Sometimes it’s a challenge to remember I am worthy…I am valuable…I am loveable…I am good enough!
Sometimes the lies from my past spoken over me by those who were supposed to have loved and protected me…yeah those lies try really hard to drill down in my brain and mess me up.
Haha…I’m learning to recognize them sooner rather than later and kick em to the curb!
We all have days like that!
I’m learning the value of quality self care! I’m learning to give myself permission to be still and heal!
You my friend are so worth the effort to be good to you today!
Take a walk in the woods.
Go for a bike ride.
Read a book.
Listen to music.
Dance like a wild person.
Take a nap.
Say “no”!
Do anything just for you!
You are worth it!
I’d love to hear your story.
Drop me a note at: pamelajwoodall@yahoo.com
You can follow me on face book at: Author Pamela Richards Woodall.
How many times have you looked around you in the middle of a storm…whether it’s a physical issue or money problems or emotional unrest or relationship hurt or so many other forms of a storm…and it seems that your friends have faded into the background?
This morning I looked out the window only to see a fog bank bout 75 feet away. Wow…what a great visual…I’m a visual learner!
I have felt that way before! Like I was in the middle of a horrific storm and thought I had friends I could turn to only to discover they all seemed to have disappeared.
It was then I’d find myself silently screaming, “Why Lord? Why have You left me all alone to fight this scary battle all by myself? I thought you were right here with me!”
I had to learn He is always with me!
His word tells me He will never leave nor forsake me.
Oh man will…friends will wreck you…family will truly mess up your life..but our Poppa God won’t! He can’t!
I’ve had to learn to change my thinkin!
Even though the storm clouds may surround me, even though the fog bank may roll in, my Poppa God is always by my side!
The sun is always shinning above the clouds!
I’ve had to learn how to change my perspective. Stop viewing my situation from a limited view and begin to view my situation with unlimited possibilities in Jesus!
I pray your day is a good one and that if you are in a storm you will not feel alone!
I’d love to hear your story!
Give me a holler here or email at: pamelajwoodall@yahoo.com
Learning to love myself has been a great challenge for I was taught from birth I was worthless and unloved and unlovable!
Ahhh…but I am discovering what a lier all those folks were! However I’ve also discovered it’s so much easier to listen to and believe those lies than to expel them and believe God’s truth about who I am!
Chances are the same holds true for you!
I often ponder on why we’re wired that way…why does it seem easier, less hard work, simpler to take in, absorb, allow those lies to become a part of our innermost being?
Maybe one reason is that if we are not taught from birth of our worth then we will have a stronger perpensity of believing those lies. And seemingly those lies are always sprinkled with a bit of sugar, a smidge of truth that will help the vile taste of the core lies go down better.
But we do not live in a Mary Poppins kinda world. The world in qhich we live in today is full of rage and hate and longing! Yes I believe we’re all, each and every one of us, are all longing just to be loved and accepted!
Accepted in the beloved! Loved for who we really are deep down on the inside we may carey a different belief.
But wait….if you knew the real me you might not like who I really am. If you knew just how frequently I fight fear or unworthiness or self doubt or those dark thoughts of suicide you probably would never wanta talk to me again.
So I’ll throw on my pretty, happy mask and I’ll paint myself up just so you’ll accept me and I’ll buy the push up bra and I’ll have my skin baked to a golden glow and I’ll get many of my body parts pierced or tattooed and so on and so on!! (Guys do the same thing!)
But I digress….
I’m learning to love and appreciate my own quirkiness. I can’t help it if you don’t! That’s on you not me!
I need to love and appreciate me so I can rise up and be what I’ve been called to be. Same as you do!
How can we truly learn to love others if we first don’t love our self!?!
3 Ways I’m Learning to Love Me
1. Listen to my inner messages
I’ve come to realize there’s no way I’d speak to another person as I have myself! So I’m learning to catch these self defeating words quicker and replace the negative with a more positive, truthful message!
