Author: opreacarmen75

There are going to be days when you’ll wake up and feel this surge of energy flowing through your veins and know that you can accomplish everything you set your mind to.  You will feel like the mountain in front of you has just transformed into a small hill. Everything will make perfect sense, from the simplest tasks to the more complicated ones. Your mind will unclutter and you will see with perfect clarity what needs to be done. Your heart will sing a song of happiness, and joy, and peace, and you will know that you have reached a state of contentment that no longer requires anyone’s validation. After a very long time, you have become whole again and filled with a passion for living that you haven’t felt in ages. Heaviness has lifted from your shoulders and you know that your wings are ready. You are ready to soar into the highest skies and take the world by surprise once again with your power of rebuilding yourself.

It is then when you know that the long trip that has started a while back has brought you to the place you were always meant to reach. It might have taken you longer than others, but it was your journey and everything that you experienced was your style of interpreting life.

Some days you’ll have the need to hide from the world and its bustle and find yourself among art, and poetry and music. And these smalls acts of concealing yourself from the world have nothing to do with being weak. They are your way of recharging and finding harmony in a familiar place surrounded by the things you love most. Do what needs to be done to make yourself whole again, because you are all you have and the world needs what you have to offer.

Be pleased by the gifts bestowed upon you and don’t be shy to share them because you might be answering someone else’s prayer.

Love,

Carmen Monica

This is a fragment from my new book, The Power in Our Scars, a collection of thoughts that will appear in the month of December. It is meant to bring comfort to a weary soul and to show that we can draw strength from our hurts.

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Often people use fate as an excuse, as an apology for all the people who we have walked away from. We speak about those times and pretend that if it were meant to happen, it would have.

But we were wrong because fate doesn’t exist. Only our effort does.

And this is where we fail each other. If it were meant to happen, we would have made it happen. If it were meant to be, we would have stayed. And we would have fought.

Love,

Carmen Monica

It’s hard to move on. It tears you down in ways you never expect to be broken. And when this happens, don’t get scared. You will rebuild yourself. Do not cry for the piece of yourself that you’ve lost nor the parts of yourself that were left over. Instead, splash them across the grass. Then, look at every one of them. Look at the memories you’ve made, and then look at the sacrifices. Look at them from a place of healing and choose to create yourself all over again. Shape your mind and your spine to be stronger this time. Then shape your heart to grow more prominent this time. Shape your eyes to see more than you’ve ever imagined, and shape your mouth to say all the words you never allowed yourself to speak.

Begin again.

Some step into a season not knowing what tomorrow would bring and they have made the brave decision of doing it anyway. They have made the brave decision of trusting and going on even on days like this and this is what matters. That they are still moving on living one day at a time, trusting in a better tomorrow, waiting for the storm to pass.

I believe that there is beauty in contrast, in the light and the dark days. I believe that there is beauty hidden in hope and in hurt, in ashes and in flames. I truly believe that one can fall and then rise again, that one can sin and still be saved.

I truly believe in sitting with the broken, the ones holding their piece together with belief, the ones bandaging their fear in faith. I believe in the souls who had protected their soft, who had always known, even when it ached the most that their wounds would heal, that the hardest part of life grows from the inside.

I truly believe that there is beauty in contrast, that you haven’t lived until you have died.

Love,

Carmen Monica

Deciding to forgive is the first step, but we have to do something more important than forgiving. We have to pray and bless our enemies. Wow! I am pretty sure many say to themselves: Are you kidding? How can I pray for someone to be blessed when the truth is I don’t want them to be blessed? But when we decide to pray for our enemies to be blessed, we are releasing them so God can bless them with the truth that has the power to free them.

I truly believe that God expects us to help those who hurt us by giving us the grace to carry on this heavy task. Our hardest test will be how well we handle those who mishandled us. Forgiving the ones who hurt us is the most powerful thing we will ever have to do, but it will open doors to many blessings in our lives.

We can only overcome evil with good, for the evil things that were done to us can only be overcome by a willingness to let go of bitterness and anger and by praying and blessing our enemies. When we show love, and we are kind and do good things expecting and hoping for nothing in return, our recompense is abundant, our hearts are filled with love and grace.

Love,

Carmen Monica

One of the most beautiful things in the world is a woman’s heart. It is both fragile and strong, delicate yet resilient. When a woman decides to give you her heart she gives you her most prized possession. If you love, cherish, nurture and protect it, a woman will give you the world. She will make you her world and everything she does will gravitate around you. Be careful how you treat her heart so that you will always be her guiding light, her island of joy, her place if tranquility, her confident, her friend and her lover.

One day we’ll forget the reason we cried, and the ones who brought the pain. We will finally realize that the secret of being free is not revenge, but allowing the things to unfold in their own ways and time. After all, not the first chapter in our lives matters the most but our last. It is the last chapter that will show how well we ran the race. So smile, laugh, forgive and love over and over again. You show maturity when someone has hurt you so badly, and instead of lowering yourself to their level you let Karma clean up the mess.

Tell yourself that you are strong and brave enough and go out there and live without restrictions. Let go of everything that no longer serves you or brings you joy. Your moment has finally come, so go out there and live above the mediocrity, step out of the box that held you down. Regardless of your age, the circumstances, the scars, make a decision to live the rest of your life worthy, filled with joy and peace. There will be days when troubles will come and they will be rough, but you have the power to fight them and stop them. You’ve done it before and you survived and came out even stronger than before. This is your legacy, your story of bravery.

Sometimes all we miss is patience. We need patience to understand that we need to make the decisions together. We need to understand that we can heal together. We can change together. All we need is to know that nothing happens overnight nor it will be easy. People are usually more successful in making changes when they have the support of a loving partner.