If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.
If it doesn’t sound right, don’t listen.
If it makes you feel uneasy, trust your gut.
If it doens’t make you feel good, then walk away.
If it doesn’t bring out the best in you, then leave it behind.
Beautiful things happen when we distance ourselves from negative people and situations; trust your intuition to guide you towards the positive.
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
I don’t get angry very often and I try not to get upset at someone who says hurtful things to me, but I will tell you this, there is but ONE WORD that will make my blood boil and fill me with an anger that makes my head spin: VICTIM! Aside from those emotions, it hurts my heart, because I’m not that.
And recently someone decided to publicly call me that. The comments were nasty, untrue, and bordering on “threatening.” And they called me a “victim.”
There’s not many people who have called me that, in fact, I know of only two and those two people live unhappy lives and take their negative feelings about themselves and turn them on me. And the moment those two people called me that I wished them love and light and sent them on their way. The friendship had served its’ time and was done, because if you think that’s what I am then you have no place in my life. I will not surround myself with anyone that believes that of me.
I am not a victim, I am a survivor and proud of that.
I am a survivor of divorce, domestic violence, emotional abuse and breast cancer. I never once saw myself as a victim of any of these things because, while I never wanted to have any of it happen, I accepted them as life lessons. Those things happened to me so that I could learn from them, survive them, and use my voice through my writing to help other’s going through those situations.
Me? A victim?
Not by a long shot.
But there are those that play the victim themselves. They are martyrs and portray themselves as good people, when in reality, they are quick to judge and despise anyone who has something they want. They are jealous and insecure, and in reality, they are the ones who choose to be a victim.
And trust me, I’m not one of them.
I don’t have a perfect life, but it’s perfect for me. I have a wonderful man in my life and have five beautiful children, all of whom I’m very proud of. I am able to pursue my passion of writing every day of my life. I’m surrounded by some amazing friends who always have my back and see me as a survivor. My “bubble” is filled with the people that support me and more importantly, love me.
And none of them believe me to be a victim because they know I’m not.
I write about my past experiences in a positive light, hoping to let others know that they’re not alone, that there’s always hope, and there’s always a way to get through it.
I know that there are people who will judge me, but if you’re going to do that, make sure that you know me. Don’t see me through eyes of hatred and jealousy, see me through the eyes of “truth.”
“Survivor” is one of my favorite words. It means you had enough faith in yourself and your Higher Power to get through the tough times. Life hasn’t always been easy for me, yet I choose to be grateful for every day I wake up, for every experience, good or bad, that life hands me because in the end everything is a lesson to learn so that we can live the best life possible.
And once again I’ll say this: “If you can’t be kind, be quiet.”
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
Sometimes it takes one moment, one conversation, one word from someone else in which you find yourself “waking up” to something you weren’t seeing. It’s that moment which stops you in your tracks and makes you toss off the rose colored glasses and see the reality of a situation for the truth that it is.
And it can make you angry with yourself, it can hurt your heart, it can make you sad, but no matter the emotion it causes within you, it’s one that you need to deal with. You have to think about why you weren’t seeing what you needed to. You have to wonder how it all got to this point. And you have to understand your feelings and figure out what your role in getting to this point was. After all, we allowed it to happen. Maybe not consciously, but we allowed it.
And we allowed it because we lost sight of something that should be the most 
important thing: you.
It happens more often than not, and sadly, we don’t always see it coming…in fact we never see it coming until it’s here. What you do with it next is the key to moving forward: you have to forgive yourself.
Forgive yourself for making someone else more important and valuable than yourself; forgive yourself for allowing someone else’s life to hold more importance and value than your own; and forgive yourself for loving someone else more than you love yourself.
Forgive yourself for allowing someone else to care less about you than you care about them; forgive yourself for loving someone more than you love yourself; and forgive yourself for not seeing it.
And then try to understand why it happened; why you didn’t see it coming; and why you allowed it.
We do so many selfless things where love for our children, friends and significant
others are concerned that we often lose sight of ourselves and that’s when your “waking up” moment happens. It’s the Universe’s way of telling us that we haven’t been paying enough attention to ourselves and that we let our love for other’s cloud our love for ourselves.
Call it a “wake up” call from the Universe or a nudge from your Higher Power, but regardless, it comes from a source that loves you unconditionally and that source wants the best for you.
Forgive yourself for allowing the moment to happen and embrace the beautiful mess you are for learning the lesson from it: never let anyone love you less than you love yourself.
You are just as important as anyone you place importance on; you are just as valuable as anyone you place value on; and you are as worthy of love as anyone you love.
It was yet another life lesson to learn and one to be grateful for, because it happened to help you have the best life possible. It’s never selfish to do what’s best for YOU because doing what’s best for YOU spills onto the ones around you that you love.
And always remember the most important thing of all:
YOU ARE AMAZING!
Wishing you love and light,
~Anne Dennish~
Anne Dennish - Writer/Author 