their vision in a way that a business brain would understand. This much support nets this much growth and development and provide the plan of action.

Today we see a great divide in the nonprofit community with those that are failing or just getting by and others who have a history and track record of measured success. It is not by accident. The organizations that thrive, even in competitive economic times are the ones that fully appreciates the need for the vision to be well supported by the money. You need great salespeople to go along with a great vision.

Most successful people want to help communities that are struggling and to help the under-served communities but they also want to know that the hand out is providing the support for a hand up. Will the money make a difference?

We hear the term “social justice” more and more today, we hear about the inequality of the wealth in our country, we hear that those that “have” should be willing to “pay more” but what incentive do the ones that do not “have” have to succeed if support/money comes with no effort?

What I know for sure is that you can have an excellent mission but without proper funding you will not sustain success. But if you can marry that same mission with money, the sky truly can be the limit. It takes hard work, it takes persistence, it takes an understanding that to appeal to those that can support your cause, you must first communicate that by coming together you can and you will create a winning partnership. Everyone likes being part of a winning team!

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

All books by Bernadette A Moyer on Amazon and Barnes& Noble

The Courage to Say Yes

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The Courage to Say Yes
By Bernadette A. Moyer

 

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Several years ago I blogged about “the courage to say no” and often it does take courage to thankfully decline. It could be an event or a position or even a piece of pie and we just don’t think it is right for us and yet we may have difficulty saying no.

However, recently I have been pondering what it takes to respond with “yes” a simple “yes I will do that” or “yes I want that” and “yes I am open to that possibility.”

Sometimes it takes courage to respond with “yes” because it is unknown and we may not be sure if it is what we want. How many times do we get invited to attend an event and we just aren’t sure? Should I go? Should I decline?

That new association with a friend, is this someone worthy of opening up the door and opening up to get to know better? How about that volunteer position or that new job? Is this something that will work for us? Truth is that most often we won’t really know unless we try it or if/when we have that gut feeling that responds with either an up or down vote. Sometimes we instinctively know that “yes” is the correct answer for us. And sometimes it isn’t.

Should I say yes or should I say no? It sounds so simple, right? But what are we actually saying yes or no in our response?

I was recently invited to attend a Ted Cruz for President Rally, at first I was like sure I will go but as the time to attend was getting closer I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t? He is not my first choice for President. I ended up attending and it was definitely well worth my time. That “yes” response allowed me to meet up with my neighbors, see old local political friends and actually learn a few things. It was interesting.

It was my first ever event with the “secret service” and my first ever Presidential candidate rally. We have been involved locally in politics, but never on the national level. It was fun! It was educational! It was new to us and definitely worth that “yes” response. But … what if I didn’t go? I guess I would never know what I was missing.

Through the years I have been offered many things, opportunities to travel, opportunities to go into business, opportunities to move, and opportunities to throw my support behind a specific cause and typically my gut answer gets it right.

However as I age, I find myself with more of an open mind and open heart and more often a desire to respond with “yes” because putting myself in new places with new people and new opportunities and new challenges allows me to learn and to grow and to appreciate everything for what it is … a part of life … a part of living and what greater way is there to experience life than to respond in the affirmative?

YES! YES! YES! Doesn’t it feel good to just say yes, yes I can do that! Yes, I will do that! Yes!

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

New books! Along The Way and Another Way on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Internships Create Win-Win Relationships

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Internships Create Win-Win Relationships
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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My first intern was from Chicago and was attending Loyola University here in Maryland. She was wonderful! Bright-eyed and ready to serve and I could literally throw her into any workplace situation and she was great and handled it all like a pro.

Her course load was heavy but she always managed to find the time to volunteer. At the time I was working as a Special Events Manager many years ago and together my intern and I did everything from preparing the seating charts for a black tie gala to Sam’s Club runs for our school to work in house store.

Around this same time I lost my administrative assistant who was on leave for a few weeks and I was already overwhelmed with my busy schedule when I suggested to my boss the possibility of a “temp” a temporary employee he was supportive but with the caveat, “you will have to decide if having a temp is worth the time it will take you to manage them” and he was so right.

The temp was charging up hours and getting very little accomplished and here was my intern working for free and just tearing it up! Something was just not right with this picture. After a week of the temp, I let her go, ramped up my work schedule and encouraged my intern to give me all her available hours. She did and together we managed to not only make our goals but exceed them.

Charting her working hours for her Loyola University internship and writing her letter of recommendation was a small price to pay for all the work that she contributed. It was a win-win relationship. And if she was local I would have hired her in a second.

A Delaware Senator informed me that Washington D.C. engages approximately 20,000 interns each year. They are big believers in engaging interns and fully appreciate all their many contributions and also how it sets these same young people up for success.

In the past ten years I have engaged many interns to work alongside of me in nonprofit work. Most are students who are studying communications and public relations. I have witnessed them do everything from create a website to help with branding and creating new marketing materials. Each intern has left with a robust portfolio that they would otherwise not have had, and they made contributions that lasted long after their departures.

I do my best to keep up with all the interns that I have engaged, social media makes it fairly easy to do so. I marvel at how far they have gone and just how easily they tend to transition into a full–time regular paying job. I want to believe that part of their success harkens back to their ability to successful intern and also their willingness to work for free as they begin to pave their way along the professional corridor.

Internships create win-win relationships that not only enhance the workplace but add valuable work experience to people who are beginning their career. And quite honestly unlike the hired “temp” I have never engaged an intern that has not been worth their weight in gold.

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
All books by Bernadette A. Moyer are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble