Tag Archives: hurt

Including Lost Loved Ones In Your Holiday Celebration

Losing a loved one hurts a lot. It’s a pain that never really goes away, it just becomes a little more bearable as time goes on. And while I am grateful that my religious beliefs are that we will see our loved ones again someday in the eternities, there is still the hurts of missing […]

You Don’t Know How Strong You Are Til Being Strong Is The Only Choice You Have

“You never know how strong you are…until being strong is the only choice you have.” Over the course of my adult life I’ve gone through some really hard things that at times have been so painful I didn’t know how in the world I would ever be able to get through them. There’ve been days […]

Dare To Be!

When a new day begins, dare to smile gratefully. When there is darkness, dare to be the first to shine a light. When there is injustice, dare to be the first to condemn it. When something seems difficult, dare to do it anyway. When life seems to beat you down, dare to fight back. When […]

Forgiveness Doesn’t Mean That What Happened Was Okay

I’m still struggling today to find words to express the sadness I feel about what’s happening around the world right now. I was reading back through things I’d written today and came across something I wrote on the 13th anniversary of September 11th 2001 about hatred. It reads:  “Holding on to anger is like drinking […]

Time Heals Almost Everything, Give It Time

“Time heals almost everything, give it time.”  -Unknown  “How are you doing?” I asked.  My friend proceeded to tell me of the tremendous hardships she’s going through this week and then concluded by saying “Sorry you asked I bet.”  I wasn’t at all sorry I asked – I was grateful she trusted me enough to […]

IF WE ONLY UNDERSTOOD

Could we but draw back the curtains That surround each other’s lives, See the naked heart and spirit, Know what spur the action gives, Often we should find it better, Purer than we judged we should, We should love each other better, If we only understood. Could we judge all deeds by motives, See the […]

Communicating Like That Isn’t Any More Effective In Getting What You Want As An Adult Then It Was When You Were A Child

“I’m gonna hold my breath until you give in and give me what I want!”  Now there’s a communication tactic we learned as children was never effective in getting us what we wanted. All it did was make our cheeks turn blue and give us a pounding headache. Never once did it actually get us […]

When Life Throws You A Curveball

The last several months life has thrown me some major curveballs that I frankly never saw coming, and those curveballs have caused me to have to deal with things I never expected to go through. As each of them hit I felt completely unprepared to deal with the mix of emotions hitting me all at […]

Don’t ruin a good today by thinking about a bad yesterday.

How often do you find yourself thinking about something bad that happened yesterday and it ends up ruining the way you feel today?  I have to admit I have let myself do that at times, but I can also say that doing it has never once helped me nor made me feel better about anything…it’s […]

We can learn it the easy way or we can learn it the hard way and only we can decide which it will be

“Don’t touch that, it’s hot” my mom said as she pulled out a fresh tray of cookies from the oven – yet immediately I started thinking “I wonder how hot it really is? It’s probably not that hot. I think I’ll just see for myself just how hot it is.” You would think that nursing […]

There Is No Such Thing As A Selfless Lie

There have been numerous scientific experiments which have proven that people lie for selfish reasons. Yet how often do we hear people say they lied to be selfless in order to protect the other person, or to avoid hurting the other person, or because they didn’t want the other person to think less of them, […]

Creating A Day Worth Living

Life can sometimes seem ridiculously complicated. And trying to find peace amidst the chaos day to day often feels a bit impossible. So what makes for a peaceful day? If the only way to have a peaceful day is to have a day where everything goes perfectly then the chance of us ever having a […]

Protect that what you value most

When my two children were young they started calling me “Mama Bear” because they knew their Mama would fight fiercely to protect her two little cubs. That’s because we protect what we value most, and my kids have always been what I value most. Becoming a parent is one of the most surreal experiences in […]

