inspiration

Left Behind

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Left Behind
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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No one wants to be that person, the one who gets left behind. Sooner or later we all have that experience and it never feels good. Whether we are left by choice, by divorce or by death, being left behind is hard and it is a scary feeling.

We build our lives with others, we have friends, we have families and we have our pets. When they leave and we are left behind we feel that void. That special place they once held now is an open space.

Our bichon Chipper is grieving his sister Happy who passed over just a few weeks ago. We have never heard such deep intense cries from him in all our seven years with him.

Every time when of our children grew up and left home, we almost immediately replaced them with a furry baby. Each dog has held our heart much like our young children once did, today we grieve Happy. It drives home again, that feeling of being left.

Yet with Happy is was a soft pain and loss because we have so many happy memories with her. She was just so easy to care for and to love. It was natural.

“Those we love never truly leave us, Harry. There are things that death cannot touch.” – Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

From day one my husband Brian and I acknowledged that one of us would be “widowed” again, one of us would know that feeling again … that feeling of being left behind. We do everything in our power to honor all the time that we share together by living our best life and living it as centered and honest as possible.

So many people live within us… we remember … we grieve… we rejoice …we are better for having known them and loved them …

Each of us finds that day when we move past the loss … past the grief … and truly celebrate what once was and what was once shared. We learn once again that life is for the living and that we must live it!

“If you focus on what you left behind, you will never see what lies ahead.” – Gusteau, Ratatouille

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

What’s In Your Heart

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What’s In Your Heart
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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What is in your heart? Is your heart filled with love and gratitude? Or is your heart filled with anger and resentments? Is your heart full or is it empty?

Like most things in life, our hearts are our responsibilities and what we allow in them says everything about us and who we are …

Lately I find myself making definitive choices about what I will put on my heart. I find myself turning away from hatred and conflict until I am able to come to a peaceful and loving conclusion. I no longer allow the hatred and anger of others to enter my heart. It is their stuff, not mine.

Making the choice on those that I allow into my heart has allowed me to be a better and brighter and happier more loving person.

And if and when a confrontation is necessary, I lead with and I speak from my heart. There is a lot of hatred and garbage out in this world; we choose what we allow to enter into our hearts. Where I will always feel compassion and love for others, I have learned to draw the line when it comes to who and what I allow to enter my heart and my soul.

I can’t change anyone else but when I present my best heart, change naturally occurs for the better. Fill your heart with love. Fill it with people, places and things that you love. Plant the seeds of love within yourself and watch them grow in you and in those that you attract and associate.

What is in your heart? Might just be the single best question you can ask yourself every single day …

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

Books by Bernadette on Amazon and Barnes& Noble

You Are Not Alone

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You Are Not Alone
By Bernadette A. Moyer

you are not alone

Each life comes attached as we are born attached to so many others. We start with one family and eventually go on and create yet another family. When we are older and wiser we come to understand that we are all connected. We are not alone.

We are not born alone and we do not die alone. We have family, we have friends and we have faith. There is nothing that we encounter in life where someone else has not experienced it. It could be we share in the same joys, we share in the same loves, and we share in the same loss, in the same heartaches and in the same tearful moments. Our love is shared. Our life is shared. We are not alone.

Whatever you may be going through, whatever you may be feeling, someone somewhere else has already been there. They survived it and you will too.

Each one of us in on a shared journey …

Our lives are not perfect little packages assigned to just us. They are messy parts that often overlap with other messy parts and other messy people. There is no true, perfect and absolute world that is only filled with love and all that is good. There is a shared life and shared experiences, and not all of it is pretty.

Sometimes because of what we are currently feeling or currently going through, it is easy to feel like we are the only ones. Support groups help us when we seek out others who are going through what we are currently going through.

There is no such thing as a perfect life; there is no one on the face of this earth that will have 100% of happy days. When we fully embrace that we are not alone, whatever is causing us grief and strife is shared and therefore we learn that “pain shared is pain divided.”

