Pay attention to your thoughts.
Trust them.
These thoughts are Divine wisdom being offered to you in answer to your prayers for Divine guidance.
Rest your mind.
Follow your soul.
Love and blessings,
Wendy
Tag: healthandwellness
Moment of Grace – Love, Wendy
When I feel depleted, I have nothing to share…I cannot fill your cup.
If I need time, for whatever the reason, it’s not about you. I’m not abandoning you, I’m just making myself a priority today where I offer to myself a moment of grace.
I am worthy of rest and wellness.
Love, Wendy
Managing Daily Stress For Lasting Wellness – Love, Wendy
Find your inner strength and resolve to allow your mind to steer you towards wellness, recognizing that true resilience comes from within with every opportunity that affords you to practice navigating with a clear mind and healthy body, not from the fleeting relief of external substances. External situations, no matter how challenging, should never dictate your choices or push you towards unhealthy coping mechanisms.
By recognizing and nurturing your inner clarity, you have the opportunity to make healthy practices a lifestyle. Try grounding yourself in healthier ways to manage stress—such as mindfulness, exercise, organic foods, loving connections, and self-reflection where you empower yourself to face life’s challenges and adversity, disappointments and hardships with awareness, grace and stability.
In choosing wellness over temporary escapes, you honor your body and mind, building lasting strength, and a sense of agency that no external circumstance can take away. Remember, the power to heal and grow always resides within you when you practice daily self care, self respect and self preservation.
As it states in my book, Write Pray Recover:A Journey To Wellness Through Spiritual Solutions and Self Care, “Self care is the actions that we take to achieve wellness, and wellness is where we stand in our power.”
Take care of yourself for yourself, and to demonstrate to others how you expect to be treated. By honoring your own needs and setting clear boundaries, you show others that you value yourself and deserve to be treated with kindness and consideration.
And perhaps, you will encourage those observing your agency and practices to set their own standards a little higher.
Love and blessings,
Wendy
Mental Health and Wellness – Love, Wendy
Our mental health is on a continuum and on any given day, for any given reason, at any given time we move along that continuum and we must be armed with a variety of tools at our disposal as we move along the continuum.
Movement along the continuum could relate to biological factors, environmental factors and even how we practice daily self-care.
Self care is one of the most effective ways in managing our symptoms and to stay ahead of our symptoms. This is especially true when we are aware of our body/mind connection and recognize the symptoms in the early stage of escalation. With this information, we can intervene immediately, and/or ask for support.
We all have mental health.
Our relationship to self driven by self care, self respect and self preservation above all else is the foundation of wellness.
Wellness becomes not just an outcome, but a living practice grounded in our ability to honor and protect the integrity of who we are, and how we experience life.
Love,
Wendy
Music – Love, Wendy
Music, including melody and lyrics, is the universal language of expression. Music is the accompaniment to one’s experiences, and where one feels safe to “feel” and to emote.
Music reignites our soul and encourages us to reflect, to express our emotions, to be vulnerable, and deepens the process of processing our experiences.
Music invites us to remember, to connect to our joys and sorrows, to celebrate, and to heal in the safe space of our own memories.
Love, Wendy
“Carry Quietly” – Love, Wendy
Recently, the famous saying, “There are none so blind who will not see,” has pierced my heart. It has become very personal.
And so as I typically do, I asked a question of the angels as to how I will move forward with this information, and they answered me through music. A song entitled, “Carry Quietly” began to play on my Pandora station immediately upon posing my question.
I take it to mean to hold that relationship with love, not to challenge what I observe, to simply practice acceptance without judgement, and to “carry it quietly,” as “there are none so blind who will not see.”
Love can still shine through the cracks of our differences, illuminating the genuineness of the human condition.
By embracing acceptance, we cradle the beauty of imperfection, allowing compassion to blossom even in the face of ignorance.
And perhaps at another time, we plant another seed.
It’s in this quiet carrying that we find strength—not in force, but in gentle resilience, nurturing connections that remind us we are all part of a larger tapestry, woven together by shared experiences and emotions.
Perhaps we can even find a lesson of a deeper understanding of the human condition creating a deeper connection to Spirit, to ourselves, and to others as we “carry it quietly.”
Love, Wendy
Normalize Making Mistakes – Love, Wendy
Let us normalize making mistakes.
We all make our wisest decisions with the knowledge that we have based on life experiences at any given time.
As we evolve, we have the opportunity to embrace new wisdom and perspectives.
Embracing this process allows us to be more compassionate toward ourselves and others.
