We See the World As We Are

By Bernadette A. Moyer

Most often we see the world as we are and we don’t see this world as it is … two people can look at and experience the same things and yet walk away with a completely different view. How does this happen? For most of us our view of life and the world has so much more to do with how we are inside rather than what is going on outside of ourselves.

“I could never do that!” Many times we see the actions of others and we declare that it isn’t us and we would never do that. Our responses for many things come from how we were wired as children. If we were trained a certain way, that becomes how we react and respond, part of the growing and maturation into adulthood comes when we learn to think for ourselves and process things for ourselves.

Generally speaking, loving people respond with love and angry hurt people respond with fear and anger. Our responses come from our world view, do we see the good or the evil in people and how much of what we see has to do with the world as it is versus the world as we are?

Loving people see love. As I watched the Bible TV series, I was reminded of this; no matter what Jesus encountered he turned it into good and into a lesson to be learned. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the persecution and the hate and fear; it was that he didn’t allow it to enter into his own heart.

When we are hurt by others, most of the time that is processed through the lenses of, “I would never do that!” and perhaps we wouldn’t. But the truth is that what they have done is only a slight if we allow it to enter our heart that way. Simply put hatred only continues if we take what is spewed and own it and then put more of it into the universe. I have learned to keep myself in check by pausing and thinking through all my responses. I start with am I responding out of love or out of fear? A response of love is always a choice just like any other response. Someone else’s venom and hate comes from their world view and is about them. It only enters our life and our hearts if we allow it to do so.

“The core cause of anger is a lack of self-worth. Rage is an excruciating experience of powerlessness.” Gary Zukav

The day that I gave birth to my daughter was a day that my heart was filled with love, not just for her but for everyone in my family and in my world. Any hurts and grievances became past history. It was as if I was transformed out of my love for my daughter. I forgave everyone, everything. I had a similar experience the day that I buried my first husband. His death allowed me to love with such vulnerability and I forgave everyone everything. On both occasions I was my most beautiful loving self.

It shouldn’t take a birth or a death for us to operate out of a pure loving heart. These were my experiences and looking back it speaks to how I process and respond, someone else may have anger in a death situation or not be as open hearted in a new birth.

When my child was born, I could never have imagined not sharing it with my entire family, and I did. Recently a friend’s daughter had a new baby. She deliberately excluded her mother, the grandmother from being there. My friend is one of the most loving people and she is crushed. I know in my heart that part of her pain is because she, herself would never had done the same thing to her mother and family. This is a big decision to deny your mother access to you and your new born baby. How does this mother ever forgive such a deep hurt? Yet she must because otherwise it will be like a cancer that lives in her heart. Why would any daughter deny her biological parents this joyous occasion of a new addition to the family?

My friend is taking it all in and onto herself and yet it is her daughter who chose to shut the door on love.  We respond to the world as we are and not necessarily as the world is, we do not control the actions of others.  What other people do or don’t do is about them and not about us.

“Choosing not to act on an angry impulse and to feel that pain that lies beneath it is a very courageous thing to do.” Gary Zukav and Linda Francis

We can all make a case against anyone for anything both real and/or perceived if that is what we choose to do. But when we make that case, we need to look inside our own hearts and ask ourselves, what is really going on here? Why am I acting like this? What made me respond in this fashion? Why did I choose fear and hatred when I could just as easily have chosen love and acceptance?

Every one of us is a work in progress, but there are things that are universal and can work for everyone. If you want peace, be a peaceful person. If you want more love, give more love. Practice forgiveness so that when your time comes, you too will be forgiven.

Where we can’t control what other people do and say, we can control how we respond to it. And sometimes the very best response is no response at all. Their anger and their fight lives inside of themselves.

We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are, anger and hate only become our reality if we allow it. Putting more love and loving “as is” allows us to be loved “as is” and brings more love to us. What you put out into the universe is what is returned to you. We must remember that when we are faced with challenging situations and people. Their stuff is their stuff and not ours; it speaks to and defines them and not us.

What would Jesus do? He would take the high road and respond with love. We must condition ourselves and learn to do the same.

Love is what we do for ourselves …

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

To Heal or To Hurt

By Bernadette A. Moyer

No one gets through this life unscathed, we have choices though, and we can choice to heal our hurts or to continue hurting and hurt others in the process.

Generally I am amused with the term “dysfunctional family” to say that any family is “dysfunctional’ is to presume that there is a model of a fully “functional” family. I have yet to see or to know any family that is perfect, the model or fully “functional.”

