Danny Rongo, “That Oneness Guy” asked me to kick off the fifth season of his podcast and I was thrilled to do it! We had a great time doing this interview as we talked about my books, my breast cancer and how we both keep a positive outlook on life. If you’re looking for some encouragement, motivation and inspiration, take a listen.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
I heard this quote the other day and have been in love with it ever since…because it’s so true. We keep holding on to the life we planned, even if it doesn’t work out the way we wanted it to. We hold onto wanting what or who we can’t have, hold onto the life we want for our children that had other plans, and even hold on to the career we wanted so badly that we couldn’t accept wasn’t meant to be.
We hold onto the dream of what we wanted, when in fact, there is most often, a better and bigger dream just waiting for us…and this is why I love this quote.
I thought I would be married to the same person forever…life had other plans.
I thought that all of my children would live close by…they had other plans.
I thought I would be living a much different life than I am now…life is teaching me patience.
So, you see, we all need to let go of the life that we planned that isn’t happening the way we had thought or wanted and open our hearts and mind to the life that is waiting for us.
It’s just waiting for you…
It’s just waiting for me…
Let’s sit back, have faith and let it happen.
I know I am.
I hope you do, too.
It’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
Photo by Anne Dennish @2020
I woke up at 4 am this morning with a heart that was hurting and a mind racing with thoughts of a lesson that I’m forever learning: “when someone shows you who they really are, believe them.”
The actions of someone towards you shouldn’t be ignored. If they treat you as if you don’t matter to them, believe them. If they make another person a priority over you, believe that you are not a priority. If they tell you all the things that are wrong with you, believe that that’s the way they feel about you.
People’s actions let you know if their words are truth. They let you know where their loyalty lies. They let you know whether you’re a priority or not. They let you know that the people who don’t care about them are more important than the person who does care about them: YOU!
Sometimes we simply don’t want to see what is right in front of us. We make excuses for 
the person who hurt us, we believe that they won’t do it again, and we believe that they do care about us even though their behavior has shown us over and over again that they don’t.
We don’t want to see the truth because we know how much it’s going to hurt.
And then the day comes where you have no choice but to see the truth. It’s the day you have to remember to give yourself all of the things that they can’t or won’t: love, respect, compassion, understanding and loyalty.
Everything begins with you.
And that means that you have to stop making everything about them.
“Don’t be someone else’s slogan because you are poetry.”
Don’t allow yourself to be treated like a slogan.
You deserve to be treated like poetry.
It’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
Happy December 1st! It’s the perfect day to officially announce to you that my new book, “Each Breath Along The Journey” has been released and is available for online purchase on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
I’m so excited about this new book and I hope that all of you who read it will be, too! 
“Each Breath Along The Journey” is a collection of short stories based on the personal experiences of the writer and how she survived them.
This book is filled with the life lessons that the author has learned throughout her life, from her divorce and being on her own to raise five children to surviving breast cancer. Some stories will make you cry and some will make you laugh, yet you’ll know that you’re not alone in this world.”
Buy it for yourself or give it as a gift. It’s the perfect time of year to share a book that’s positive, inspirational and motivational for everyone.
The last month of the year is here so let’s take it out in style…together! It’s time to start “living your best life!”
It’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
There’s a moment in my life that I will never forget. I was in my attorney’s office years ago going through my divorce. I was emotional and told her that it was so sad to me that the marriage was ending. What she said to me has stayed in my mind ever since:
“Yes, the marriage is ending, but you’re grieving the loss of a dream.”
And that was the best explanation I’ve ever heard… because she was right.
Every loss in life is a “grief of the loss of a dream.”
It could be the loss of the dream of losing someone we thought would be in our life forever, of losing a pet, of losing the job we love, of losing something important to us on our “bucket list.”
We all have dreams.
And when those dreams don’t come true we have to grieve the loss of them.
But please remember this: there WILL be dreams that come true.
I promise.
And it’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
“What’s” happened to you in your life isn’t as important as “why” it happened. ~AD~
We all experience some difficult situations in our life and I’ve come to accept and understand that the “what” that’s happened to me isn’t as important as the“why” that it did.
We’re so quick to blame others for our difficult times, yet we have a hand in those situations as well. Perhaps we aren’t being our authentic self or standing in our truth to those around us. Maybe we change “who” we are according to the people we are around at a particular moment. I can tell you that I’ve learned that I am in control of what I allow to happen to me and it’s up to me to set healthy boundaries for my highest good…and it’s not always easy to do.