Forgive yourself and use your experiences to fuel your growth, transforming challenges into lessons that guide you toward a more enlightened path.
EXCERPT FROM MY UPCOMING BOOK – WRITE PRAY RECOVER:A JOURNEY TO WELLNESS THROUGH SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS AND SELF CARE – LOVE, WENDY
AWARENESS OF SELF, OTHERS, AND SPIRIT
As we practice awareness of ourselves and others through spiritually aligned actions, especially when we are met with conflict, it is helpful to remember these four suggestions in arriving at a mutually beneficial and constructive resolution:
1. Do not react.
2. Listen without judgement of others, and practice non-judgement of ourselves.
3. BREATHE…Observe your feelings and emotions, allow them to pass through you and, if warranted, take a timeout.
4. Respond with respect, sincerely validate all feelings, and state a clear intention of a positive outcome that will be beneficial to both parties.
Recently, I created these four steps as a way to remind myself of how to practice implementing spiritually aligned actions, at a glance. My friend and colleague, and the author of the foreword to this book, David Rahman and I disagreed on his initial draft to be used.
In an email David sent me the draft, and as a teacher, I could see a few places that, in my opinion, needed to be edited for clarity of meaning. I edited the foreword, and sent it back for David’s approval. David sent it back immediately and said that he was not okay with some of the edits as he felt that it changed the meaning of what he was trying to convey.
Immediately, I felt old triggers sneak in. As a child and young adult, I was never heard and my feelings had to be kept quiet. Whenever I wanted to discuss or share my feelings, I was told to “get out of my sight or I’ll break your neck!” So, I was allowing my past traumatic experiences to bleed into this present situation, and David had not said or done anything remotely similar to my childhood experience that warranted the rush of feelings that surfaced! My heart began to race, my head got a tight feeling, and I felt hot all over. Without thinking or breathing, or allowing myself the space to understand David’s words, or to offer validation of what he was feeling, I sent the email right back to him and said, “Then maybe we shouldn’t use your foreword.” I was literally in a fight/flight mindset. I had hundreds of irrational thoughts swirling around in my mind that, looking back, had absolutely nothing to do with the present situation. So, having an old behavior mindset (we all falter, but it’s how quickly we recover that counts!) was my way of “being heard.” What happens with trauma is it leaves an emotional, behavioral and mental imprint. So, when something feels the same as that traumatic painful experience, it activates your thought patterns linked to the initial trauma. This makes you think, act, react and feel in the same way you did when it first happened even though it is a different experience. David emailed back and said, “Okay, we won’t use it.”
The moment that I read his words, it was as if Spirit embraced all of me and suggested I reach out to David coming from a humble, loving, and spiritually aligned action. I felt an immediate calm. I texted David and asked if we could have a conversation, and he said, “Of course!” David and I are close friends in addition to being colleagues, and I admire him in his own right as a man and as a business man who helps thousands around the world who are living with mental health challenges to “reset their mindset,” and I value his friendship. So, we were going to FaceTime in an hour (David lives in the U.K. and we FaceTime a few times a week). Before then, I wanted to write down, as a reminder, my spiritually aligned action(s) that would offer an outcome we could both be excited about, and that would act as a reminder to myself to remain present throughout our dialogue.
The four steps listed above came pouring onto the paper immediately. I knew Spirit was speaking through me as I wrote it down and placed it in front of me on my bed next to my laptop where I would soon FaceTime with David.
As I allowed David to explain why he was feeling that some of the edits were not edits he could live with, I could feel my anger/anxiety escalating and I could hear intrusive thoughts yelling at him, “You’re not right! I’m a teacher!” Trauma is hard to tame, but not impossible, and because I wrote down the steps I wanted to follow and had it within view, I kept saying to myself, “David has the right to feel how he is feeling, and I must validate his feelings as I would like my feelings to be validated. I listened to his words with an intermittent reminder to myself to come back to the present, and that this situation is the present and in no way linked to, or reflective of my past trauma.
We spoke and negotiated for about an hour, and the result is the eloquent and heartfelt foreword that we agreed upon.
When we are aware of our trauma and how it can pop up without warning, and we are willing to heal it, and we are connected to the Universe/God/Spirit, we can create magnificent and permanent change.
EXCERPT FROM MY UPCOMING BOOK WRITE PRAY RECOVER:A JOURNEY TO WELLNESS THROUGH SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS AND SELF CARE – LOVE, WENDY
TRANSFORMATION THROUGH SELF-CARE, BOUNDARIES AND SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS
It takes a lot of work to unlearn old thought patterns and behaviors that were ingrained in our minds as precious children by adults who didn’t have the tools to care for us properly. We internalized the lack of love and attention, and the deprivation of emotional and physical safety and blamed ourselves. As adults, we find it hard to love and forgive ourselves, setting no boundaries, people pleasing, allowing ourselves to continue in unhealthy relationships, and desperate to feel loved.