What I do know is that no one gets through this life unscathed. Each one of us will experience a wide range of events some will be happy and pleasurable and others may literally bring us to our knees.

In our country according to a 2009 survey 50% of all college aged students have contemplated suicide in their life.  Kids between the ages of 18 and 23 have at least had one episode or thoughts about ending their own life. This figure seems staggering then I thought about the kids that I worked with and knew and I could name more than a few that I was aware of that had at least one time thought about suicide.

As I watched The Road Back, the story of Wynonna Judd and her husband Cactus, I was struck at how they triumphed over tragedy.  Early in their marriage he had a motorcycle accident where he lost his leg and his arm and hand that had to be reattached to his body. He is a professional drummer. Never once did he play the “why me” card or act out in destructive ways. He worked his butt off and worked through much pain until he could play the drums again. His attitude was everything as was his faith in God. Cactus could just as easily played the victim, he could have quit. But he chose to heal and to heal himself.

Bishop T.D. Jakes; “Let go of your past.  When you hold on to your history, you do it at the expense of your destiny.”

On a recent Oprah Life Class with Bishop T.D. Jakes the topic was family relationships and family estrangements. One of the groups on this show was two sisters that had estranged over an old boyfriend several years ago. The guy is no longer in the picture but the sisters hadn’t spoken in three years.  He encouraged them to work it out, he said, “that is your sister!”

I wish my family estrangement was that simple over an old boyfriend? But it wasn’t and it isn’t. It is about family that supported a child molester and threw their sister away. They didn’t even try. Instead they chose to scapegoat, re-write history, lie, and slander and make up stories to justify their absence and my absence too. How do you come back to that? You don’t.

But … you still have to forgive them and you have to heal from it. If we don’t choose to heal we only continue the hurt. Hurt that shows itself in many forms and seeps into all other relationships. Your history is not your destiny unless you allow it to be.

If you show up 99 times and someone else smacks you in the face, then you show up for the 100^th time and they smack you in the face, is it their fault or yours? At some point you stop showing up when you already know what the outcome will be.

Family behavior is often set in place when we are just kids, most families revert back to childhood in how they relate and treat one another. My history is only my destiny if I allow it to continue. It takes will, drive and determination to break the model. But it can be done.

You have to believe you are worth more and then take all the necessary steps to heal from the hurt. At some point we must all take responsibility and heal our hurts because when we don’t we tend to recreate them.

Let go of the past!

Create your life in the now and for the future …

And once again, because it is worth rewriting;

“When you hold on to your history, you do it at the expense of your destiny.” Bishop T.D. Jakes

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

 

 

 

Our Stewardship

By Bernadette A. Moyer

What will you leave behind? What will your legacy be once you have departed this life? It surely won’t be about “things” but rather about other people and our relationships. Did we leave this place better than how we found it?

Did we give more than we took? Did we make a positive contribution to society and to others? Did we practice love and forgiveness? What will our stewardship say about us?

We are mere stewards in this lifetime; we own nothing because if we did the U-Haul would be following the hearse to our final destination.  “For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.” From Luke 12:42-46

Remember the Kansas song Dust in the Wind and the line “all we are is dust in the wind” and “nothin’ lasts forever but the earth and sky.”

On the date that my “Other Mother” turned 80 years old another friend lost her battle with cancer. She had just celebrated her 56th birthday. My “Other Mother” has acquired many possessions in her lifetime, the friend’s departure drives home how nothing will go with her into the next life.

We take nothing with us when we leave this life we return “home” the same way that we arrived with no earthly possessions. In this lifetime we are merely the stewards of “things” and “property” and “material possessions.”

Our relationships transform or transition or they die. How we took care of them will determine their fate.  How do we want to be remembered? What legacy do we wish to leave behind?

Everything that we are given is one day returned. We are stewards for all living things; for our children, our animals, our family and our friends. Our employment and our career path also afford us the opportunity for stewardship too.

How we take care of the land and the people and all living things is a direct reflection on how we practiced our stewardship.

