One of my fondest memories is being in boy scouts. One of those memories includes summer camps and getting to spend time with my dad.
(PLEASE keep Brandon and our entire family in your prayers as we continue to stumble through all of this)
Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
Understanding
By Bernadette A. Moyer
Understanding as a noun is defined as the ability to understand something: comprehension and are synonymous with comprehension, grasp, and mastery.
When used as an adjective sympathetically aware of other people feelings: tolerant and forgiving. Synonyms are compassionate, sympathetic, sensitive, considerate, tender, kind, thoughtful, tolerant, patient, forbearing, lenient, merciful, forgiving, humane, approachable, supportive and perceptive. Understanding is also defined as having insight and good judgement.
So after reading all that, who would not want to have more understanding?
There is no question we are living in a time of fear, anger and judgements and I have to question if that serves any of us well?
I never had any hatred toward my parents, not ever, and that didn’t mean they didn’t do things that I didn’t like. I might have had an occasion to be disappointed in them but I always tried to understand them. This served me well in never having to carry the burdens of anger and judgements and hatred.
Some of my father’s behaviors were questionable to me, so I tried harder to understand him. I could never have at age18 entered into the service during the Korean War like he did. I could and would never know what it feels like to have an enemy shoot at me and want to kill me all the while living in a foreign country. And yet as a teenager, this was my father’s reality. As a child, just a little boy he experienced the death of his seven year old brother. Again he lived through an experience that I never had but always tried to understand how that formed him and his life and contributed to making him the man that he was and that I knew and loved.
My mother was more of a mystery to me. She had what appeared to be a large loving family with six siblings and parents that loved each other and worked hard for their family. She was intelligent and highly educated. The mystery for me was why a woman who appeared to have so much going for her also had a history with men that were abusive to her. I still don’t understand it yet I know that it is true. What happened to her? I truly can’t answer that but I always tried to understand her. For me it was harder to love her because as much as I tried, I didn’t really understand her.
Today there are so many adult children that have decided to judge their parents so harshly; I witness it every single day in my support group. For me the take away is so clear, these kids have absolutely no desire to understand their parents and what formed them. And it is so sad, because they too will one day require understanding. We all do.
Prayer of Saint Francis Lyrics
Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love
Where there is injury pardon
Where there is doubt faith
Where there is despair hope
Where there is darkness light
And where there is sadness joy
Oh divine grant that I may
Not seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life
Amen
Today I pray for a world and for a life that includes more and more understanding and less and less criticism and judgement.
Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
Along The Way and Another Way books on Amazon and Barnes & Noble
“Didn’t you notice me?” He asked.
By Bernadette A. Moyer
It was 1976 and I was just seventeen years old as I was running up the stairs in our Allentown house. I was in a hurry and anxious to talk to my mother, I swiftly ran past a three year old little boy named Brenden, who caught my attention when he said so confidently and so clearly ”didn’t you notice me?”
He was calling me out. Brenden was a child that I often babysat along with his older sister Ariane and three other siblings. I liked the name Ariane so much that I named my own daughter after her. They were the children of a Baptist minister and his wife; they were friends of my mother and our family. The kids were all adorable and each child was confident and proud.
It is more than 40 years later and I will never forget that day and that a three year old said what needed to be said, he stopped me in my tracks when he asked me “didn’t you notice me?” I felt awful and I made sure he knew that I not only noticed him but appreciated seeing him again. I apologized for attempting to run past him. All he wanted was acknowledgement. I never intended to “not notice him” but clearly my actions said otherwise.
I read much more than I could ever write and I see posts that I read but never comment on although they often strike a chord with me. Every single day sometimes multiple times in a day I hear from or read about families that are broken and relationships that have ended. More and more families have estranged family members. There are family members that have decided not to acknowledge other family members.
Often during the holiday season the wounds, hurts and heartaches resurface with greater intensity. Everyone wants that Norman Rockwell like Christmas and yet few families really experience it. Someone is hurting, someone is missing, and many things in the family are different. Mom and dad have adult children that not only don’t “notice” them but literally want nothing to do with them. Overall the parents are bewildered and the adult children feel justified.
In just about every single case, the narrative is pretty much the same the adult children say they were “abused” it was mental abuse, or verbal abuse or physical abuse or all three. They all had “terrible childhoods” and now mom and dad must pay. They must pay by “no contact” or by not being accepted and noticed. It is an intolerant response.
