Carmen Monica Oprea

Patience is the quality that allows us to overcome the obstacles we face, both on the earthly path and on the spiritual path. It is closely linked to hope, the belief that we will be able to overcome the current obstacles and that the future will bring us good.

So, above all, patience implies a strong trust in our capabilities, and especially trust in the will of God, having the understanding that nothing in this universe is accidental! Love, Carmen Monica

A lot of clichés exist about forgiveness. You find them in every piece of advice, in every endorsed opinion, in blogs about letting go of the anger. You read them in quotes and stuck them on post-it notes to a wall. You know that there is no simple task to forgive and it seems like a gap exists between deciding to forgive and feeling peace.

Forgiveness is a vast land for those who crave justice, and the very thought of letting someone walk away free from what they’ve done makes you sick. You don’t want to wipe your hands clean. You want them to bear the weight of what they’ve done, not you. You want to see the scores evened. Sometimes, forgiveness seems like the ultimate betrayal, and you can’t give up the fight for justice after what had happened to you. The anger is burning inside and pumping toxicity throughout your system, but you know that you can’t let it go. The anger is as inseparable from you as your mind and heart.

But the thing about anger is that it doesn’t realize that the past is over and that the damage has been done. Anger is the refusal to heal because when you’re scared, you’re afraid of who you’ll be once the wounds close up and you have to go on living as the new you. Forgiveness is healthier because it brings peace, it brings release when you want the madness in your brain to quiet, but you can’t find a way to get there. Nobody tells you this about forgiveness: it’s not going to fix anything because it is not an eraser that wipes away the pain of what’s happened to you. It doesn’t undo the pain you’ve been living with and grant you immediate peace. Finding peace is a long and arduous battle.

Forgiveness means giving up hope for a different past. It means acknowledging that the past is over, the dust has settled, and the destruction left can never be reconstructed. There is no magic solution to the harm that’s been caused, but you still have to live. Forgiveness means restoring your peace. Forgiveness doesn’t mean to make amends with who hurt you; it doesn’t mean befriending them, sympathizing with them or validating what they’ve done to you. It’s just accepting that they had left a mark on you, and that, for better or worse, the mark is your burden to bear. It means that you’re done waiting for the ones who broke you to come and put you back together. It’s you who decides to heal your wounds and to move forward.

Forgiveness isn’t about letting the injustice reign. It’s about creating your justice, your destiny, reinventing yourself. It’s about getting back on your feet and deciding that the rest of your life isn’t going to be unhappy because of what happened to you. It means walking bravely into the future with every scar you’ve incurred along the way. Forgiveness means that what happened to you won’t define you any longer. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you give up your power, but it means that you’re finally taking it all back.

Love,

Carmen Monica

Make your own decisions, stand on your own two feet, pull yourself together after you fell. You have to continually look for a way to carve your own path in life, to do what you want. You shouldn’t be afraid to go solo and to trust yourself.

Love fiercely, terribly, beautifully and thoroughly with a passion that sickens, consumes. Become a knot of emotions that twists your feelings, throws you upside-down. But don’t also forget to be kind, compassionate, understanding.  Allow yourself to give love because everything else you’ve been brainwashed to believe you need you already have.

Take care of yourself even if that might suggest an entirely different life than the one you thought you would have. Only you can figure it out because no book and no one else can advise you what to do.

Learn to survive because life is about surviving the best way you know how.

Love,

Carmen Monica

Once the truth awakens in your heart, you’ll never be the same person. It’s taken me more than forty years to come to this awareness, but I haven’t been the same woman since I did.

Nowadays, we are programmed continuously to be someone else and not ourselves. This is why we are so terribly confused about whom we should be. There are days when we are creative, articulate, accomplished and funny, but some days we don’t see ourselves this way. We are all hard on ourselves because we don’t only want to be other people, but we want to be perfect versions of them.

Let me tell you about a woman I know. When her first book was published, instead of congratulating herself for producing such a beautiful book after years of effort, she was on the edge of madness because she had used the wrong verb in a sentence. Instead of celebrating her achievement, she robbed herself of this joy.

We should strive to be the first-rate version of ourselves because our best is always good enough. Only God is perfect.

Love,

Carmen Monica

We all lost someone and it hurt. We might have lost them suddenly , unexpectedly, or we began losing pieces of them until one day there was nothing left. Perhaps we’ve known some of them all our lives or maybe we have barely known them at all. Regardless, we cannot control the depth of the wound another soul inflicts in us. I am not here to tell you that tomorrow is another day or that the sun will continue to shine or that there is plenty of fish in the sea. I am going to tell you that it is okay to hurt as much as you do because hurting is necessary to make you more human. I can’t promise you that it will get better any time soon, but, eventually, it will. And for now, take your time. Take all the time you need. Love, Carmen Monica

Sometimes you let go of people without even noticing. You stop thinking of them every day. You stop waiting for them to reply to you. You stop allowing them to take so much space in your life. You move on, you go about your day without worrying about them. You stop expecting them to come back with an apology.

You accept that they are no longer part of your life. You just let them go, as simple as that.

You may not see it today or tomorrow, but you will look back a few years from now and be perplexed and awed by how every little thing added up and brought you somewhere wonderful or where you always wanted to be. You will be grateful that things didn’t work out the way you once wanted them to.

Love,

Carmen Monica

We have to tell the ones we love that we love them not for what they are, but for what we become when we are in their presence.

We should tell the ones we love that they are loved not only for what they made of themselves, but we love them for what they make of us too.

We must tell our loved ones that we love them because they bring out the best in us. We should tell our loved ones that we love them for putting their hands over our hearts and passing over all the foolish, weak things we do, and for drawing out into the light all the beautiful things that no one else had looked far enough to find them.

We should tell our loved ones that we love them because they help us make a temple from our lives, not a tavern. We must thank the ones we love for making us good and keeping us happy.

Tell your loved ones that they are loved for being themselves.

Love,

Carmen Monica

The essence of self-confidence is an optimistic attitude along with learning from our mistakes and recognizing that we can use everything that life throws at us as a lesson if we’re willing to be taught. Self-confidence is like a special elixir to help us face the challenges of life. It includes an aromatic blend of essences like attitude, experience, knowledge, wisdom, optimism, and faith. Self-confidence is available to everyone.

Most of us confuse self-esteem with self-confidence. Self-esteem consists of our feelings about ourselves, about how we love, accept and approve ourselves. How beautiful it will be to just waltz into a beauty salon and buy a bottle of self-confidence!

When you are not sure of yourself, but life asks you to be otherwise, it’s comforting to remember that you can borrow self-confidence from your authenticity. When we act as if we’re self-confident, we become so. If life challenges you, you must show confidence or acquire self-confidence from your authentic self.

Love,

Carmen Monica