I had breast cancer and it can’t always be prevented, yet I could have had a mammogram sooner than I had; I went 5 years without one and only had one done when I found my tumor. So while this “what” may have been destined to happen to me, the “why” it happened when it did was because I wasn’t loving myself enough to get that mammogram every year like I should have. I know better now.
I’ve lived through divorce and a bad relationship. The “what” that caused an ending to these relationships isn’t as important as the “why” it happened. It happened because I was allowing those people to treat me in a way I didn’t deserve. What you allow will continue and it did for me until I realized I deserved better and decided to stop it.
And I’ve lived through emotional, verbal and physical abuse. It went on for years until I finally put an end to it. “What” was said and done to me isn’t as important as “why” it was done to me. It happened because I let it happen. I wasn’t as strong as I am now, my self-esteem was non-existent, and I blamed myself for causing all those things that were said and done to me then. I was at the bottom and when I finally decided that enough was enough, I pulled myself up off the floor and began to see clearly of the “why” it happened. I began to get stronger day by day and set up boundaries that were never again to be crossed by anyone, and if they were, I certainly recognized it sooner. It happened because I let it, not because I deserved it. It was yet another life lesson for me to learn.
You have to love yourself, respect yourself, and know that you don’t deserve to be treated badly by anyone, especially by yourself. Let’s face it, we’re all masters of self-sabotage at times…we can hurt ourselves better than the person who is hurting us. Yet that’s not the way it should be; you know that as well as I do.
It’s time we all, myself included, stop focusing on the “what” that happened to us and start looking deep within ourselves to see our truth of the“why” it happened.
It’s then that we learn and grow and move forward into the life we want and deserve.
It’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
I’ve gone through my share of, what most may say, are traumatic experiences: divorce, cancer, and abuse, to name a few. When I share these experiences publicly many people ask me how I’m still standing, how in the world did I become so positive after so many negative things happened to me.
My answer is always the same: Because I chose to get through and I’m standing even stronger.
And how is that possible?
Because I knew I had to feel all the emotions that came with those “traumas” and deal with them; and that’s how I was able to heal.
No one wants to feel hurt, sadness or brokenness, yet we all do at some point in our life. Many people block those emotions; they tuck them away and believe that they moved on from them. I can tell you that they didn’t. Ignoring what you have to face is lying to yourself and eventually all those emotions you didn’t deal with will catch up with you at some point in your life. They always do.
And when they do catch up with you those around you pay the price for it as well.
Don’t you want to feel happy? Don’t you want to find joy in your life? Don’t you want to let go of an experience that caused you pain?
Sure you do…we all do.
So do it. Take a long look in the mirror at yourself and let your truth come through. Take that experience and all the pain that came with it and deal with it. Feel the pain, the heartache and let the healing waters of your tears flow to release it all. Then forgive the experience so you no longer hold onto it and then forgive yourself for allowing it to hold you back from the happiness you want and deserve.
You can run from those traumatic experiences but trust me, you can’t hide from them until you deal with them.
Feel, deal and heal, my friends.
It’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
And I want to share it with you because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: when I write from the heart and share my most intimate emotions with you, it’s therapeutic for me. It takes those emotions out of my soul and puts them onto paper…and it’s truly a good thing for me. And I hope it’s a good for those of you going through a similar situation.
Yesterday the Jersey Shore suffered from a tremendous amount of rain, causing massive floods in our surrounding areas. There were those that needed to be taken from their homes and cars by boat. I didn’t go through anything that extreme but what I did go through was painful in its’ own right.
The rains hit hard in the morning and around 11 am my son, Noah, went down into our basement. I heard him say “Mom, you better get down here.”
My heart sank because I knew it wasn’t going to be good and it wasn’t: my basement was flooded. I went down the stairs and looked around. There was water everywhere and all I could focus on was the cardboard boxes filled with their favorite childhood books and memories soaked in water. I knew right then and there that we had lost all of those things we felt “important.” Water was everywhere and I was overwhelmed with where to even start.
Yet I knew in my heart where to start and it was to start throwing things out.
And through the hours that my youngest, Sam, and I filled one garbage bag after another with their childhood memories I began to think of a time in my life over 7 years ago when I was going through another time of throwing my “memories” in the trash.