“A society is defined not only by what it creates but by what it refuses to destroy.” John Sawhill

 

 

The Ocean is Always Where I Left It

By Bernadette A. Moyer

Changing world, places lost

Friends in heaven, parents now gone

Businesses found to be enjoyed

Now leveled, replaced with new

Sun that shines, rain that minds

Fast one day, slow the next

The ocean is still

What I like best

Age can harden and hurt the soul

People and places they come and they go

Count on me, then you are gone

The ocean is a place, I always know

Tree’s we grow them, cut them back

Children raise them, don’t turn back

Count on me, you say you know

Count on me, promising not to go

What I’ve learned is all I have

My heart steady

It is sincere, peaceful and ready

The ocean is always where I left it

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

Our Defining Moments

By Bernadette A. Moyer

We all have them. The defining moments and the defining years, they usually harken back to when we learned many valuable lessons. When we learn to drive and when we graduate and when we marry and when we have children. There are the years when we advance our careers and others when we experiences profound losses. Sometimes our defining moments come with a specific year and birthdate. I remember getting married at 19, being pregnant at the age of 20 and having a child just three days after I turned 21. I remember being widowed at the age of 23.

When I turned 25 I was completely miserable as a single mother with a 4 year old daughter. I was in an inappropriate relationship and feeling lost. My mother tried to cheer me up but the truth was I was transitioning from immature to a mature adult. I was finally taking hold of my life and responsibility for myself. That year I returned to school, changed careers and at age 26 purchased my first home. I became a Realtor and afforded not only a mortgage, but a new car and a child in private school. It wasn’t easy but I was determined and driven.

At age 30 I was mourning another failed relationship that ended badly. But at age 32 I would meet my husband who would become my long term love and life partner. Together we would embark on merging our broken families as we both had a spouse die and leave us with children. It wasn’t always smooth sailing but we were making it work. By age 38 I was feeling so accomplished as my child graduated from a highly regarded all girls Catholic Prep school with a fully funded academic scholarship. I was happy and I was thin and I was feeling good.

My feelings of accomplishment would be short lived because as it became time for my child to set her own course she would leave home and never look back. I grew up in my 30’s and my 40’s. I succeeded then and into my 50’s when yet another family drama would tear at me. More angry more hate more hurtful family that would take their pound of flesh when my desire to share “my story” was about to come to the light. All was well as long as they could conceal their flaws, scapegoat me and re-write history. It was yet another learning curve for me. Once I had a much better opinion of the key players than what they ever deserved.

But all was not lost as my heart grew larger, my self-worth increased and my faith in God prevailed. What I was left with was more lessons learned and a greater sense of peace.

Time always ferrets out the truth. We can package things anyway that we like but history always emerges with the truth. As parents we have a hard time watching our adult children fail. Many times by the poor choices that they would make and yet we all made them. And we survived just like they will.

My husband says that he was also miserable at age 25 when he wasn’t quite happy with the choices that he had made either. But isn’t that life? It is about learning and about growing up. It was about transitioning from thinking like a child to behaving like an adult. It was about being responsible for our own lives and our own decisions.

Every one of us can be mad or sad about something we can also make the decision to be happy and glad. It is through the struggle that we find enlightenment.

Sometimes when we look back at the storms that we weathered and the loss that we suffered and the pain that we endured, we can remember that each was nothing more than the catalyst for change and for growth and that it was merely time for learning another lesson.

So here is to our defining moments … the ones that shaped us and made us who and what we are today!

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

Love is a Living Thing

By Bernadette A. Moyer

Love is a living thing, and in being so love can and does die too. We were driving away and my heart was broken. I could see her in the rear view mirror, holding court with her friends, smoking a cigarette and wearing the little Ann Taylor dress and Coach Purse I had purchased for her.  She was just shy of her 18^th birthday. Little did I know that our relationship had ended.

Someone who was a friend at that time said, “The heart that you had for her is gone and maybe one day you will be able to grow a new one.”  I couldn’t believe he said that! I couldn’t imagine that ever being true. She was my daughter and my job was to love her and to love her forever.

Throughout the years my husband would say, “One day she will be gone longer than you had her.”  It is getting really close to that time now. When we haven’t seen someone in 17 years it becomes virtually impossible to keep the love alive. Regardless who that person is because love is a living thing and it needs certain elements to stay alive.

There was a time when I fought so desperately to keep the love alive. She was used to people leaving her through death and through choice and I was going to love her beyond all that. I was going to be there even if she wasn’t. In retrospect she killed my love for her.  She made sure that it died. No one could really come back from the things that she did and the things that she said. No one could come back with a loving heart.

Another friend and colleague would tell me, “You must save yourself.” It was more than a decade of estrangement at that time. Yet again it seemed so odd to me. He had a daughter and he loved her. He beamed when he spoke of her and all her many accomplishments and yet I was supposed to forgo my child and “save myself.”