There isn’t a person you wouldn’t love if you could read their whole story

“There isn’t a person you wouldn’t love if you could read their whole story.”  – Marjorie Hinckley I love that quote. When someone reminded me of this quote the other day I couldn’t help but stop and think how true it is. We see people through a certain lens…we make snap judgments…we make assumptions about […]

Strength comes from overcoming obstacles

There are a lot of times in life we question why we have to go through really hard times. Years ago someone shared this story with me. I have probably shared this before with all of you but it just seemed like it was worth sharing it again today: Parable of the Butterfly A man […]

Be strong enough to let go

“Be strong enough to let go, and wise enough to wait for what you deserve.” – unknown Letting go of something you have cared about, but recognize is hurting you, is never easy.  Whether it’s a toxic relationship (or just a relationship that is keeping you from moving forward), or a bad habit (especially an […]

Recognize Your Own Song And Sing It Well

In the book ‘Wisdom of the Heart’ Alan Cohen tells the following story: When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has […]

A Harrowing Experience and My Gratitude For Those Who Got Me Through It

Last week my family and I went down to Lake Powell for the week to host our kids and their college friends for a welcome home celebration trip for our daughter Ashley. We knew she had missed Lake Powell vacations tremendously while she had been serving her mission for 18 months so we made it […]

It’s what you see that matters

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” – Henry David Thoreau You could take a group of people and have them all look at the very same situation and yet later if you asked each person what they saw they will likely describe having seen different things. That’s because everyone’s […]

“Charity is expecting the best of each other”

“If it is our nature to criticize or demean, we can cause the voices of gladness to be silenced. We need those who bring gladness into our lives. We need those who give encouragement and reflect optimism.” – Marvin Ashton What the world needs more of is people who are encouraging and optimistic. The world […]

Don’t Look Back, You’re Not Going That Way!

We are about to begin a New Year, so as we do I suggest that we take this opportunity to let the past go! Let old hurts go, let past grudges go, let past failures go, let past disappointments go…LET IT GO! If we want our New Year to be amazing and incredible, which I […]

Only Three Words

Years ago someone sent me an article called “Only 3 Words“.  It was such a great article that I saved it. When I was going through some old papers I came across it again this week and as I read it I knew I had to share it with all of you. I have no […]

Our Perception Is Our Choice

This statement is something all of us should really stop and think long and hard about…Our perception is our choice…There are many things in our life that ARE NOT our choice, for example – how the weather will be, or whether a person will fall in love with us or not, or whether we will […]

DARE TO BE!

Dare to Be When a new day begins, dare to smile gratefully. When there is darkness, dare to be the first to shine a light. When there is injustice, dare to be the first to condemn it. When something seems difficult, dare to do it anyway. When life seems to beat you down, dare to […]

Learn to Doubt Your Doubts

This last week was a stressful one. And in going through that stress I found myself beginning to really doubt many things that I had previously felt really good about. The more I thought about those doubts the more and more I began to really question things and wonder if I had been completely wrong […]

All We Need To Do Is Apply What We Learned As A Child

We learn so many simple life lessons as a child, yet often times we overlook how those simple rules apply to us as adults. The fact is that those life lessons, if remembered, will help us all our lives, no matter how old we are.  I love the words of Robert Fulghum: All I Really […]

Don’t Do Something Permanently Stupid Just Because You Are Temporarily Upset

There are always things that are going to happen that will cause us to be temporarily upset. That’s just part of life. But when those things happen we have to find a way to keep our wits about us so we don’t do something permanently stupid that we will regret later. Instead we should focus […]

Trust What Someone Has Shown Themselves To Be, Not What We Wish That They Were

There have been a few times in my life where I really believed in someone and trusted them and then came to discover that they weren’t the person that I thought they were at all. It hurts a lot when you discover that someone you thought was a good person just isn’t. And then you […]

The importance of sharing your experiences with other people

“It’s important that we share our experiences with other people. Your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else. When you tell your story, you free yourself and give other people permission to acknowledge their own story.”  -Iyanla Vanzant When my children were young they went through some really difficult things. Today […]