Staying Alive

by Bernadette A. Sahm

My husband and I decided that our mantra for this period of our lives in retirement will be referred to as “STAYING ALIVE” and the Bee Gees song Stayin’ Alive from 1977 is our theme song! So it goes …

“Well now, I get low and I get high And if I can’t get either, I really try Got the wings of heaven on my shoes I’m a dancin’ man and I just can’t lose You know it’s all right, it’s okay I’ll live to see another day …”

For us it’s about a wholistic approach to living out the rest of our lives with the trinity of mind, body and soul. What have we done and what can we do to be sure that each and every day we do something that 1) enriches our mind through reading, conversations, laughter and learning 2) what healthy choices have we made for our bodies like good healthy eating choices and exercise and 3) have we prayed and enlightened our souls, have we connected to others and the Lord our God in a meaningful way.

We try and live a healthy lifestyle grounded in gratitude and love. We eat fresh fruits and vegetables and good prime meats for protein. Eggs are a stable and healthy fats. Being Italian we, both enjoy a pasta dish at least once a week. Exercise is important to us whether at the gym or outside activities, we do our best to get our goal of 10,000 steps daily. Living minutes from the ocean allows us such great beach walks and getaways. Sunshine is healthy too! The air by the ocean just feels more alive and for us it never gets old.

Fun stuff like spending time with friends and loved ones as well as enjoying concerts, restaurants and the theater outings make us happy. We both love music and nothing better than live music from a beloved artist. Traveling is fun and we prefer a healthy long road trip to planes, do love a good train ride too.

Seeking out beauty in all its forms adds to our love of life and our staying alive mantra!

Not long ago an acquaintance who is still working full time asked us, “what do you do all day?” In unison we responded with, “whatever we want to do!’ We love our life and my husband Brian often remarks, “we earned it!” Both of us have worked hard in our careers and together we raised three children and five precious pups! We have lived a full life and this phase means so much to us. We choose peace, love and happiness and we choose it each and every single day!

So here is to “staying alive” as long as possible and hopefully until we take our last breath … and doing it our way …

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer and Instagram @bernadetteamoyer @bernadettesahm

#living #life #stayingalive #healthychoices #goodliving

What Is Meant For You

By Bernadette A. Sahm

What is meant for you, will find you! I am a firm believer in this statement. If it is meant to happen, if someone is meant to be in your life, it will happen.

Several years ago, I was working on a project with another professional colleague. We shared some personal stories. I was talking to her about a relationship that ended and left me quite sad and gutted. Her response was, “It wasn’t meant to be.” At the time that was not what I wanted to hear. Since then, I have often reflected on it. It wasn’t meant to be.

We all get older and hopefully wiser. My younger self wanted a different outcome. Today my mature self believes what is meant for you, will find you. If it doesn’t it wasn’t meant to be. Peace and happiness come from acceptance and understanding.

All that I have is meant for me, all that I don’t wasn’t meant to be. I know it sounds so simple, but I think that it’s meant to be that simplistic.

Think about all things that just came naturally and at the time when you were open and ready to receive it. What is meant for you quotes emphasize that destined opportunities, relationships, and successes will naturally align with your life, and this encourages patience, trust, and letting go of forced outcomes.

What is meant for you, will find you!

Peace and blessings, Bernadette

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer and Instagram @bernadetteamoyer @Bernadettesahm

The Grief I Carried

by Bernadette A. Sahm

The grief I carried was deep and not because of all the hurts I survived

But rather for the empty holes left inside of me, by you

The pain of real loss, loss in not having but

Knowing you should have had, the pain of no desire for understanding

The pain of your many convictions, the pain was real and yet through it all

These many years lives so deeply that its no longer relevant

Nor present on a daily basis that pain of believing

I had you, loved you, knew you and only came to realize

I never had you, nor could I love you enough to right all your many wrongs

And in the end, I found that I never knew you at all

My peace didn’t come from trying to hang on, it came from shedding

It was the letting go with grace and in God’s love

Where I survived and thrived in love and in happiness

Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer and Instagram @bernadetteamoyer @bernadettesahm

#life #lessons #wisdom #love #grace #peace #faith #God

He Gone

by Bernadette A. Sahm

You can’t open any news source without learning that celebrity couple Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman have split after 19 years of marriage. Like most people I am a bit shocked and saddened as it appeared they were a happy and loving couple.