Whatever transpired later in life could never take away from all the many years that we shared. I loved her and cared for her. I have those memories and a zillion and one plus photos, event invites and writings in her own handwriting and for all that I am eternally thankful.

The last battle did me in with her. She may as well have thrown gasoline on me and lit a match. It was when it became crystal clear to me the depth and the degree of her hatred toward me. I still can’t imagine not seeing someone, anyone for 15 years and still carrying such hatred in your heart. I mean for your own sake and wellness, let it go. But that last time was what it took for me to see her so clearly and to lose any remaining love I may have had or any hope of ever repairing our relationship.

Today I feel good again, really good and I am at peace. I have no love left for her and where it doesn’t make me sad, I question how any mother would and could feel that way toward their child. Yet I do. I can say it out loud I can say it to God and I can share it with my family, I have nothing left for her, nothing.

I wish her all the best, I wish her the biggest and the brightest life and yet I want nothing to do with her, not now and not ever.  It is the most loving act of all, pure total surrender.  No one is more surprised than me. How did this happen? Well it didn’t happen overnight it took years and years. I grieved for a full ten plus years, I shed more tears than I could have ever imagined. I was so hurt and so blind-sided, I never saw it coming. I was shocked.

When that very first year went by I asked a friend to try and find out how she was doing and what was going on with her. I couldn’t imagine that not one time in that first year did she ever miss me or reach out for me. It would be another devastating blow to learn that in that first year she was pregnant and had her son. I didn’t even know. I would learn that she had a child when he was already 5-months old. Yet another act that would disclose for me how cut off she was from me.

Then several more years would pass when a long-term friend of 30 years would direct me to our local court house. She for whatever reason was looking my child up there. It was there I would learn my grandson’s name and his birthdate and who his father was and it was there that I would learn of who was raising him. Another deep cut and blow another hurt that I would have to work my way back from.

Today I am on the strong and healed side. I am as over it as any mother could be, every day I support parents in their grief of losing their children through estrangement. I can tell exactly where they are in the process by what they are feeling and expressing. For the most part their hearts are still open although somewhat shattered. I can tell by their rawness how new the cut off from their beloved child is and was and how they are managing their grief.

For all of them I hope and pray for a resolution before love dies. Because love can and will die if it isn’t properly nurtured.  I see so much clearer today. Love truly is blind. When we love our children so absolutely we often refuse to see or are too close to see or are in denial about our children. Being away from my child had allowed me to see things much more clearly.

I took on so much responsibility for her; I allowed myself to be the target and scapegoat and was so easily manipulated. I being her target wasn’t helping her. Blaming others is the surest way to fall short on our own lives. When we blame others we fail to accept responsibility. Pointing our fingers out and making others look bad takes the focus off us.

Or does it? Maybe in the short run but sooner or later who we are and what we are will surface. We can only hide so long. We can only blame so long before we have to accept responsibility for our lives and for all of our decisions.

You know it is over when the love is gone and so are the anger and the sadness and the hurt and disappointment. What you are left with is peace and with understanding and a desire to help all those others who are suffering like you were.  Nothing lasts forever, nothing.

Love is a living thing, and love can and will die when we don’t cherish it and nurture it and appreciate it.

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

It Isn’t About You

By Bernadette A. Moyer

“Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream in their own mind; they all are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, as we try to impose our world on their world.” The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz

I am that person who used to take it all so personally and gets upset when an aggressive driver gives me the finger or some other road rage act. I will say out loud to myself as I drive in my car, “I’m sorry, I didn’t even see you there.” And then I think how that person could get so mad when he doesn’t even know me. If I get cut off on the road, I don’t get angry but most often give the benefit of doubt. They probably didn’t see me there either; they weren’t doing anything to me personally.

They say “perception is reality” if that is how someone perceives it, it is real to them. It took a long time for me to be fully developed enough to know that what everyone says isn’t necessarily the truth. It may be their perception but it might not be mine. I have a friend who is smart enough when he hears things to say, “Well that isn’t my experience.” He doesn’t just buy into what people say but rather what he knows from his own experience. Perhaps more of us should be like him.

Over the holidays, I thought a lot about my family. I spent time thinking about my mother and I pray for her soul every day. I pray that she has peace in heaven and that God has helped her. My mother was many things, like most people with strengths and weaknesses. She was one of the smartest women I know and worked harder than most people I know. She was driven. She was a highly educated administrative nurse with numerous years in all the intensive units of a well-respected hospital as well as a long stretch as a pediatric nurse. She had a zest for life and she loved food and was a pretty good cook. Many people loved her and most people liked her too.

