Tag Archives: self love

You Are More Than Good Enough

A Book Reading/Signing & Wine Reception

I have been quite busy lately. There are so many things going on; so many events, so many commitments, and not enough time to do it all. At least, that’s how I’ve been feeling. For starters, I am still trying to get used to my new professional role as an administrator at one of NYC’s public hospitals. I’ve been in my new role for about 5 months and while I have worked in health care my entire professional career, I forgot what it was like to deal with staff issues, patient issues, and customer satisfaction. It has been very overwhelming to say the least. In addition to my professional career, I am also a writing workshop facilitator for the New York City Latina Writer’s Group (NYCLWG), a  member of the DeAlmas Women’s Institute, a writer, and last but most importantly a first time expecting mom to be. Needless to say I have been EXHAUSTED. But with everything that I have going on I am truly grateful for it all.

I am grateful to have a job that allows me to meet my financial obligations, that allows me to help our patients and improve their overall health care experience, a job where I know I will be challenged every day. I am grateful to be a part of a community of writers where I can teach and learn simultaneously and as a DeAlmas Visionera, I am grateful that I have been able to re-connect with myself, my spirit, and my heart’s deepest desire. Something amazing happens when you start to believe that you truly deserve everything that you ever wanted. As women, we tend to put the needs of others before our own and somehow lose sight of the things that we want for ourselves. At least for me, that statement holds true. Being a member of DeAlmas helped me to regain sight of the things I truly wanted.

I realized that I needed to re-focus and I needed to start putting myself before others. I realized that if I wasn’t happy with myself and the direction of my life then there wouldn’t be much that I could do for others. Once I re-focused on myself, transformational things began to happen for me. First, I was able to complete writing and publishing my first book, Welcome to Heartbreak. Shortly after that I was accepted into Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA in creative writing program, and lastly on November 6, 2011 I found out that the one thing I had wanted most, I was finally receiving. I was pregnant with my first child.

This may not seem as something monumental for most women, but for me, after trying unsuccessfully to conceive for the past 10 yrs I had given up on that dream. I had decided that since it hadn’t happened in 10 years it probably wasn’t meant for me to be a mother. I began to feel like I wasn’t good enough to experience such a blessing. It wasn’t until I attended the DeAlmas Visiones workshop in 2011 that slowly but surely those thoughts and self doubt began to disappear. Being able to accomplish my heart’s deepest desires was a direct result of all the self-work I did in 2011 with DeAlmas. This is why I am so honored and excited to be the mistress of ceremonies for the book signing for author and founder of DeAlmas Women’s Institute, Gloria Rodriguez, being held on March 6th, 2012 from 6-9 pm at the Longwood Art Gallery at Hostos Community College.

It is the perfect way to kick off Women’s History Month as we celebrate Gloria’s first book You Are More Than Good Enough. The book, which I love, combines storytelling, sacred wisdom, practical tools and techniques that will inspire, cajole and catapult readers into an embrace of themselves. In this book, Gloria generously shares the pitfalls, challenges and triumphs of her step-by-step voyage to self-acceptance and self-love in order to embrace her soul’s calling. Readers will learn techniques (techniques that we used during our bi-weekly self-work sessions) – treasures of the soul – that will prepare them to rediscover their true essence, connect to their life purpose and deny any power to an inner critic.  Knowing you are good enough is no small feat but with compassion and understanding Gloria Rodriguez gives us permission to claim the best of who we are with confidence and without apology.

I invite you all to come share a night of beauty, inspiration, and most importanly self-love because we are all more than good enough.

Click on the link for more info or to RSVP to this event:

You Are More Than Good Enough Book Signing/Reception

Fall in Love With You…

“i found god in myself and i loved her. i loved her fiercely.”  - Ntozake Shange

Most of us spend a great deal of our lives looking for love, chasing love, recuperating from love or complaining about love. Never realizing that in our quest for love we are neglecting the person that matters most.  Ourselves.

I believe that as women we often disregard our own needs as a result of always taking care of other people. We spend so much time seeking out and working on developing external relationships that we often times forget to work on the relationship within.  We give so much of ourselves emotionally, physically, and spiritually that  eventually we end up depleted seeking fulfillment from someone else.

However, we can not look to another to fulfill us, “to complete us”, as eloquently stated in Jerry Maguire. We can only seek to fulfill ourselves, to give to ourselves that which we freely give to others; others, who often times don’t deserve it and that is LOVE.  Learn to fall in love with YOU!

Love yourself! Deeply and profoundly! Know that the most important relationship that you could ever have is the relationship that you have with yourself. When that relationship is strong you will see that you will be happier, healthier, and that you will no longer put up with or accept mediocrity from anyone.

Walk in your divine self. You are love, made from love and made to be loved. By loving yourself you teach others how to love you.  Love is not something that comes from someone else; it is an extension of our own minds, reverberating back to us in what seems to be another person’s smile (Williamson, 1993).

When you learn to truly fall in love with you, your entire life begins to change. It changes because when you are in love your main priority is making the person you’re in love with happy. Imagine applying that concept to yourself. Imagine putting your own happiness first. Only you have the power to do this. When you take back your power you take back control of your happiness because you now realize that happiness comes from within. Any happiness that you find with someone else is in addition to the happiness that you already have.