This celebrity news has caused more than a few “couple conversations” with my husband. We have been together for 34 years now and married for 28 years. It is not always easy, but we are committed and stay in love. I hate the term “work at it” as I would rather say we try to keep it fun and happy. We enjoyed each other’s company and like many of the same things. We grew up during the same time period.

They say Keith moved out from the family months ago and are just now making it public knowledge. My husband’s immediate response was “somebody didn’t want it” in regard to their marriage. It made me think that yeah, the only “secret” to a happy marriage is that both people have to want it.

When a man moves out of the family home and purchases his own private residence you can almost guarantee it is because he has found a new partner. I am willing to bet that Nicole has been replaced with a younger version. We have witnessed this show before …

I am a firm believer that when it is over, it is over, both people have to want it for a marriage to succeed. I can’t imagine what is more difficult to leave or to stay in a relationship that you don’t want to be in and are unhappy.

What I think is that he is gone and in my life experience Nicole will find someone or someone better!

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

Instagram @bernadetteamoyer @bernadettesahm

Group Think

by Bernadette A. Sahm

When I was a kid, I was friends with all the kids. Friends with the jocks, the artists, the pot heads, the brainiacs, the religious, the non-believers, all of them. I still have that same belief that each person, each type of person has something special to offer. And I was interested in knowing them.

Although I am personally a Christian and Conservative, I never force my beliefs on others. I do my best to live by the “golden rule” treat others as you wish to be treated. It’s not my place to change anyone else but rather to continue to work on and improve myself. If I live a live that is worthy of friends and followers, so be and if not, that is fine too,

What I find increasingly difficult to understand is our current culture or “group think” and the desire to hate and even hurt those that think differently. I find our current political discourse to be soul crushing. I see people that I love and adore spew political hatred at their so called “opposition” and it saddens me. Not because of the target of their wrath and hatred because of how small it makes them look. Often, I shake my head. How could someone so smart and so accomplished spew hatred toward another group of people just because they think/believe in a different way?

We used to believe that shared ideas from opposing viewpoints meted out the best outcomes, today we aren’t even able to have those conversations. I worry for anyone who lives with any hatred in their hearts. I believe it is like a cancer that will harm them from the inside out. Peace and love and acceptance are so much healthier.

My parents taught me that “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” what if someone said something you didn’t like, you just walked away, turned them off, didn’t listen?

Today it’s apparent that there are people who believe that if you don’t think and believe as they do, you deserve to be murdered. How can this even be possible? How on earth did we get here? And more importantly, where do we go from here?

Written on the day after Charlie Kirk was murdered …

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

Instagram @bernadettesahm

Wave Watcher

by Bernadette A. Sahm

“When I sit here by the sea and listen to the sounds of waves, I feel free from all obligations and people of this world.” Henry David Thoreau

Wave watcher

Am I

Soft foam

Gentle wave

Unique forms

High tide

Wave watcher

Am I

Fierce crisp and cold

So many sounds and shapes

Not alone

Gather here

Celebrate there

Low tide

Ebb and flow

Wave watcher

Am I

Never gets old

Does not disappoint

Always amazing

Sunny hot

Dark and cold

Wave watcher

Am I

Winter Spring Summer and Fall

Flows and goes

In and out

Today, tomorrow and forever

Wave watcher

Am I

Follow Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer and Instagram @bernadettesahm

#ocean #life #love #peace #sea #beach

Aging Backwards

by Bernadette A. Sahm

My husband tells me that I am “aging backwards” I’ll take it! And he would know as we have been together for 34 years now, together since we were just 32 years old. Although this is not the first time I’ve heard this, it is the first time I actually believe it.

I believe that I had aged pre-maturely in my early twenties as I was widowed at age 23 and left alone with a two-year-old toddler to raise. It felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders as I tried to navigate single motherhood and earning enough to support us. This was definitely not what I had signed up for at such a young age.

“I was so much older then, I am younger than that now” by Bob Dylan

Then came years of a different level of stresses in a new marriage and taking on the mother role for newborn infant twins, as I tried to work my way up my chosen career paths.

