truth

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

Does Not Come With Instructions

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Does Not Come With Instructions
By Bernadette A. Moyer

instructions

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

lives

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

Memory Lane

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Memory Lane
By Bernadette A. Moyer

memorylane

We all have them, our memories; we have memories of our childhood, our teenage years, our young adult years and more. We can think about them and sometimes we can visit the people and the places from another time.

Going home will always be Allentown, Pennsylvania for me. It is where I spent a large portion of my childhood and my teenage years as well as my young adult years. As a kid, I walked to school and to church, to many friends’ homes, to the library, the YMCA, to my guitar lessons downtown. I learned to drive there went to first concerts there and even married and had my only birthed child there.

The memories are powerful and numerous. My friend of over 40 years from our days as camp counselors still lives there. My father lived and died there. Again, the memories are many and they run the entire spectrum of happiness, joy, pain and losses. They run the entire spectrum of life.

When I go home to visit, I visit many significant landmarks, the place where I married, the church where my daughter was baptized, my first apartment, my favorite market, and favorite eateries and more.

It is always a fun trip down “memory lane” and yet there is also something so profound about where we started in life and where we end up. There is that distance between our beginnings and where we are today. And of course all the people, the places and the experiences we had along the way. Some remain and many do not stay.

I remember fun times of laughter with my sisters. Fun times with childhood friends. I remember my Confirmation in our neighborhood church. I remember the hospital where I was a volunteer candy striper and several years later, that same hospital where my daughter would come into this world. I remember so many things.

My parents were together there, and then they were not as a divorce would end their union. Just like life when people are so profound and significant in our lives and then they just are not at all present in our lives. We learn to adjust and to adapt; we learn to take our memories with us as we move away and as we move along.

I look back and I see so clearly the riches of the many experiences I have had, truly it has been like a buffet of choices of options of likes and dislikes. Overall, though, I know that it has all contributed to who I became and who I am today. I love my life, I love myself, and I love my journey, warts and all. It truly has been rich and long and wide. I am happy and I am grateful.

A trip down memory lane is always well worth the trip … I highly recommend the trip!

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

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

Check Yourself

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Check Yourself
By Bernadette A. Moyer

Man walking down road at sunset

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

believe

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

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

What Do I Want

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What Do I Want
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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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

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

Happiness Heals You

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Happiness Heals You
By Bernadette A. Moyer

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You have to want to be happy and you have to want to be healed and both come together as a package deal. Happiness heals us! It just does …

The more things that you can do that make yourself happy, the healthier you will feel and become. If one area of life isn’t going well for you then focus on the areas that bring you joy and happiness.

Happiness is infectious and contagious. There is no limit or end to the happiness you can create. Spread it around and see it take on a new life and more growth and power. What you put out into the universe comes right back to you.

We all come with our own issues, things that we were born with or things that happened in our childhood or later in life, hurts and disappointments are a natural part of living life. Most often they are here for us to learn and to grow. We can stay stuck in our disappointments or we can gather up the lessons learned and move forward with grace and love and happiness.

It is possible all we have to do is desire it and we do this by acting in ways that show our love and gratitude for the lives that we lead. Learning to live in the moment knowing that yesterday is over and tomorrow has yet to come.

We do create our own heaven or hell, it all depends on us. Every single situation gives us the opportunity to respond with love. Happiness is a choice. Love is a choice.

Do the things you love, surround yourself with the people that you love and strive to be the best version of yourself. No one can make you happy unless you want to be happy. No one can heal you unless you want to be healed.

“Folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” Abraham Lincoln

Today I pray that you have enough happiness to heal all the things that have hurt you. Seek happiness!

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

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

Living a Lie

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Living a Lie
By Bernadette A. Moyer

illusion

My husband is famous for saying “he/she is just living a lie.” Sadly we have known more than a few people like that, people that create a narrative to help justify their own poor behaviors. There are people that knowingly lie so they don’t have to accept responsibility for their circumstances and life choices.

We live in a world where “political correctness” often takes the place of harsh reality. And many of us actually bless it and go along with it. You can declare what sex you are! I recently filled out an application where I was asked if I was male, female, and other or does not wish to declare. Next thing we will be able to adjust who our parents are if we can fill out forms like a birth certificate and “declare” whatever sex we are then maybe the next step is we can also “declare” and decide whoever we want our parents to be regardless of who they truly were?

The definition of “mental illness” used to be defined as living in an altered reality and yet in our culture today we almost promote it.

I remember so vividly back in the 1980’s telling my mother that her husband was a child abuser and I will never ever forget her response to me, “we will never speak of this again” she said.

What she meant was I will never speak to you again. Think about that response? Not something like he would never do that or why on earth would you say that? But “never speak of this” she knew the truth and she lived more than 30 years with a lie. She was living a lie. It was easier for her to deny the truth than to face the cold harsh reality.

What made it even harder to witness was how she aligned herself with others in the family that would also provide cover for her and go along with the lie because the truth was just so hard to accept. Who on earth wants to be married to a child molester or have one in the family? In order for her to believe the truth she would have had to leave him and she wasn’t going to do that.

I couldn’t live her lie, I couldn’t live with it for me and I wouldn’t put my three children around someone that was known to me as a child abuser. There were no winners but I knew I did what had to be done. And even though I seldom spoke of it, let’s face it; it’s pretty embarrassing having a known child abuser marry into the family. Initially I didn’t want to embarrass my mother and I didn’t want to bring further harm to the child who trusted me enough to confide in me. Then one day you realize that by NOT speaking out and by not speaking the truth you have contributed to making yourself the scapegoat and a target.

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The problem with living a lie though is that seldom is it innocent and seldom does it just include or affect just one person. It has been said “you are only as sick as your secrets.”

They say that many abuse survivors go into an altered state to protect themselves when they are being abused. PTSD or posttraumatic stress disorder is a mental disorder that can develop after a person is exposed to a traumatic event such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions or other threats on a person’s life. Many survivors can’t face the truth. It is just so painful and therefore some will create an alternate reality.

For almost 20 years now I have been a part of several support groups for estranged parents of adult children. I knew that pain from both sides. I knew it from my mother and years later I would know it from my daughter. I have been supported and I have supported many others through their shock and pain and disbelief. It’s messy. Most parents take it on themselves blaming themselves and looking at what they did, didn’t do and could have done differently. After all we were the adults, we were the parents we were the ones that raised them.

What I have uncovered in many circumstances and from speaking to parents as well as the adult children that estrange is that often it starts out simple enough, something was said and done or perceived as a wrong and the child decides to dismiss mom and dad from their lives.

But … and a big but as time goes by it becomes more and more difficult to return. Much has happened and typically the adult child has others in their ear it could be a spouse, a husband or wife a friend, a family member someone that usually has an agenda of their own. The adult child doesn’t want to be the “bad” one because what “good” adult child throws mom and dad away and erases them from their life? So mom and dad have to be the bad guys.

Recently I had an adult child confide in me that they literally sought out others in the family that would side with them. Anyone that already had issues was a new alliance in the estrangement. Sides are drawn and sides are chosen, again making any meaningful reconciliation virtually impossible.

The road coming back becomes littered with more and more lies … they lie to protect themselves, they lie about their families, they lie about mom and dad and in being a “victim” many reap the rewards of victimization. So the lies continue.

One lie typically leads to numerous other lies and sadly and eventually they end up living a lie … it has been said, “The only people who are mad at you for speaking the truth are those people who are living a lie. Keep speaking the truth.”

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