2. Forgive Me Quicker
Oh gracious this is a hard one for me!!
I’m still punishing myself over something that happened almost 40 years ago. I know its wrong but have felt I needed to do this!
The Word tells us to be quick to forgive. Well I’m learning that applies to me the same as anyone else!
3. Do Something Daily for Me
Doesn’t need to cost anything nor take a lot of time. It is important that I chose on purpose to daily show my inner self, the little girl within, that I value who I am!
Maybe I take my first hot cup of coffee outside and breath in the new morning.
Maybe I take an afternoon nap.
Maybe I indulge myself with a good chocolate treat.
Maybe I linger longer in a warm hug from my beloved!
Whatever it may be I need to do one thing for me daily!
I encourage you to begin today learning to love and appreciate you! You are worth it and so very important!
I’d love to hear your story!
Drop me a line here.
You can also follow me on Facebook at: Author Pamela Richards-Woodall
Not of me being raped but women I know, have known since high school and those who went to school with my son and other women I know.
It was a very disturbing dream!
I hate these kinds of dreams for to me there is no point in them except the enemy messing with my sleep; however, the more I’ve pondered on this subject this morning the more I wonder if I’m to share my words…again.
I’ve been criticized for sharing too much, for being so open yet I know God has called me to be transparent of what I’ve experienced in hopes of showing others who may have suffered similar experiences that there is hope in Him!
Rape is sexual intercourse, either with the man’s penis or some object inserted into the victim, against the other person’s will!
With regard to my experiences in my childhood I’ve used the words assault, molested, violated but today let’s call it what it really is/was: RAPE!!!
And rape can be carried out by women!
Rape is having some object, human or not, forced inside any of your openings against your will!
Rape is wrong!
Rape can happen to little girls and boys, women and men!
I truly can’t count the times I’ve been raped from before I did not have memories up to my adulthood! It was wrong!
Rape is about the rapist being a bully!
Rape is about the rapist humiliating the one being raped!
Rape is about the rapist needing the power over another!
Rape is wrong!!
Some of my rapists are dead and gone, others are not!
In my dream I had a tazer like object but when I touched these people who were raping they just dissolved! How cool is that!!!
It has taken boat loads of prayers, tears, hard work and quality counselors to help me get past my former horrific experiences! I praise God He has me in the palm of His hand. I don’t know why I had to go through what I did but I can guarantee you if it was to help one person I will share my story anywhere I can!
You can heal from rape, from abuse!
You must be willing to fight the fight to overcome and rise above it!
I share a lot of these experiences in my book, Secrets in the Hollers, as well as the new one, Secrets Exposed!
It is high time to tell the secrets!
I hope you will stand with me in stating that there should be #secretsnomore !
I’d love to hear your story!
You are not alone and someone does truly care about you!
I am a #warriorrisingup !!!
Check our my facebook page at: Author Pamela Richards Woodall
I am available for speaking engagements and training opportunities working to help heal the hurting from various abusive situations!
I #amwriting on Secrets Exposed, part 2 in the Secret series.
This series exposes those dirty little secrets that often go on behind closed doors No One wants to really talk about! This series is written as a work of fiction based on a true story….mine!
Noone should ever have to live through fear and abuse and shame and pain and more!
Especially our precious children!
If you’d like to purchase book 1, Secrets in the Hollers, in book form you may contact me at Oaktreepub@yahoo.com. Or you may purchase one for your e-reader at Amazon Kindle.
I am also available to help meet your training needs on various topics including surviving traumatic child abuse, healing from abuse and domestic violence issues.
Have you ever had days where you seem to wrestle with some unseen force just to barely keep your head above water? It’s almost like some giant hand is trying ever so hard to push you under the water!
Have you felt surely that you were gonna drown in the depths of despair?
Have you ever tried ever so hard to get away from your own self because of the many thoughts that are fighting one over the other to get to the forefront of your mind?