Most all of the parents I have spoken with declare that they loved their kids and did the best they knew how, they did their best with what they had and what they knew at that time. Many parents never saw it coming and most of the adult kids seem to think little or nothing of it. Bad parents must be erased, period.
What you learn though in life is that it is never ever that simple. Relationships are complex and complicated. Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. The longer you are in any relationship the wider the range of experiences you will share.
Like Brenden, a small child, I used to take it all in and onto myself; I used to be willing to accept the feelings and the responsibilities that went along when someone, anyone decided to cut me out of their life.
Then one day I woke up and accepted that I am human, sometimes I do great and other times not so much, but at the end of the day I am only responsible for my actions. I take 100% responsibilty for the things I do and the things I say, how other people treat me is about them, it was and is never about me.
The way we treat other people says so much about us, it is never about the other person, our actions, our decisions are all ours. We own them. Just like our feelings and our emotions, they belong to us. Simply put, your anger is your problem.
When I woke up to it I realized that absolutely nothing other people do is because of me, it is always because of them. People do what they do and people create their narrative often so they may justify their own behaviors and all their own decisions and actions.
What kind of son or daughter looks good when they have cut mom and dad out of their lives? Zero and none at all and so it is determined that mom and dad must be the “bad” ones because it surely isn’t going to be their adult children.
The same thinking can be applied to marriages that break apart or most any other relationships that end, someone is declared “right” and someone else is declared the “wrong” one. That’s just what we do, a couple decides to divorce and we want to know who is at fault? Yet again it isn’t that simple.
Relationships succeed or fail because of what both sides do; both parties contribute to the success or to the failure. The success is because of both people as is the failure. It is never ever just one sided. I always try my best to live by the golden rule, treat other people in the way that you, yourself would want to be treated. If you wouldn’t want something done to you, you probably shouldn’t do that same thing to anyone else.
We beat ourselves up when relationships don’t turn out like we think they should, we might be better served if we just accept that we have done our best, acknowledge our own portion and learn the lessons that each and every relationship can teach us.
At the end of the day and at the end of this life, we ask ourselves about what do we need and what do we want. For most all of us that answer will be peace and to be acknowledged that we were here and that we mattered.
As we age, we learn that we can come to peace after we did everything we can to right our wrongs and to trust that with God comes the entire acknowledgement that we will ever need.
You can’t fix someone else, you can only be the best person that you can be, it has been said that if you can’t fix it, it probably wasn’t your problem in the first place.
“Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past, let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” John F. Kennedy
Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
Along The Way and Another Way on Amazon and Barnes and Noble
The Nurture in Nature
By Bernadette A. Moyer
Just returned from a long weekend in Niagara Falls, New York and words nor photographs will ever do justice to the splendor and natural beauty of The Falls. It was my first trip there and hopefully not my last. It was nature at its best. The sounds and the look of waterfalls doing what they do naturally just a beautiful scene to take in, it almost took my breath away.
Minutes before you reach the falls to view, you hear them with that soft and calming sound of rushing waters. Then when you arrive you aren’t sure where to look first and what area to walk down first. There are people there just like you admiring it, taking it in and shooting photos and videos.
There is so much here to love, first it is a FREE National Park and on the day that we first arrived we received FREE holiday parking in their lot. The Falls are mesmerizing and they exude energy. There is incredible life, a life force that comes with the raging waterfalls. Each different time of day brings a different back drop with daylight one look and then in being backlit with colored lights at night. During our weekend stay we visited three times and I could have easily returned for many more visits. It doesn’t get old.
I was overcome with peace and also with pride. These waterfalls made me aware of just how small I am in a world with natural wonders and with the life force of this energy found in nature. I was also proud to live in a country that showcases its natural beauty so beautifully.
The trip to the waterfalls at Niagara Falls once again drove home for me just how much nurturing can be found in nature. So much life was happening right there and right then. The good news is that it didn’t include; television, radio, news, games or any other distraction that we face in life it was just simple Mother Nature at her best most beautiful self.
I am reminded again that all we really need to maintain our peace is a trip outdoors whether it is Niagara Falls, the ocean, the mountains, a lake or park, a garden or backyard trees and landscaping, Mother Nature is always there with arms wide open and willing to share all her many splendors. She nurtures us so completely in being honest and true and completely natural.