There is no other person on the Universe that can complete you. You were born a “whole” individual, you were not born in pieces. Movies and music will have you believe that in order to be completely happy you need someone else. This is a fallacy. When you allow yourself to believe this you are saying to the other person “I can only be happy if I am with you”…This sort of thinking is the thinking that allows many to stay in hurtful, dysfunctional, abusive relationships because the individual believes that they can only be happy with this abuser. Here’s a reality check if it hurts chances are you aren’t happy. Therefore why stay in a hurtful situation?

I am aware that until we get to the point where  we’ve had enough of things that hurt and long more than anything for a peaceful love, we are bound to take painful roads. We are destined to play out frivolous disasters until we declare ourselves finished and done with them (Williamson, 1993). This is the nature of life but wehen you truly love yourself you will put up with far less nonsense and get out of that unhealthy relationship much sooner.

The following passage I read somewhere and post here for all of you. It reminds me of the power that I have when I choose to take control of my thoughts and feelings.

“You can completely transform any relationship, no matter what it’s like right now.

Every single relationship you have is a reflection of how you feel inside about you. You are a magnet attracting to you all things, via the signal you are emitting through your thoughts and feelings.

Every relationship you have and every interaction with every person, is a reflection of your own thoughts and feelings in that very moment.

To transform every single relationship you have in your life:

Fall in love with YOU!

Make lists of hundreds and hundreds of wonderful things about you.

Keep adding to it every day.

Know that you are perfect. Do not think any negative thoughts about you.

Know that you are worthy and deserving of anything and everything you could possibly want in your life.

Focus on the wonderful things in every person.

Look for only those things.

Do not blame or criticize anybody, ever.
Set an intention that you are going to see the best in everything and everyone.
Make your happiness the number one thing in your life. Happiness is an inside job.

Free yourself of the responsibility of trying to make other people happy.

Respect and love them enough to allow them to take care of their own happiness.
Get your attention off those things in others that don’t make you feel good.

Appreciate and love yourself in every moment you can.

Do not expect others to behave in a way you want, so you will be happy.

Release yourself forevermore and know that you alone control your happiness and it is a choice, no matter what anyone else is doing. Love and respect yourself completely. Know that you are perfect right now.

Forgiveness

We attach our feelings to the moment when we were hurt, endowing it with immortality. And we let it assault us every time it comes to mind. It travels with us, sleeps with us, hovers over us while we make love, and broods over us while we die. Our hate does not even have the decency to die when those we hate die–for it is a parasite sucking OUR blood, not theirs. There is only one remedy for it. Forgiveness.-Lewis B. Smedes 
 
  
Today the word that I am meditating on is FORGIVENESS. It is the first word to come into my mind and so I am paying attention to it. I know that in order to continue growing and to continue healing, we must forgive ourselves and forgive all those who have hurt us.
 
We must forgive if we want to free ourselves of the pain of our past and heal our wounds.  Forgiveness means that you have made the decision to stop being angry at someone. Forgiveness allows us to move forward so that we can live happy, healthy, and productive lives; moving forward means letting go. You can’t move forward when you have chains and shackles holding you back.
 
Forgiving is never easy, but it is necessary for our healing and growth. Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that doesn’t serve us – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who we are destined to be.
 
Letting go of anger and forgiveness are one and the same. The reason we don’t forgive is because we are angry and we are taking something personally. We believe someone deliberately did something to us and that we are a victim. The truth is, that people only hurt others because they are acting out their own inner wounding. Much of which occurred when they were children. As adults, we carry those wounds with us because we have never forgiven all those in our past that have hurt us.
 
Today, forgive yourself for doing all of the things that dishonored who God intended you to be. Forgive yourself for not living up to your fullest potential. Forgive yourself for hurting and disappointing those that you love, including yourself. Forgive yourself for allowing feelings of unworthiness to blind you of your true worth. Forgive yourself for ever doubting that you are great.
 
Forgive yourself for allowing others to disrupt your peace. Forgive those who you let into your life that were only a part of it to take from you and never to give. Forgive yourself for allowing them to use you. Forgive yourself for loving people who were never worthy of your love and forgive yourself for not loving those that were.
 
Forgive yourself for searching for someone to make you happy when all the while happiness resided within. Forgive yourself for not loving yourself enough to know that you deserved better. Forgive all those who have ever wished you harm or unhappiness. Forgive yourself for buying into others’ negative opinions of you. Forgive yourself for believing that you always had to be perfect when all you ever had to be was yourself.
 
Today the word that I am meditating on is FORGIVENESS. I practice forgiveness because it is essential for my spiritual and emotional well being. You should too!

Intellectual Beauty

I am intellectually beautiful. My mind is my greatest asset. While most focus on their physical beauty, I concentrate on enriching my mind, spirit and soul because with time, even beauty fades.  Don’t be fooled by the media or by what society deems as beautiful. Those who only see physical beauty have not evolved enough to realize that there’s more to beauty than meets the eye. It is a person’s mind and soul that hold the true beauty of the individual. So few of us truly know how to appreciate this type of beauty that we focus on only what we can see. Once we learn to see the true beauty that one holds, the outer beauty no longer appeals to us and it is the inner beauty that we begin to crave and need. When you look in the mirror don’t be fooled, know that your true beauty is not what you or others see, it is what lies within. Don’t strive to be a physical beauty. Strive to be an intellectual beauty.♥