Personally I often struggle with chaotic thoughts, even stinking thinking. I grew up in an abusive, dysfunctional home which created a perfect cesspool of an opportunity for stinkin’ thinkin’! I learned how to think unwisely as a child. I learned how to think unbalanced, unhealthy. Now I am learning how to think more in a healthy manner! But it’s not always easy, well at least for me anyway!
As an abused child I learned, conditioned if you will, at a very early age to try to think one, two or ever five steps ahead of a situation so I could possibly avoid yet another attack; I learned how to plot various situations in my head to figure out what I should do if this or that happened. When we learn that behavior as a child it makes deep ruts in our brains that if we don’t make the effort to get out of those ruts as an adult could very well end up being our grave! I don’t know about you but I didn’t want that!
So I’m learning to change my stinkin’ thinkin’ by creating new paths in my brain; healthier ways of thinking! Stinkin thinkin only serves to kill, steal and destroy! I want life and life more abundantly!
So what am I learning to do to change that behavior, to change that old way of thinking?
It’s taken me may years but I am realizing I am making progress in this area. I’m learning to quickly identify old patterns that have before caused me pain, grief, depression, anxiety and so much more!
Actually just this week I had an experience where I’d wandered around in this funk, this stinkin’ thinkin’, letting it suck the life outta me like two ticks and no dog! I allowed myself to get into a major depression from listening to the lies, the assaults on my thinking of how bad I am or how I’d never amount to anything or any of a hundred more accusations! While talking with my sweet husband later on I realized that the voice I heard were very familiar from my past, even all the way back to my childhood. Oh wow…revelation!
And as he so sweetly reminded me, “Babe, that’s not your Father’s voice!” (Meaning our Heavenly Father) And he was and is right!
Identify that voice.
2. Assess if the message is helpful or hurtful
So as the day that I heard and listened to the stinkin’ thinkin’ wore on I realized that the words I was hearing in my head were actually giving me a headache. Well that’s certainly not a good thing now is it?! In fact it was hurtful!
By mid-afternoon I was not only fighting depression, I was battling a major headache! I had to make some changes.
So I got out and went for a short walk to hopefully clear my head. I got a shower and actively began to change my way of thinking, change what I was listening to. And it did make a difference!
I was sad to admit all that time I spent listening to those words I’d wasted precious time I would not get back. I had allowed myself to be duped into believing the stinkin thinkin that had plagued my mind for most of that day!
3. Create a new strategy
Remember those ruts I mentioned earlier? I learned to view them as a cow path down to the pond from across the hill round the field. That cow will take the path of least resistance, much like we humans often do, and in doing so by going the same route over and over again, pretty soon a rut begins to form. Oh at first it’s merely a faint path hard to make out but after months and years of walking the same way day after day it becomes more clearly defined.
So in order to get out of this rut I must create a new plan of action, a new strategy! I must choose on purpose to think differently. I’m learning to recognize the accusing voice much quicker! And not only to recognize when I’m being lied to; I must replace those lies with His truth! And in order to know what that is I must discover it! I must search out His truth and what He says about me!
This all takes effort on my part but if I want to grow, if I want to take responsibility for my life, as a healthy adult should, then I must be willing to do so!
You too can do something similar.
If you are fighting stinkin thinkin there is positive changes availiable. I don’t know about you but I’ve decided that life is just way too precious and too short, to spend the rest of my years beating myself up. I am going to adjust my thinking. I am creating a new cow path so to speak. I do not wanta live in a rut the rest of my life!
No! I’m going to explore, discover who I am, who He wants me to be!
I’m so thankful that I’m learning to identify that voice and access whether or not those words I hear in my head is helpful or hurtful then create a new strategy! Good growth is possible!
Be kind to yourself during this transition process. It’s not easy to climb up out of a rut you’ve been walking in for years. You’ll need to be strong to climb up over and out but you can do it! One step at a time! One day at a time!