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” Helen Keller

You are not alone …

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

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

White Spaces

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White Spaces
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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Seeking white spaces, places, people and things yet to be explored, white spaces with no expectations, and no history and there is nothing good nor nothing bad just looking for new white spaces.

Recently I find myself becoming more excited about what is yet to be explored rather than the familiar been there and done that. Seeking and searching for those moments yet to be defined.

Embracing white noise, that sacred space where you can reflect, think, create, imagine and dream. I am seeking brand new blank canvases yet to be determined and ready to be created upon. I am pulling out new pages that are ready for words, writing and creating anew.

Recently I was appreciating my husband’s coloring book and commented on the uncolored areas and he stated so eloquently “not everything has to be colored” and I immediately thought about the importance of those white areas. How they are there for imagination, how they are there to promote the other colored areas and how those white spaces have an importance all their own.

So much of our life is defined as the years roll on by and yet we don’t know just how much we don’t know. There is always something more to learn, something new to create and something more to place upon our white spaces.

White spaces are those sacred spaces and places where you can breathe again and breathe new, white spaces where you can imagine and stop, think and appreciate again. White spaces that don’t necessarily have to be filled in but can be appreciated for the simplicity that they hold on their own or are yet to be determined.

When we mediate on the color white, white that represents peace we are mediating for peace. Happy white spaces … seek them out as often as you can, enjoy them for what they are and what they just might become. Happy and healthy white spaces …

(Written and created on the white spaces and white sandy beach at Daytona Beach Shores, Easter 2018)

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

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

Does Not Come With Instructions

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Does Not Come With Instructions
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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None of our relationships come with “instructions” we just wing it. We live and we learn. Some things work with some people and somethings don’t. Just like with our children each child grows and develops differently. Every child has different needs and different personalities.

What I have learned with most people is that the ones who are most happy are also the same ones that are most appreciative and thankful. It doesn’t matter how much or how little they have, or how much or little they have been given, they appreciate it all, and are grateful and therefore happy.

The unhappy among us are also the ones who never appreciate anything or anyone and have a sense of entitlement. How can you be happy? When you feel like the world owes you? When your focus is on what you didn’t get or don’t have rather than what you do have and what was given to you?

When we learn to appreciate everything even the most difficult situations, even the most painful loses and turn them around to see the lessons learned we can move from hurt, pain and loss to an attitude of gratitude for having experienced them. We are alive, we feel, we learn and we live.

And if our relationships came with “instructions” would we read them? Even want them? Today, as I write this, I look out my window to green grass, sunshine, bunny rabbits running around and little birds that are chirping. How could I not be thankful and appreciative and therefore happy to be alive.

There isn’t a little book of “instructions” we live and we learn … and our life is truly happier when we learn to appreciate it all.

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

The Lives We Touch

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The Lives We Touch
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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My Uncle Lou recently passed on, he was a doctor. He was a huge personality and he loved what he did and was good at it. There is no way to tell just how many lives he touched, how many people he made a difference to and just how many people will remember him now that he is gone.

His obituary states that he was a medical doctor for 61 years. What I remember is a man that truly was larger than life. He was a tremendous support to my mother, his sister. He was always giving; he always had something to offer and to give.

As a little girl I remember the many times he came to visit my grandmother, his mother and times we visited him and his family. These memories are from long ago, yet it is impossible not to think of them with his recent passing.

The only way we do justice to life is by living it to its fullest. He was 88 years old. If I live that long, I will have 30 more years ahead of me, there is nothing like a death to drive home for us just how numbered our days here are, there will be an ending one day.

But how many lives will we touch? Who will remember us upon our passing?

Many years ago a significant death in my life taught me “life is for the living, live it.” And today I would add, “Touch as many lives as you can, and be touched by as many lives too, because that is all that truly matters the most in life!”

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

Books by Bernadette A. Moyer on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Check Yourself

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Check Yourself
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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Check yourself? What are you putting forth into the universe? Is it love, is it hatred? Thoughts become actions, what are you thinking about? Are they positive thoughts that are rooted in love or negative thoughts rooted in hate?

