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Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
Month: June 2018
“Kindness Counts”
I’d be lying to you if I said the recent suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain didn’t still upset me, because they do. Even more so than those two suicides are countless social media posts about the number of people who take their own lives, of the importance of understanding mental illness, and the faces of those who suffer and have suffered from these illnesses.
Kate and Anthony were public figures, yet to see just how many people actually do take their own lives is unbelievable. There are no pictures for the world to see on social media of these people; they were living their life just as we all do.
Yet there’s so much more to each and every story of suicide.
And I, for one, can’t even begin to know how to understand them all, except to say that they’re all tragic, sad, and heartbreaking.
What I can do is keep writing words of encouragement and inspiration to all of you; I can keep writing stories to share with you in the hopes that it may touch the heart of someone who needed to read it; and I can keep doing something every day of my life to make a difference in the world and in the life of another.
Let’s do this together.
Let’s start today.
One act of kindness can change the day or even the life of another human being. We don’t always know what someone else is going through, so be kind to each other with both your words and your actions.
Kindness counts.
We all count.
Remember that.
It’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
“On Being Lonely”
It’s been such a sad week at hearing of the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. Depression, mental illness, and worse than that, a feeling of loneliness…it attacks even the most strongest of people at times, rich or poor, famous or not. We’re all vulnerable at feeling such times of sadness.
Robin Williams said it best years ago that the worse type of loneliness is being with people who make you feel that way. And he’s right that being alone isn’t the worst thing in the world, it’s being with people you love that make you feel alone.
So today I want to say this to all of you: If you’re blessed to have people in your life that love you, care for you, respect you, and are always there for you then know how lucky you are. It’s a gift to have people like that in your life.
Be sure to let them know you feel the same. Don’t let the ones you love feel lonely. Give back to them all the gifts they give to you.
Think about it.
Stop what you’re doing right now and grab the hand of someone who loves you that may or may not be going through a sad day; wrap your arms around them in a loving hug; sit with them, share your thoughts with them, share yourself with them.
Be there.
Don’t wait for the day they’re not there anymore for you.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
“One Chair”
Years ago whenever my grandmother saw a two seater car she’d say: “That’s a selfish car. There’s only enough room for two people.” It was a funny thing to hear her say, yet as I’ve grown older I understand even more of what she was saying.
I’m that way with chairs.
My front porch has a table and two chairs on one side of the door and on the other side is two chairs with a table between them. I’m usually in one of those chairs and look forward to the people I love sitting with me in the other chair.
There’s not always someone sitting with me but there’s an empty chair just always waiting for someone who needs to use it.
When I see someone put only one chair out for themselves it tells me a couple of things. It tells me that they want to be alone, it tells me that they don’t want me sitting with them, it tells me that they never had a thought to how I was feeling and that I may need someone to give me a chair.
Sometimes we all need a chair. We need that second chair to know we’re not alone. We need that second chair so that we don’t feel lonely. We need that second chair to let us know that someone is just waiting for us to sit in it.
The second chair means that someone wants us.
The second chair means that someone loves us.
The second chair means that we matter.
And to me, when I see only one chair I see a person who is selfish, who doesn’t care about anyone other than themselves and a person who takes the people in his life for granted.
You can spend your life with only one chair.
But remember what that chair represents to those that love you.
And be mindful and aware that a day may come in which there won’t be that person to fill a second chair; you will be there alone with one chair.
I love having two chairs on my front porch.
It’s my small way of letting the people I love know that they’re always welcome to be with me, that I love them, and that I want to spend time with them.
Chairs.
How many do you have?
I hope you have more than one.
It’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
“Time To Shift”
When you replace “why is this happening to me” with “what is this trying to teach me?” everything shifts.
And that’s truth.
So often we find ourselves in situations that upset us and our first thought is always “why is this happening to me?”
And the answer is always the same: “Life is trying to teach you something about yourself.”
Now the work begins. You need to look long and hard at the situation and think about how and why it happened.