WE CAN UNLEARN AND RELEARN. It is absolutely possible.
Find a professional that best serves your specific needs and that you feel safe with. Do the work, be dedicated to unlearning, and make room for gorgeous new lessons. Open your mind to a whole new understanding of yourself and all you are capable of. Unlimited beliefs open the path of an eventful journey filled with transformation and bountiful opportunities. Love yourself before all else.
Part of my self-care is setting boundaries. It benefits my personal space and gives others information about my expectations and what I will, and will not accept. One who lives in an ego-based mindset takes my boundaries personally and is not in alignment with my journey, nor are they in alignment with Spirit. For me to practice self-care, I must remain in alignment only with those who respect my personal space, my boundaries, and my desires.
Boundaries are set up to act as barriers to unwelcome attitudes, unsolicited advice, unhealthy behaviors and unwanted advances. When we step on top of the line, blurring the lines of friendship or way over the line into another’s personal space, we are displaying lack of self-control, profound disrespect, and blatant disregard for another’s values, morals, and heartfelt beliefs. Once is a test; twice is a life lesson. Healthy living begins with healthy boundaries. State them directly and clearly.
I have come from the mindset of a young girl who sought attention and validation for all of my choices and successes, and sought to be cradled in my pain, to a grown ass woman whose healthy choices, self-healing, and successes promote wellness. I have had the presence of mind to make it all happen through the pain my way. I stand deeply in humility and with the deepest sense of gratitude. Seven years of recovery, lessons and experience deeply rooted in a spiritual transformation and self-love have prepared me to stand alone, yet always connected to Spirit. I am, also, however, surrounded by the love of so many faithful souls, as I navigate the present moment, and everyday challenges.”
EXCERPT FROM WRITE PRAY RECOVER:A JOURNEY TO WELLNESS THROUGH SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS AND SELF CARE
A NEW BEGINNING…BY THE GRACE OF GOD
“In early 2013, shortly after I began my own recovery from lifelong addiction to prescription pills, and co-occurring disorders, my son, Matthew, and I, began a blog and website (no longer online) called The Rx Diaries, where my son designed a platform for me to write about my recovery from substance use disorder and mental illness. He came up with the words, “recovery, rebirth, release,” and used a butterfly as the focal point of my logo. No truer words resonate with me. The butterfly is an accurate depiction of my journey. I have broken free from the darkness, abandoned the cocoon, and I am free to live in my truth.
We have many “rebirths” throughout our lives, and each time we release what we learned that no longer serves us. As we shed that skin, we continue to learn, grow, and evolve, and to remain in a state of ease within our truest and highest self, where we are also able to offer ourselves, fully, to helping others on their journeys.
Recovery from anything is ongoing. It is a journey, and it is all about what road we choose to travel. There are times when we travel in the darkness and there are times when we hit a roadblock. We must remember that as we remain focused, as we remain in faith, as we remain determined, the sun will shine the light on us once again so we may continue on our way home. For me, I chose the road less travelled, yet have never lost my way.
It is said that everyone loves a comeback story. This is especially true for the woman who came back from a life of substance use disorder and co-occurring disorders. The woman with an inspirational story to share that offers hope to others struggling with this disease. A woman that nearly died of this disease in early 2013.
On April 2, 2013, I got ready for bed and in a moment where I had some clarity, I dropped to my knees and asked the Universe/God/Spirit to please help me, to save my life. I said, “God/Universe/Spirit, if you show me the way out of this, I will devote my life to any path you put before me.”
I have always felt a deep spiritual connection to the Universe through music, and said to the Universe at the end of my prayer, “In the next song on the radio, please give me a sign that you are with me.” I sat down on the edge of my bed, turned on the radio, and the first song to play was, “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” The words touched my heart, and I became so emotional. “Jesus, take the wheel, take it from my hands. I can’t do this on my own. I’m letting go… So give me one more chance. Save me from this road I’m on. Jesus, take the wheel.”
I went to bed knowing that I would soon be given specific guidance from the Universe that would ultimately save my life. I woke up the next morning and I heard a strong intuitive voice say to me, “Call for help. It is time.” And I heard this voice tell me that “everything is going to be alright.” I have been listening to that voice ever since. April 3, 2013 was the day that my life was saved by the Grace of God.”
Write Pray Recover 