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Along The Way and Another Way by Bernadette A. Moyer available on Amazon and Barnes& Noble
Know Your Value
By Bernadette A. Moyer
“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
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Along The Way and Another Way available on Amazon and Barnes Noble
The Good People
By Bernadette A. Moyer
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
Managing Anxiety
By Bernadette A. Moyer
I have lived with anxiety my whole life. For me I believed it was a by-product of having been raised in an Italian Catholic family. There was a lot of yelling and calling one another out. There was confrontation. That is just the way it was and often the end result for me was a certain degree of anxiety.
My father wanted us to be good kids and to be smart and involved and there were definite goals and boundaries. We were expected to get good grades be high achievers and to be polite and well mannered. That was the least that was expected of us. Often the expectations created anxiety in me. How would I measure up? Would I and could I achieve good grades?
Later in my life I appreciated my parent’s high standards for me. We were supposed to excel not to just get by but to be our very best. My dad was a proud man. He believed that everyone should work and work for what they needed and wanted. Hand-outs for him were an insult. Yet there were many times when I was a young child that my parents could have used a hand up to help them with raising their five children.
For a long time probably until my late twenties and early thirties I didn’t even know what “anxiety” was just that I could be sick when confronted with pressure. The pressure of a job interview or the pressure of a business meeting often made the pit of my stomach turn.
Looking back what was almost funny was that age 26 I was the youngest Realtor in my office and it was once confided in me “how put together and accomplished you come across” and yet before that big meeting you could find me in the rest room having just dumped my lunch. I would get so nervous and sick and worried that I literally made myself throw up.
Today “anxiety” is referred to as a “mental illness” and recently I spoke with a handful of people that like me have certain degrees of anxiety or have a child or loved one who experiences “anxiety” and like me they do not consider it a “mental illness.” One friend said, “Who doesn’t have anxiety?”
I know there are different degrees of it, some people can’t function, and they become so anxious that they just can’t function to do normal everyday tasks. Even the smallest meeting or taking them out of their comfort zone causes anxiousness and an inability to function. Many are medicated as a result.
For me I have learned to tackle the things that make me anxious and to push through it. There are times I have to talk myself down and tell myself to breathe and to calm down. Mind over matter often works for me. I also imagine what the other side will look like, how will I feel when I accomplish the task that is making me anxious? How will I feel when I have mastered that which makes me nervous and anxious?
On many levels my anxiety made me better, it made me try harder, it made me more aware it contributed to my drive and to being successful. Recently I was watching an interview with Tom Petty and he said that before he performs it “takes him all day to work himself up to perform and then all night to bring him back down” I am sure that every single performer lives with a certain degree of anxiety before they actually take the stage.
And for most all of us life is our stage and it seems normal to me that any time we leave our comfort zone we will experience some degree of anxiety. The single greatest thing that I have found to help with my anxiety is being prepared. Do your homework and know what you are walking into and what you are entering. Nothing helps reduce anxiety like preparation. Take deep breathes and visualize what success will look like and feel like. Imagine how good you will feel when you get past the anxiety and accomplish what you have set out to do.
Today I would tell my younger self, calm down, breathe, take it easy, you will get through this, you will survive!
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
The thing about anxiety is that you have to manage it, because if you don’t it will manage you …
Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
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What Do I Want
By Bernadette A. Moyer
What do I want? What do I want out of life? What do I want out of today and tomorrow and next week and next year?
Seems like many times in life we should rethink and ask that question as it is sure to change as we continue to grow and change.
I truly believe the happiest people are the ones that are living their lives in a way that answers that question. What do I want? What makes me happy? How do I want to live my life and take care of myself? What do I need to be happy?
When we are young we are consumed with “what do I want” and answering and doing what we want then comes life and responsibilities, that career job, owning a home or a car and having children or pets all depend on us to produce and to provide. Sometimes it is easy to get lost in what does everyone need rather than in what do I want.
Having children and raising them is one of the most selfless acts and responsibility that we will ever take on, being responsible for another human being is the highest calling and requires giving and giving and giving on a minute to minute hour to hour and daily basis. It is never ending, but it also requires us to put our own personal wants and needs on a back burner. Kids have immediate needs all they know is now and later, adults can and do wait.