Earlier today I watched a documentary about kids with guns and kids age six and up that not only used a gun to commit murder but the days, weeks, months of thinking about it that lead up to the killing.

Then later I read a social media post that encouraged “open mindedness” and most posters were of the same mind set and then came an opposing view. This person was bullied, ganged up on and eventually left the group. They said “open minded” but what I witnessed was anything but that.

Today you can turn on any so called “news stations” I call them “editorial stations” and hear complete one sidedness regardless of any other view point.

Then I think about the mind of a child who doesn’t have the maturity and life experience to process all this and how they act out. Acting out often of anger and frustration because they can’t process what even a skilled adult would find difficult to process.

What can we do? We can check ourselves! What are we putting out into the universe with our own thoughts and actions? What verbal and nonverbal communications are we putting forth? You want more love in your life, be more loving, do you want more hurt and hatred? It all comes back to us.

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Our world will get better when we are better. If we continue to fight, to disagree, to hurt others, to spew hatred all we have done is to grow more hate. Remember when we learned that if you couldn’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all?

In the climate we are living through today, I don’t think it is a bad idea to check ourselves? What are we putting out into the universe? Would we want that same thing to be put back upon us? I am not saying it will be easy, it is hard to love a hater, hard to love a difficult person, hard to love someone that we don’t like or agree with … it may be hard, but it isn’t impossible.

There is something good in everyone … we are all works in progress … try and focus on the good and what you can support and can love … check yourself … when you can respond to even the most difficult people and things in your life with love then you too will be rewarded with love.

A six year old boy wasn’t born to be a hater and a killer, I can’t imagine what formed him to become like that, but I do know that when we choose love, choose to respond with love, we are more likely to be met with love.

Check yourself and check your heart …

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

What To Believe

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What To Believe
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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What to believe … in a world full of division, opinions, varied motivations, self-interest and more, it becomes more and more challenging to know the truth tellers from the false narratives. That is why it is so important to know who you are and to be true to yourself.

The older I become the more I am convinced that people believe what they want to believe regardless of their sources or any investment in searching for the absolute truth. Simply put if it fits their narrative, it becomes their truth.

If we say it, it must be true, right? Wrong? I guess it depends on who is saying it and what is motivating them. There are always many sides to every story and many ways to view a single act or many acts.

I was thinking about old sayings like “God helps those who help themselves” and how important trust and honesty is to the richness and depth of any real relationship. Relationships can only go deep if they are rooted in trust and honesty.

What we believe becomes our truth and our reality. If we believe we will succeed in life, we will. If we believe we will fail in life, we will. Our minds truly are the computer system for our bodies, what goes in is what comes out.

In 2017, I evaluated my life, my work, my friends and my family. I drew closer the ones that enriched my life. I pulled back and away from people and from places that didn’t add anything positive. It was more than therapeutic.

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I learned how much I value my own company, how easy my life unfolds when it does so naturally. I spent less time trying to “rescue” others and more time becoming a better person. In all this re-evaluation has served me well. I feel great. One of the great lessons recently learned was understanding that someone else’s anger, upsets and disappointments is about them and has zero to do with me.

Even the most negative things in life, can be turned around and into something positive, it we want it. Each one of us is capable of turning a negative into a positive. Each one of us decides to be happy or sad or mad or glad.

My marriage and my inner circle of friends are richer, more loving and more supportive than ever. My career and my business has refreshed and renewed itself with many new additions and the excitement that naturally follows good works.

I believe that 2018 will be a banner year both personally and professionally and I know that because with the right amount of efforts, my continued support group and with the hand of God on my back, the sky truly is the limit … ASK, BELIEVE, RECEIVE … it works!

Oh what to believe … believe in all that is good and plant those good “seeds” in a rich environment with the proper water and light and watch them grow.

Here is to a fabulous, fantastic, loving, rich, healthy and abundant year filled with love and peace for all of us!

