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Gratitude is an attitude of loving what we have, and this undoubtedly leads to having more. When we open our eyes to bountiful blessings already in our lives, we realize just how abundant the world really is. And suddenly, we feel more giving, more loving, and more open to even greater blessings. Gratitude is a key that unlocks the door to treasures we already have, and it yields greater treasurers yet to be discovered.

Gratitude is also the most highly underestimated virtue. We think of love, hope, faith and the power of prayer and forgiveness. But how often do we stop each day and give thanks for all the blessings in our lives? Are we too focused on what we lack, what we don’t have, don’t want or don’t need? By opening the heart and mind to focus on gratitude, we unleash a treasure of unceasing good that’s just waiting to overflow into our lives. A grateful person knows that by giving thanks, they’re given even more to be thankful for.

So today, let’s give thanks for second chances. Sometimes we all feel like we can’t do anything right. It’s embarrassing to make mistakes. It’s embarrassing to show others that we are less than perfect. So, let’s give thanks to everyone who has given us the chance to try again, to make things right.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Love,

Carmen Monica

Denial is a powerful tool. We should never underestimate its ability to cloud our vision. And, for different reasons, we have become experts at using denial to make coping with the reality more tolerable. We have learned how to stop pain caused by reality by pretending our circumstances are something other than what they are. But we shouldn’t be hard on ourselves because even if one part of us busy creating a fantasy world, the other part accepted the truth. It takes courage to face the truth, to let it sink in. Only when we can do that we will move forward. 🌹Love🌹 Carmen

It is said that there is a time for everything and a season for every activity. There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot. There is a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh. There is a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to search and a time to give up; a time to keep and a time to throw away. There is a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace (Ecclesiastes). Love, Carmen Monica

Slowly we learn to read the book of nature, to learn its laws, to nurture the trees; to find out where and when we are in the great ocean, to become a way for the cosmos to know itself and to return to the stars. Slowly we learn to test ideas through experiments and observations; to build on those ideas that pass the test and to reject the ones that fail. We follow the evidence wherever it leads. And we question authority and everything because it matters what’s true. Life’s continuity depends on us. Be safe everyone! Carmen Monica

You’ve wasted so many days on yesterday. It is time to bow down to the past and thank it for helping mold you into the. one-of-a-kind person. But don’t long for it. Don’t reach for it. Because you cannot go back. It’s time to think about today because today you create memories that will become your past someday. You’re going to look back, cataloguing each year, and wish you would have enjoyed this day fully and not wasted it thinking about days you can never recover. Each day is precious in its own way. It is a chance to leave a kind and everlasting imprint upon this Earth. Live every minute of every day. And if you find yourself wishing you could change yesterday, then make the change today. This way, when you look back nostalgically, it will be for the right reasons, and you will look back without regret. Love, Carmen

The key that sets you free is inside of you. I won’t tell you that it will be easy because it won’t be. I won’t tell you that all the pain will disappear all of a sudden because it won’t. I will tell you that nothing will change until you decide to stop accepting less than what you deserve. No one is going to come in and make that decision for you. The decision is yours to make and only yours. I pray that you find the strength and the courage to do what you know in your heart is best for your own happiness and peace of mind. Love, Carmen Monica

Growing up, I devoted my heart, with reckless abandon, to the idea of finding my soulmate. Wistfully, I listened to the stories of the ancient gods and how they split each human being into two parts. Our other half will make their way into our lives, completing us and emptying into us a love that we had never experienced. Now I realize that such a philosophy is more harmful than useful.

We should feel something rare when we finally meet the person we choose to spend our lives with. We should be encouraged and genuinely moved by the love we are gifted in life. Yet, we are not imperfect human beings, and there isn’t anyone in this world who’s going to fill the voids of our souls other than ourselves. The rush of feeling that we want to experience when we meet our soulmate is not a feeling bred from stitching together two reunited hearts.

There is more to forever than merely finding someone whom you feel incredibly connected to. We have to let this surge of feeling to act as a compass toward strong liaisons. Unique and enchanting feelings for someone are a significant compass, but they shouldn’t be the only factor we take into account when falling in love. We can’t keep striving for this absolute, perfect love because when life throws us some less than ideal situations, we are going to need more than connection, more than an upwelling of exhilaration. We are going to need pragmatic love. We are going to need somebody who fights for us every single day and chooses us in spite of the circumstances.

Soulmates don’t exist. Good human beings do. The aim is to redefine this idea of the perfect kind of love and turn it into an openness to an authentic kind of love. You aren’t going to find somebody who completes you, and you shouldn’t want that. Instead, strive to discover someone who encourages you to complete yourself. Strive to find someone who urges you to see all the potential flowing within your bones. Strive to find someone with whom your love grows slowly but strongly. Strive to find someone who ignites within you the motivation to love in the most enduring ways because, luckily, that kind of person exists.

Love,

Carmen Monica

When rain knocks upon your window like an eager child, it’s important to remember that even the world cries. Even the sky that holds everything together falls apart from time to time.

How often we forget that we are just living between the lines of life, between aches and joys, between what is happy and what is sad within us. Sometimes we forget that we are not alone, that no one lives in perpetual bliss or perpetual sorrow. We are all just playing with light and darkness, and we’re trying to find our harmony.

Sometimes people don’t understand why we love the way we love, why we stay the way we stay. Sometimes people can’t comprehend that we don’t love because we want to, but instead, we love because we have someone else’s blood within our veins, we have someone else’s hands clenched tightly around our heart.

Love,

Carmen Monica

 

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.

***

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