Then it happens the kids are raised, and full fledged adults out on their own and once again it is the perfect time for us, just us.
What do I want? It sounds so easy, right? But is it? How do you go about answering that question?
“Be careful what you wish for, you may receive it.” W.W. Jacobs
For me its starts with a gut check, how am I feeling? Then it goes to making lists, what else do I want to do and accomplish in this lifetime? Then jumping off and staring, diving in, trying, learning, giving it a whirl.
No other person can answer that question for us and sometimes it takes thought, aloneness and quiet for us to come up with it ourselves. All I know for sure is that the only road to true and lasting happiness is finding a way to afford what you want in both time and treasure and then setting out and making it happen!
Here is to your happiness and here is to getting and appreciating all that you ever needed and wanted …
Bernadette on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer
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Forward March
By Bernadette A. Moyer
What lies ahead is so much more important than what was left behind. Today is a new day, today is the first day of the rest of our lives. What will we do with it?
I’ve often thought that if most of us knew what was ahead, we would just stay stuck? We live in hope, we hope that what comes next will be good for us and make us happy and yet so often that just isn’t the case.
But then again many times it is… what lies ahead can be better than anything we have yet to experience. If we believe it, we can receive it!
“The future belongs to those who believe in their dreams.” Eleanor Roosevelt
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Peter Drucker
“Sometimes life doesn’t turn out the way you expected or hoped. That doesn’t mean you can’t be happy. If you don’t limit yourself to your first version of your life there’s always a bright future ahead.” Michael Josephson
Your future will always be bright when you stay focused, optimistic and confident. There is no future in the past … the future starts today … forward march …
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Hurting Hearts
By Bernadette A. Moyer
Our hearts are broken after witnessing mass murders in Las Vegas, Nevada. Who does this? What kind of a person kills 58 people and wounds over 500 more and why? We want to know why? While we still demand an answer to what kind of “why” response will it ever be good enough. It won’t!
What causes such hatred and anger in a human being that they would go on a killing mission? Prepare for it, plan on it and then carry it out? Thank God most of us will never understand that mindset and those horrific actions.
This story this event is so hard to process and I knew it would be even more difficult when the faces and the ages and the professions of those murdered would be published. These are people who should have had years and years of living life ahead of them. People that have families and friends who are left to grieve their loss and all the while trying to understand why one human being would do this to any other human being. People that should never have died so young were killed as though they didn’t matter by someone who didn’t even know their name.
Most of us will never understand this and that is a good thing, to identify with this crazed mass murdered isn’t normal for anyone that values human life.
Today I cried, it was tears of anger and shock and grief and loss. As if these murders and gunshots of hatred in Las Vegas wasn’t enough we lost an icon rock and roll star who also died unexpectedly and too young. In a recent interview Tom Petty talked about his desire to travel less and do less shows so he could be there for his grandchildren. It was as if he knew how much he missed out on with his own children and acknowledged that this time things would be different, he wanted to be there.
What can we take away from death? What should the lessons be and what should we do next? We can’t control what other people do, we can’t control many things in life except for what we do and how we handle what comes next.
Grief and loss are tremendous teachers and if nothing else they are supposed to drive home that all we really have is the here and now. The way that we treat people says so much about us. Kindness counts. Every single day we are afforded opportunities to respond with love or with hate. It is a choice.
Whatever was motivating and disturbing the Vegas killer he chose to respond with hatred. There is a lesson here. Hate and anger and killing never ever look good on anyone, not ever. There is no justifiable reason for the killing of innocent people. And the cowardly way in which he chose to murder from a distance and to their backs and then take his own life.
Everything in this event is difficult to process …
What should we come away with? How about what can any one of us do? There are two parts here for me; first and foremost we must live all of life to the fullest. Our days here are numbered and we should live like the Tim McGraw song, “Live like you are dying” do the things that matter to you, spend the time with the people that you love, live life without regrets so when the end does arrive, you know that you did live fully.
And the second thing is to check your anger and hate, let it go, use if for the fuel to do good. Hate and anger although normal emotions in humans can be controlled and redirected into something positive. Always try to lead with kindness and with love. Sometimes it is difficult to do but always, always worth it. Something good can always come from something so horrific … if we seek it, we will find it!
“And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying” Country Music Artist Tim McGraw and song written by Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman
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Bernadette A. Sahm 