Yet today as a retired senior I feel and look better than ever before! There are no “secrets” to living a good healthy lifestyle as so much of it is just common sense.

If I had to make a list of what I believe has contributed to my happiness and wellness, this list would be much of it.

1) Live in love and let go of all that no longer serves you well

2) Eat the good food/eat fresh

3) Exercise and get those 10,000 steps a day

4) Take your vitamins, I am big on taking magnesium and a low dose of aspirin daily, it works for me!

5) Get outside in the fresh air

6) Keep gratitude top of mind as there is always something to be grateful for

7) Live under your financial means so that you are not financially struggling

8) Laugh often it feels so good and is so good for you

9) Get a dog or two!

10) And for me probably the most important of all is marry well, choose wisely and make sure you live in peace and love with your forever friend/partner/lover/spouse

Bonus buy the cute outfit, get your hair and nails done and take the trip … Life is for the living, live it!

This is my list … make one that works for you too. I feel great and I believe you can too!

Peace, love and blessings,

Bernadette

P.S. Thanks Brian for the inspiration!

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

Instagram @bernadettesahm

#love #life #liveyourlife #behappy #aging #agingbackwards #gratitude

I Want History

by Bernadette A. Sahm

I want to have history with you, he said.

I want to take care of you, he said.

I want to love you, he said.

I will give you everything I have, he said.

Let’s do this, he said.

Will you marry me? he said.

I am here for you, he said.

We will outlast them, he said.

You have my whole heart, he said.

You are the only one for me, he said.

You are not alone, he said.

You are the love of my life, he said.

You did all of this and so much more, I love you so much! She spoke.

Follow me on Facebook at http://www.Facebook,com/bernadetteamoyer

Instagram @bernadettesahm

(Happy 33 years together and 28 years married! I think we have “history” …)

The Buzzsaw

By Bernadette A. Sahm

You can’t speak the truth

Because they chop your head off

Keep lying stop trying

Stand for something fall for anything

They gather together

Spy on you

Keep the lie going

Keep the lies growing

That’s what they do

They are a buzzsaw

All against you

You leave and walk away

Over it and over them

Sad but true

They knew and so did you

It’s a circular cut

The blade so abrasive

She called it “love”

I had to laugh

This from the person who knew the truth

But chooses to live a lie

She called the table “purple”

Everyone could see it was white

They looked at her

They looked at eachother

Then agreed it was “purple”

You stood there loudly proclaimed

“It’s white and you are all liars”

Birds of a feather

They do flock together

Love no, not at all

Mentally not well

I will take the white table

And the truth please

No thanks on the buzzsaw

I couldn’t care less

I’m happy now living truth and love

You are sadly purple and as stuck as ever

You can’t cut me anymore

1000 cuts I survived

Stronger, smarter and healthier

Not playing your same old tired games

I look back and shake my head

And I laugh and I laugh

I thank God that I’m good

Loved beyond measure

Peaceful tranquil and content

Over it and over you

I had to leave

I couldn’t take all the lies

I tried but I knew it was wrong

And we all knew it too

Keep your buzzsaw

I am planting a garden and

Collecting sand in my shoes …

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

#truth #survival #abuse #life #lessons #reality #buzzsaw #sand #lies

Reflections Simple Pleasures During Lent

By Bernadette A. Sahm

Hand holding walks through the neighborhood
Freshly painted do-it-yourself projects
Amish Markets
Red Candy Apples
Sunday car rides to no where
Hard cover books
Red cabbage natural dyed Easter eggs
Easter candy
No meat Friday’s
Prayers, peace, prayers and more peaceful reflections
Budding blooming flowers and trees
Waking up to the sounds of birds singing
Outdoor events
Palm Sunday
Dedicated time for reflection and gratitude
Traditional viewing of the movie The 10 Commandments
Hallow prayers app
Fasting
Chocolate Easter bunnies
Easter baskets
Easter Sunday Sunrise Service on the beach

Happy Easter blessings to all! May you be blessed with a most meaningful Easter celebration!

Follow me at Bernadette on Facebook http://www.Facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer and on Instagram bernadettesahm

#Easter #Lent #Reflection #Signsofspring