My mother was so accomplished professionally and yet she was also attracted to abusive men. Both of her husbands were both charming and abusive. Their abuse showed itself in different ways. Was she the classic magnet in being in a helping profession? I’ve heard kids say that their mothers should have left abusive relationships for the well-being of their children. Maybe I used to feel that way too and then I realized she didn’t think enough of herself to leave, it wasn’t about her children. It wasn’t about me.

For many reasons I had issues with my mother. She would leave this earth without ever once trying to right the wrongs between us. We didn’t speak for the last 23 years of her life, although I did try. She didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I finally realized, it wasn’t about me, her world and my world collided and she would have had to change her life to accept what I had to share with her. She made her choice and it wasn’t me or my truth. It wasn’t about me, it never was. Yet there was a stretch of time when I was so hurt and so angry with her. I used to think, it was about her not loving me.

When you are a feeling and connected person, you tend to take it all in and onto yourself what people spew at you. It takes a much more established person, someone who really knows their own self to understand that what we take in and onto our self is our own choice.

If you let go of that fight, they are stuck there fighting with their own self. It takes two to fight. The only way to stop; is to understand that it was never about you in the first place. Some people need to be right as the expense of another person being wrong. At a certain point you begin to understand how little value there is in being right, if you are left there, standing alone.

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

We Weren’t Designed To Be Perfect

By Bernadette A. Moyer

We weren’t designed to be perfect! It is our imperfections that make us human. We live and we learn.

The Broken Shell

We are not made to be perfect. Beauty is in the flaws. We are fragile yet strong. Life wears us down at times, polishes us at others. We break in places. We endure. It is the hole worn away in the shell that lets us see inside to its center. It’s beautiful when the inside shows, when it shines.

We weren’t designed to be perfect but rather to be real, to be honest and to be humble. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” John 8:7

No one is perfect. If we want to be forgiven, we must first forgive. What if every person really was doing the best that they could do? What if we celebrated our imperfections?

Often the difference is a minor adjustment in how we view things, how we see others mostly has to do with how we view ourselves. When we can learn to accept our own imperfections we are more likely to accept them in others.

We weren’t designed to be perfect …

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

The Mother Target

By Bernadette A. Moyer

Is there anyone out there who hasn’t had issues with their mother, over one thing or another, not ever? I am beginning to believe that “mom” wears the target and always has and always will. I mean without “mom” we wouldn’t even have been born so surely our struggles are all “her” fault, right?

Mom didn’t love us enough or she loved us too much. She was overly protective and controlling or she didn’t protect us enough and neglected us. I never hated my mother, not ever. But I never really related well with her either.

So what was my beef with her? Initially it was that she just wasn’t very feminine and not the mother I had envisioned for myself. She was tough as nails and often without much class. She was big and loud and boisterous. Yet I was told that these were the things that she became after my parent’s divorce. The woman that married my father was tall and just 105 pounds; the one who got a divorce from him was closer to 300 pounds. So what happened to her?

Later my issues were much bigger when I learned that her second husband was a child abuser. After that there was no coming back to her. She stood by him and I stood alone.

Recently I met up with one of my favorite young people. He is the same age as my twin children. We have a professional relationship but often talk about our families and issues. He loves his mother and I know that she loves him too. But … the little guy that blindly loved her is now a grown up and questions what makes her tick. He is becoming his own man and here comes the natural separation that occurs when our kids declare that they aren’t just our kids anymore. But rather an adult with their own moral code, set of values and ideas on what their life should look like sans any parental interference.

Another friend loved and adored his mother, always did. He talks about her all the time, she has passed on and in his words, “not a day goes by that I don’t think of her.” Yet it took decades before he could confide in her that he was a gay man. He was so worried about being honest with her. When he finally told her she said, “Is it my fault? Did I make you gay?” His response, (I love) “You give yourself far too much credit. No, it has nothing to do with you.”

Mothers are often so accustomed to accepting blame and responsibility for what their children do even when they aren’t little children anymore. How often do we blame the parents? What kind of home did they come from? Yet sit and talk with any parents of adult children and you will soon learn how little if any control mom or dad has when their child reaches the age of maturity.

My son and I have a very different relationship than what I experienced with my girls. We are really close and accepting of one another. Yet I see that same kind of “rub” with his father that I once experienced with my daughters. So is it that mirror image thing? I watch my husband get ticked off at our son for doing the same exact things my husband, his father does. I have to laugh.

