Looking back at my 6th grade self receiving an achievement award, I wish I could have understood my lovability was not based on what I achieved or didn’t achieve.
I am telling my younger self now, I am lovable because I am a creation of God.
I was and am just as He created me to be. Wherever I am, He meets me there. All God wants is my heart.
There is nothing I can do or not do to change this divine truth. It’s taken me a long time to see truth.
Only by allowing God’s love, mercy, and grace into my heart, could the deep pains I’ve carried since childhood begin to heal.
Only then could the lies be removed, and replaced with truth that I am love. Nothing can ever change this truth.
I praise God that He got through to me, that I remembered He is trustworthy, long enough to let down my guard, to let Him in to my heart to heal me.
God is the Master Healer and only true source of life and love. Any healing, growth, success, and light you see in me, I give all the credit to Him! He saved me. He healed me.
With hope and much love,
Ruth Renee RN
Student Nurse Wellness Coach
What miracles have happened in your life? Who has helped you heal? I’d love to hear more in the comments below, or you can email me ~ nursehealingadvocate@gmail.com
The most important thing I’ve learned about transformation is that we get there the quickest by slowing down, by speaking our truth in love, and by becoming who we truly are at the deepest level.
When you slow down, you can hear yourself think. You can sort the clutter of all the voices in your head until you can encounter your own.
You must let all the other voices go, and only then can you have a clear conversation with God. Only then can you discover who you really are!
For the first time, you meet your most authentic self without all the noise of the world telling you who you are and who you are to become.
You then have a choice…to share or not to share your most authentic self with the world. To be brave enough to truly be yourself, to JUST BE YOU, to speak your truth in love.
Your authentic voice matters! When you do not speak your truth, you abandon a part of yourself. It becomes harder to love all of yourself!!!
One of the most important things I’ve learned about being able to love myself is that authenticity matters! I matter!! My story matters. My authentic voice matters!!!
When you speak the truth in love, you step into being more fully alive, more fully you, more fully connected to God, grace, understanding and knowing. Knowing that this is the one life we have to live on this earth, HERE AND NOW.
When you hold back, when you shift your words to what others want to hear, a part of you dies inside, a part of your awareness fades away.
You step into living only half alive. And piece by piece, you continue to fade away, and the real you slowly dies.
If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be this…YOU MATTER, YOUR VOICE MATTERS, YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE MATTERS, YOU ARE ENOUGH!!!
I’ve been doing healing work and trusting the process of transformation for quite a few years now.
I have many regrets of who I was and how I behaved in the past, but I am not my past. The slate is wiped clean.
When we transform, we step into grace and beauty, into knowing and understanding that no one is worthy, no one is perfect.
We all make mistakes. We all lose hope.
It’s okay to let others know you struggle. It’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to give yourself permission to be you. I want to hear what YOU think, what YOU believe, what YOU feel, not how the world tells you to be.
I am here cheering you on. If you feel you have to hide a part of you, if you feel you can’t love yourself, or can’t let the world see ALL OF YOU, I am here cheering you on to just be you, to SPEAK YOUR TRUTH IN LOVE.
I know you can step into being you, loving you, accepting you.
I struggle with anxiety, depression, and complex PTSD. Thoughts of hating myself return from time to time, but I no longer live in the world of self-hate and abandoning myself, abandoning my voice.
I know that what I have to say is important. I know that I matter, that my authentic voice matters.
And I choose to speak the truth in love. I choose to live more fully alive each and every new day.
Today, I live in the world of hope and never giving up, the world of climbing every mountain, the world of giving myself permission to rest when I am weary and tired.
Today , I choose to step out of darkness into the light.
Mother’s Day….the truth is that it isn’t always so easy.
I have some resentment issues popping up around my son not wanting to go on Mother’s Day outings today, but I’m trying to look at other victories and come from a place of service and sacrifice, rather than expectation. That was me last year, and it didn’t go well. Today I choose to give my worries and painto God, so I can settle into appreciation and hope.
_______
For Mother’s Day this year, I planned ahead. I invited my kids to an outing I think we will all enjoy. Foot massages are scheduled with my daughter, and then we will get take out for a picnic at the lake, my favorite spot in the city. The place I go when I need to be in nature, when I need to clear my mind, the spot I took my kids to feed ducks when they were little. The place I took my mother to visit when she was in town for my birthday. So many wonderful memories!!!
A few days ago, I pulled out the cricut machine and the scrapbook supplies and created a homemade invite for Mother’s Day. I dropped it off for my kids at their dad’s, to let my son know the invitation is still open if he changes his mind. If not, I can respect his decision.
So while I’m sad my son is not coming, I dived into the resentment a bit deeper this morning. I released the hurt and pain. I uprooted the bitterness from my heart.
I then had space to connect with God to see the good things I have and what has changed and gotten better since last year. I looked at what is true. And I feel a little more peaceful, a little less sad. I released my worries to God, and I know that God’s timing is perfect. I know that reconciliation with my son is happening at its own pace.
______
Complex PTSD blew my family apart like a nuclear bomb, but God is putting it back together in a new way, healing the broken relationships between me and my children, reconciling hearts. He has already done it with my daughter. He brought her home just last week. His timing is perfect. And I can surrender my timing and my will to Him.
I know Mother’s Day isn’t always easy and I want you all to know I’m praying today for healing over mother-child relationships, praying for comfort for those who’ve lost their mother, for mothers who have lost children, and for those who are struggling to connect in the way they want with their mother or child. I’m praying for those who struggle with infertility. Praying peace over today for all of you wonderful imperfect humans, mothers, and children!!
My mother taught me to hold onto “Hope against Hope.” She taught me what a mother’s love is. When the time is right, when my son is ready, I know he and I will reconcile. God has brought so much healing to my family, and HE IS NOT FINISHED YET!!!