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

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

Know Your Value

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Know Your Value
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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“Self-worth is so vital to your happiness. If you don’t feel good about YOU, it’s hard to feel good about anything else.” Sandy Hall

Know your value and know your worth, if you don’t see your value how could or would someone else? Sometimes in life, you have to take a stand that others may not like or appreciate but the truth is that at the end of the day, you could compromise your value away if you don’t stand strong.

Every single person alive has value and worth but like most things it starts with self-worth. If we don’t value ourselves most likely others won’t value us either. Never allow someone else to de-value you for their own gain and narrative. Stand strong and always, always know your value.

You weren’t put here on this earth to be anything less than your best or to live life without being true to yourself. If someone else can’t or won’t see your worth, move on, that door isn’t your door anyway. You will never be your best or come to your full potential surrounded by people that disrespect you, don’t appreciate you and are unable or unwilling to see your worth.

In every situation and in every relationship, it is up to us to know our value. Don’t compromise your set of values to fit into places where you don’t belong. If you do you will regret diminishing your own self-worth and in the end have handed over any possibility of other people seeing your true value.

Self-worth: “The ability to comprehend and accept my true value –To understand I am more than my mind, body, emotions and behaviors. To see myself as God sees me, to accept His love for me and to learn to love myself in a like manner.” Dr. Christina Hibbert

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

Along The Way and Another Way available on Amazon and Barnes Noble

The Good People

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The Good People
By Bernadette A. Moyer

good people

In a world that seems to be spiraling downward with greater speed and in larger numbers it is easy to become cynical and skewed as a result. Focus on the good people. They are still out there. If you aren’t already good become your best. Be better today than you were yesterday and strive to be even better tomorrow.

I have always had people that I looked up to, people that survived and even thrived in the most difficult situations. Shortly after moving to Baltimore, when my first husband died, I became aware of local TV News Anchor Susan White-Bowden. Her husband had committed suicide and later her teen son also took his own life. She had to be devastated although on television you would never have known it. She carried on and she did it with class and grace.

She was a hero for me. Many years later I would invite her to book events that I held and even a slumber party for women. Susan was and is awe inspiring speaker and author. I watched her take the audience from laughter to tears and back. She sold out of her books. People love her. She took the unimaginable and turned it around for the greater good. Nothing was going to bring her 17 year old son back but she showed us all that even with that intense loss and grief, life was worth living. And it was worth living well.

Last night I watched the first part of the Elizabeth Smart story in her words. Elizabeth is another woman that amazes me. She literally went from hell and came back to life. She was kidnapped, repeatedly raped and tied up and chained. She was treated worse than any wild animal. She survived it all. Came back to life wrote a book, shared her story and now speaks out and inspires others.

When I think of these women I am inspired and awe struck. Then I wonder what went into their recovery. Was it therapy? Was it support from loved ones? Is it the way they are wired and build? Are they just naturally strong? Or is it a combination of many of these things? I would be willing it is a combination of many of these things with the main thing being the desire and determination to heal. I believe that they wanted to be better and worked hard to get better. And so they did.

In our news today we are riddled with creepy people and creepy stories, things people have done to one another. The people who abuse physically, sexually and verbally and people that have no value for life and kill. One thing I know for sure is that we must focus and give the oxygen to the survivors and the ones who thrive. We must learn to focus on the good people.

There will always be haters and hurters but we don’t need to give up any more oxygen for them. Life has its own way of dealing with those people. Generally as a society my sense is that we give too much life and breath to people that are sick, evil and just not good people.

Who can you call out today for doing good and being a good person? Who can you help raise up that wants to be better and do good? What can you do today for yourself to be better than you were yesterday?

People that have been to hell and back always inspire me, I look at them and I think they thrived and survived through all that and so can I and so can everyone. You just have to want it, and want it badly enough to work through it.

Prayers up! Today I celebrate all the good people in this world and in my own life and I Thank God and feel so blessed to know more than just a few of them …

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

Along The Way and Another Way on Amazon and Barnes & Noble