It was over 7 years ago that I was getting out of a second marriage that never should have happened. At that time I had lost the house I designed, built and lived in for over 20 years. I lost my home, my car, and all the money the kids and I had saved up over the years. That second marriage cost me more than I could say. I remember two dumpsters in my driveway for two weeks as the kids and I threw out as much as we could, knowing that we were moving to a much smaller house.
I can remember the heartache of throwing out things that had meant so much to me and to them but we didn’t have much choice. The home we lived in was so much larger than the home we were moving to and still live in. I had to keep telling myself that it was just “stuff” and that I could take the memories with me.
It was a painful time to lose literally everything I had…that we had…yet we did it. And we moved into our “Cozy Cottage.”
And we were fine. We were happy.
I moved in here with nothing. No car, no money and no job, yet we had each other and within a few weeks I had a job and another car. And we survived.
And I’ve been rebuilding my life ever since.
Yet today brought all those emotions back again and I’ll admit that I shed a few tears as I filled garbage bag after garbage bag with yet more memories. It was tough and I felt overwhelmed. I kept filling bags of their favorite children’s books to stuffed animals, one right after another, and Sam just kept bringing them up the stairs and out the door to the trash. It wasn’t the exact “Mother/Son” day I would have planned.
But we did it and there’s still another couple of days to finish up the task.
Yet after my tears spilled of another time of throwing out things that meant something to me, I began to pull myself together and remind myself that they are just the possessions, just the “stuff” that we had compiled for many years. Throwing the stuff out didn’t erase the memories…it just got rid of the physical stuff, but it will never erase the emotional stuff we gained from the years we had it.
Life is a funny thing sometimes. There comes a moment in all our lives that brings back a moment from the past, and oftentimes it’s a painful memory. Yet we seemed to have learned from the past that when those sad memories come back we know better…we feel the pain, the sadness, and the heartache and let it go much sooner than we had in the past. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the things that we had tried to forget because we shouldn’t forget anything…we should learn from it, accept it and move forward.
Because, after all, we don’t ever lose the precious moments we have of our children or loved ones; they are embedded in our minds and hearts forever. The physical possession is a wonderful thing to have but losing it doesn’t erase what our heart holds deep inside.
Our hearts take pictures of those moments in life that mean the most and no flood, no fire, and no one person can ever take that away.
And it’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
I wrote this quote many years ago near the end of my 20 year marriage. As I began to heal physically and emotionally from all the turmoil of that, I realized that it was at my moments of anxiety, sadness or depression that he became strong. At first I thought he was showing true signs of kindness, yet in time I realized what was really happening: I was feeding his ego and he was starving my self-esteem. He felt like “the big man” helping the poor, defenseless, broken woman. The woman HE broke. The woman he was abusive to; the woman he told over and over again was stupid and ugly; the woman he told would never be loved by anyone.
And I believed him…until I stopped believing him.
Are you wondering how I stopped believing all that negative stuff he had embedded into my brain? I woke up. I realized that I had allowed him the freedom to treat me that way. I allowed him to speak down to me and allowed him to be disrespectful to me. So, one day I woke up and stopped allowing it, and when I did that the marriage was done and over with.
I went through years of healing myself mentally and emotionally, and of course it was with the help of many spiritual teachers and a wonderful tribe of true friends that I was able to. I’m grateful for each and every one of them.
I learned so much about myself and that loving myself first was the answer to preventing anyone anyone from treating me that way. You’d think it would never happen again, yet I’m human; we’re all human. Sometimes life brings you back to an experience that you thought you had learned the lessons from, yet life knows when you forget the lesson. And the Universe will put a similar experience back into your way until you wake up and realize that what you stopped allowing years ago, you’re allowing once again.
Even after that divorce I would find myself meeting someone whose ego was strengthened by my weakness, and for those that know me, they know I’m anything but weak. It would sporadically happen here and there throughout the years, yet now I’m much more able to recognize it when it’s happening. I’ve learned that those people lack control of their own life so they try and control mine; they lack self-respect and are unable to respect anyone else; they don’t feel strong unless they’re paired up with someone weak.
And I am no longer that girl.
I want to be treated the way I deserve and the way that I treat others: with love, kindness, compassion, consideration and loyalty, and I won’t settle for anything less. I want to be loved for the person I am, quirks and all, because I love the person that I’ve become.
We all have moments of feeling weak and that’s okay; it’s those moments that help us to find our strength again and stand back up on our feet even stronger.