God is my anchor and he gives me the ability to love as he loves, to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. And I’m so thankful for my mother who taught me these truths, passed on the gifts of strength, hope, love.
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” – 1 Corinthians 13:7
______
Through all of my heartache and struggle, the most important lesson I’ve learned is this….God’s love for us is so much bigger than the love with which we love our own children.
Praying you feel God’s love and healing presence today!!
Much love,
Ruth Renee RN
Student Nurse Wellness Coach
Is there any small space of resentment or pain you can witness and release to clear space for hope, love, gratitude, and truth? ❤️
May God bless you and keep you, and be a refuge for you in times of heartache and trouble.
For it is you who light my lamp; the Lord my God lightens my darkness. For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall. This God—his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.” – Psalm 18:28-20 ESV
Just as the seasons change, your past is not your present.
As humans, it seems change doesn’t happen as naturally for us, as it does for the seasons. So what’s the difference?
We humans always have a choice, and often times we choose to live in our past, rather than fully living in the present, in the now ~body, mind, and spirit integrated in the same place at the same time.
Trust me, I know how hard it is to let go of broken dreams. I’ve struggled to surrender many of my heartaches to God.
The sudden tragic loss of my father when I was a teen. My divorce and the loss of my dream in life to grow old with my first love.
I struggled to let go, to move on, to accept that I couldn’t fix this broken dream just like I couldn’t fix the dream of having my father heal and stay alive. I so badly wanted my dad with me to celebrate my graduations, my wedding, the births of my children. It has been so hard to let go, to let myself surrender these broken dreams to God.
I feel deeply and it’s okay to grieve loss for as long as we need, but for me I realized my chronic grief was hurting me more than it was helping me heal. I became stuck. I stopped living. My body was present, but my mind lived in the past trying to analyze, overthink, and find a way to fix unfixable problems.
Two lessons I’ve learned the hard way…
1) Praying someone to stay alive doesn’t always work, no matter how great your faith. Our time is not always God’s time. Our will is not always God’s will.
2) I can’t “do the work” for another to heal their past trauma, as much as I desperately want. I can’t change anyone except myself.
I have tried to do things my own way, to do the work for others, to fix others because I could not fix my dad.
I have lived the past over and over expecting a different solution. And that, my friend, is the very definition of insanity, and why letting go of the past and surrendering our will to God is so important.
Through many years of hard life experiences, trauma counseling, and doing the healing work for myself, I have learned that change requires the same from all who want to step out of brokenness, from all who want to let go of the broken dreams of the past, from all who want to step into being your greatest empowered healthy self, the person you were always called to be.
The good news is that change is always possible. As a good therapist told me over and over, I always have choices and options!
When we find the motivation to change, it begins with a single shift in our mindset, followed by a choice, then lots of small steps, and for sure we need to celebrate all the little victories and even the failures. It is all just feedback and a learning process about ourselves, the goal being to peel the layers until we reach the core of who we truly are at the deepest level.
The most important thing I’ve learned about transformation is that we get there the fastest by slowing down, speaking our truths, and becoming our authentic selves as best we can.
Some words by recovery expert Melody Beattie have been balm to my weary, grieving soul over the last few years.
“Let go of all expectations. Cut the strings of resentment and negativity that connect you to another. Detach from bitterness and forgive. Make room for love and positivity. The universe will do what it will.
Sometimes your dream will come true, sometimes they won’t. Sometimes when you let go of a broken dream, another one gently takes its place“ ~Melody Beattie
It can be hard to let go of broken dreams, to let go of the past and love fully alive in the present moment, but it is possible!!!
With the help of my higher power I am doing so, and I believe you can too.
We decide if we let the past continue to be our present, like the perpetual Groundhog Day movie.
Or, we decide if we choose to allow each new day be a fresh start to do something different, for us to be someone healthier than we were the day before.
Change is always possible!!
And I believe you are worth it!
With hope and confidence,
Ruth Renee, RN
Student Nurse Coach
Are there any broken dreams you are struggling to let go?What have you learned because of the struggle?
If you’d like to connect, please email nursehealingadvocate@gmail.com or comment below.
Telling the story of my past
Overcome with exhaustion
sadness, fear, and hurt
Thoughts haze and fog
Droopy eyelids blink
Head weighs heavy
Memories of trauma
Impossible to carry
Alone
Drive home safe
Collapse into bed
Open the window
Turn on the fan
Weighted blankets
Fetal position
Calves twitch
Intestines flutter
God whispers, “rest”
Weak eyelids closing
I whisper this prayer
God, I’m hurt and scared
This terror from my past
I can’t carry it alone
I need your armor
I need your love
I need you with me
Help me know
it’s safe to rest
Meet me, Jesus
in my worry
hurt and fear
Meet me, Jesus
in my room
on my bed
Make it safe
Make it safe
to sleep
to rest
to be alone
Trapped words set free My time is now To verbalize what happened The story of my life symbolism in everything Understanding God, truth, poetry my gift, my talent, my identity
Seeds not buried under a rock
But planted in good soil
Watered enough to grow
Sprout and blossom
Rise up as a sapling tree
Young, small at first
Growing mature, tall, strong
A mighty live oak
Reaching up to the blue, blue sky
A mighty live oak
Filled with leaves year round
Sometimes needing pruning
Always bearing green, green leaves
Thank you, God For sending me believers Who showed me who You are I learned who I really am I accept the gifts and talents You gave me before I was born I am finding my purpose, my calling My words no longer hidden My talents no longer buried under a rock
I let go of guilt and shame I cast my cares on you Because you care for me More than I will ever know It is time now My time is now Trapped words set free Trapped words set free
______