Did someone say something hurtful to you? Did someone make you cry? Did someone point a finger of blame at your for being who you are?
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” then you need to still your mind, take a deep breath and ask yourself “why?”
And the answer to this is always the same: “Because you let them.”
You let them treat you less than your worth.
And what you allow will continue.
It always does.
And that’s what the situation is about. It’s not randomly happening TO YOU, it’s happening FOR YOU…the Universe is trying to teach you a life lesson. It’s asking you the tough questions: “Why would you let someone treat you like that?”
Most of us don’t know how to answer that except to make excuses for their bad behavior. It’s having a false hope that it won’t happen again and that they really didn’t mean it. It’s a false hope of believing that the person will change. It’s a false hope that they’ll say they’re sorry and mean it.
I’ve been in that position more times in this lifetime than I can count but I’ve grown as a person, become stronger, and believe that those moments of pain and heartache aren’t my fault. After all, no one does anything intentionally to another human being in the hopes that they’ll hurt you. Yet, it happens and I’ve learned that it’s happened because of their feelings, not mine. It could be their insecurities coming through, or it could simply be that they truly meant what they said. Only that person can answer that question.
And only you can answer the question of why you let it happen.
And only you can figure out the lesson it was trying to teach you.
Most often times those situations happen to remind us that we’re important, that we count, and that we are valuable.
They happen to remind us to love ourselves more, to be kind to ourselves and respect ourselves.
And they happen to remind us that we should always be kind, and if we can’t then we should be quiet. They remind us that no one should treat another human being badly, not matter the excuse or reason for the bad behavior. They remind us that we all have a heart and soul that can be easily broken, and when another human being breaks them it takes time and effort for the healing to begin.
And the healing begins with YOU when you understand the lesson that life hit you with.
And only you can change the situation.
And only you can stop allowing those experience to happen.
Forget about “why this is happening to you” and shift your focus and energy to “what is this trying to teach me?”
It’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
“Life As A Writer”
I’ve been writing all of my life, since the day I could hold a pencil in my hand and learn to spell. It’s something as natural to me as breathing. When I was a young child my stories were nothing more than a few sentences and a crayon drawing at the bottom of the page.
Through high school and college I could be found sitting on the beach like a Bohemian hippie, writing lyrics and poetry. There were nights you would find me in the hallway of my dorm, hot pot of instant coffee and me sitting against the wall with a notebook writing through the middle of the night while all the other college students were asleep.
During my marriage and raising children I began keeping a journal about my feelings of being a wife and mom. I wrote poetry and journal entries which would become short stories.
I was always writing something.
Yet until a few years ago whenever someone asked what I did I would say I’m a mom. I was a Sunday School teacher, a soccer mom, PTA mom, Cub Scout leader and a Brownie leader. There was never a mention of “I’m a writer.”
It’s funny how you can write and write your whole life and never say you were a writer.
Until my first book was published.
Well, even when it was published I still would say “I write books.”
It was my close high school friend, Rich, that said to me one day: “Why don’t you say what you are? You’re a writer. You’re a published author. You’re exactly what you wanted to be.”
Wow…I never thought of myself as that.
And why?
There’s really no definitive answer “why” I never said it or thought it; I spent most of my life raising my kids, so to think of myself as someone other than that seemed like a foreign concept to me.
Yet the truth of the matter is that I AM a writer. I AM a published author. I AM a lyricist.
And I’m even more than that.
I’m a writer who uses her words to heal and help others and try and make a difference in the world.
Writing is a part of my everyday life and as much a part of me as breathing is.
And as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that I can use my writing to share my experiences with others; to help them through a difficult time; to let them know they’re not alone.
Writing is my voice that I want to be heard.
Writing is my heart reaching out to love the world.
Writing is my soul that shares it passion.
Writing is my passion and my dream come true.
Writing is the one way I know to reach out to people. It’s my way of helping, sharing and making a difference in one life and one day, I hope, the world.
My name is Anne Dennish.
And I’m a writer.
And it’s a very good thing…for me.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
Anne Dennish - Writer/Author 