We all have moments of finding ourselves back in a situation that we thought would never return and that’s okay; you’re given that situation to remind you of the lesson you forgot.
And we all find ourselves staring into the mirror, looking at ourselves and wondering how we got here and what happened to us, and that’s okay; keep looking in that mirror long enough and you’ll once again see the person you thought was lost.
It’s those moments of feeling lost that we’re actually finding ourselves again, and we’re finding an even better and stronger version of the person we once were.
Life is about balance and we all fall out of balance every so often. It’s when the world around us is spinning out of control that we see the truth of everything, and it’s in those moments that we find our balance again.
Don’t let anyone make you feel weak; surround yourself with people that make you feel strong.
Don’t spend your precious time feeding someone’s ego; spend your time feeding your self-esteem.
And don’t rely on anyone loving you the way you want to be loved; love yourself that way first and the rest will fall into place.
Everything in your life begins with YOU.
Stop allowing what you don’t want to continue.
Forgive yourself when you forgot a lesson you learned and continue moving forward.
And love yourself.
If you do nothing else, love yourself.
Anything and everything is possible if you begin with love.
It’s a good thing.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
I wrote that quote many years ago near the end of my 20 year marriage. As I began to heal physically and emotionally from all the turmoil of that, I realized that it was at my moments of anxiety, sadness or depression that he became strong. At first I thought he was showing true signs of kindness, yet in time I realized what was really happening: I was feeding his ego and he was starving my self-esteem. He felt like “the big man” helping the poor, defenseless, broken woman. The woman HE broke. The woman he was abusive to; the woman he told over and over again was stupid and ugly; the woman he told would never be loved by anyone.
And I believed him…until I stopped believing him.
Are you wondering how I stopped believing all that negative stuff he had embedded onto my brain? I woke up. I realized that I had allowed him free reign over me for many years and that by doing that, the behavior continued. I allowed him to speak down to me and allowed him to be disrespectful to me. So, one day I woke up and stopped allowing it, and the marriage was done and over with.
I went through years of healing myself mentally and emotionally, and of course it was with the help of many spiritual teachers and a wonderful tribe of true friends.
I learned so much about myself and that loving myself first was the answer to not allowing anyone else to treat me that way. You’d think it would never happen again, yet I’m human; we’re all human. Sometimes life brings you an experience that you thought you had learned the lessons from…yet life knows when you forget the lesson. And the Universe will put a similar experience back into your way until you wake up and realize that what you stopped allowing years ago, you’re allowing once again.
Even after that divorce I would find myself meeting someone whose ego was strengthened by my weakness, and for those that know me, they know I’m anything but weak. It would sporadically happen here and there throughout the years, yet know I’m much more able to recognize it when it’s happening. I’ve learned that those people lack control of their own life so they try and control mine; they lack self-respect and are unable to respect anyone else; they don’t feel strong unless they’re paired up with someone weak.
And I am no longer that girl.
I want to be treated the way I deserve and the way that I treat others: with love, kindness, compassion, consideration and loyalty. And I won’t settle for anything less. I want to be loved for the person I am, quirks and all, because I love that person that I’ve become.
We all have moments of feeling weak and that’s okay; it’s those moments that help us to find our strength again and stand back up on our feet even stronger.
We all have moments of finding ourselves back in a situation that we thought would never return and that’s okay; you’re given that situation to remind you of the lesson you forgot.
And we all find ourselves staring into the mirror, looking at ourselves and wondering how we got here and what happened to us, and that’s okay; keep looking in that mirror long enough and you’ll once again see the person you thought was lost.
It’s those moments of feeling lost that we’re actually finding ourselves again, and we’re finding an even better and stronger version of the person we once were.
Life is about balance and we all fall out of balance every so often. It’s when the world around us is spinning out of control that we see the truth of everything, and it’s those moments we find our balance again.
Don’t let anyone make you feel weak; surround yourself with people that make you strong.
Don’t spend your precious time feeding someone’s ego; spend your time feeding your self-esteem.
And don’t rely on anyone loving you the way you want to be loved; love yourself that way first and the rest will fall into place.
Everything in your life begins with YOU.
Stop allowing what you don’t want to continue.
Forgive yourself when you forgot a lesson you learned and get back on track.
And love yourself.
If you do nothing else, love yourself.
Everything is possible when you begin with love.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
Anne Dennish - Writer/Author 