Therapists have made a fortune trying to unravel the mother-daughter relationship. They say it is the most complicated of all relationships and can offer the greatest of joy or the most painful experiences of all. I always believed that life was tough enough without at least having a mother. I don’t think I would have been driven to adopt pre-mature infant twins if I thought their life would have been better without any mother at all. After their birth mother died, I assumed the role of “mom.” The mother is the one person who is supposed to love you no matter what you do.

From the beginning of time mothers have worn the target on their backs. The blame game, mom did this or mom did that mom was there or mom never was there for me. It is a miracle that any mother gets it right when our expectations are so high for her. The mother is supposed to be all loving and all giving and all of the time.

How does that work though, when the target of the child’s rage is so often directed at the very person who gave them life and brought them into the world? I don’t believe that anyone’s life is better without their mother in their life. I learned how to live without my mother. I lived without her for more than two decades before she died. I did okay but it was not at all ideal.

My husband always loved his mother and had peace with her. But that didn’t mean that he was always happy with her either. In his words there were times she was “loud and embarrassed him in public.” Yet he always chose love over denial. He never denied her.

When you have little children no one tells you that one day they will grow up and they just might reject you and target you with all their rage and anger. The more I talk with other parents and mothers of adult children, the more I learn just how challenging the mother-child relationship can be and is for so many.

We want “mom” to be everything, virginal, pure, perfect but cool and worldly and educated too. We want “mom” to be everything and more, we want to dismiss her too when she is not in keeping with our “vision” of what “mom” should be and mean to us. What a burden to put on anyone. When I think of it, what right did I have to expect my mother to be more “feminine” if that wasn’t her, that wasn’t her!

The best part about having raised our kids and knowing that they are adults now is in knowing that our job is done. They can love us or hate us, their choice. We know that we did the work. We did the best we could and there are no do-overs. I don’t know if there are any women though, mothers or mothers to be that go into having children with a desire to being the target for their children just because they are the “mom.”

Here is to all the “moms” out there, I know one thing for certain, we all want the very best for our children whether they are with or without us!

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer

Why are you eating that?

By Bernadette A. Moyer

Why are you eating “that” are you hungry, bored or filling a void? Is it what you are eating or is it what is eating at you? How many of us are emotional eaters? We eat when we are happy we eat when we are sad and we eat when we are empty inside? Unlike other “addictions” like cigarettes and alcohol where you can just get rid of them we need to eat to survive.  

Every single day it feels like there are a million and one choices. What to have for breakfast and for lunch and for dinner, what about our snacks?  There are just so many choices!

Eating healthy may not always be eating fun stuff. I don’t know of any diets that include cakes, cookies and candy on a regular basis unless they are modified and low in sugars. We have all heard it before “you are what you eat!” But how much of our eating has to do with what is eating at us? How much of it harkens back to emotional eating and trying to literally fill a void?

Some people don’t eat when they are depressed. And others consume even more when they are depressed. We all have diets that work for us and others that aren’t good for our genetic makeup.

Personally I do well with a high protein low carb diet if I want to lose weight. And ultimately that means moving away from everything I grew up eating and loving from my Italian heritage.  Pasta, pizza and bread don’t make the cut if I am serious about losing weight. I can feel it almost immediately with a full belly when I consume those kinds of carbs. And I can feel the transformation when I eat a high protein and low carbohydrate diet.

How many times is food tied to our social events? Almost always or so it seems …right? My husband can’t enjoy the movie house experience unless he has the popcorn that he feels goes along with it. Foods represent holidays and changing of the season, food is love and food is life. But the truth is there are many foods that just are not good for us, period.

We all know there is no magic bullet and that it is an ongoing challenge to maintain a healthy diet and a healthy weight. But I would be willing to bet for many that are significantly overweight it has a lot more to do with what is going on emotionally and the voids they have inside. I would also be willing to bet that when our hearts and souls and our heads are in a good place our diet almost always follows suit.

Like most things being fit and eating right is what we do for ourselves. The question I have asked myself with my New Year and my resolutions is, “why are you eating that?” And if I can’t come up with a good reason then it never passes my lips. For the first week of this New Year I lost 10 pounds just by reducing my carb intake, now comes the real challenge if I want to see significant results. I have a goal and I have a date and most of all, my head, my heart and my soul are all aligned and in a good place.

So for the next leg of my journey it won’t be about what is eating at me but rather about what I am eating and how the food I consume adds to my overall sense of wellness!

Happy food, happy diet and happy transformation for 2015!

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer