The two most powerful words you can say are these:
I AM
Last year, my friend Melissa Boyd introduced me to a song that embodies this idea in such a beautiful way! I want to share it with you all.
“I am the light of my soul. I am beautiful. I am bountiful. I am bliss.”
I hope you will give yourself the less than three minutes it takes to watch and listen to this video right now. Start with a drop or two of essential oil (may I suggest Rosemary for clarity and remembrance?) on a cotton ball or tissue to engage all of your senses!Keep reading
I was so excited when I found out Seth Godin had a new book out!
I like to test drive books before I buy them (when possible) by getting them from the library.
As I was reading and starting my 8th page of notes on the book in my journal, I realized that this was a book I needed to buy.
Duh.
Seth Godin’s writing makes you think about your own life and examine your feelings about what you are–and are not–doing. He has a way of asking questions that cuts right through to get to the truth. This book has come along at the perfect time for me, as the really great books so often do. I have been re-evaluating all of my activities and this met me at exactly the place on this journey where I needed it.
Just one (and I have many!) of my favorite quotes from the book (italics by author):
“Everyone always acts in accordance with their internal narratives.”
Last night I was working on a Vision Board in preparation for a class I am teaching next month. For this particuIar project, I was trying to avoid looking at the words and focus just on the images, so it took me a while to notice how many of the ads in the magazine were drug company ads.
I decided to go back to the beginning and tear out all of the pharmaceutical ads.
I could not believe it!
So many ads telling us that we are broken, faulty, but don’t worry–we can sell you a medication for that! A toxic, potentially deadly, medication.
The most egregious of these is the Gardasil ad. I recently heard this vaccine referred to as “Garda-kill” by Brandy Vaughn (a former drug company rep for Merck). Think about that.
Next time you are offered a drug or a vaccine (or any medical intervention or treatment), ask questions.
If you only ask one question, let it be this: Can I see the package insert for that? And if you are #brave enough to ask a second question of your healthcare provider, ask this: Have you read it?Keep reading
This is probably not something you thought you’d need to factor into your decision-making.
Maybe you’re like me. I used to think that vaccine bottles contained some form of antigen and saline, and not much else.
And then I learned about mercury. And aluminum.
I thought these things were probably bad to have injected into our bodies. Alas, I did not know vaccines contained these and other materials when I was making most of my vaccine decisions.
I started to question the process after I became a nurse. In nursing school, I was taught that nurses need a physician’s order to administer a drug. After I graduated and was out in the ‘real world’, I learned about flu shots being given out in the community at senior centers and such. I asked how nurses could be giving these shots to people without a doctor’s order. I asked about the process of informed consent, which I was taught was required before any medical intervention.
Crickets.
I have found this happens a lot in healthcare. When things don’t make sense to me, or fly in the face of what I’ve been taught and I seek answers, there are none. None that make sense. I hear: “This is how we do it.” “This is how we’ve always done it.” “Flu shots are the exception.”
Um, what?
Fast forward to 2018. Through my own quest for the truth and through self-education, I now know quite a lot more about vaccines and what’s actually in them, some of which I found shocking. Unbelievable. Like aborted male fetal tissue.
Who thought Carmen Shenk’s book about kitchen simplicity could change your thoughts about your own home?
I love how this book helped me see my home through the author’s lens of simplicity and how it jump-started new ideas for me about how to better organize my kitchen. Even now, weeks after I finished the book, I am still evaluating how I set up my kitchen, what’s necessary and loved, and what is just taking up space. I have a renewed energy for my de-cluttering efforts. I also loved Carmen’s approach of keeping her home a haven, and actively keeping out the negative energy that abounds in the world.
I have certainly heard of taking a news fast in the past. I actually (almost) never watched the news. Over the past two years, however, I have become addicted to it, as my husband so kindly pointed out to me last week. This creates an energy in the house that we could certainly do without. The point that Carmen makes is that this is something we can control. Making home a haven is our decision.
I love how, by author Carmen Shenk describing her own experience and life, which is so very different from my own, helps me see my living situation in a completely different way.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” ~Wayne Dyer
I watched a video recently on Senator Susan Collins’ Facebook page. She talked about how she was standing in line at a pharmacy when she heard a conversation between two people who had to decide not to pick up a prescription medication because of the exorbitant cost. She was so upset by this!
I had a similar occurrence that left me scratching my head. I was picking up a tube of Erythromycin at the pharmacy which I expected to cost just a few dollars. When I was told that it was $20+ dollars, I was floored.
Why does it cost so much? I asked the pharmacy tech. She just shook her head and said that’s what it cost. I told her it cost a fraction of that the last time I got it and she said well, that’s what it costs now. I asked her to ring it up using an AARP pharmacy discount card and a GoodRx card to compare the costs, because I was trying to find out the cheapest way to get it.
She resisted me. I had the idea in the first place because another pharmacist had done that for me (at a different store) years ago when the cost of another antibiotic that should have been cheap was not.
In the end, I just paid the too-high price and left, disgusted but grateful that I rarely had a need to purchase prescription drugs.
But Senator Susan Collins didn’t just shake her head and leave. She took action. She wrote the bill that was just passed to remove the ‘gag order’ that prevented pharmacists from telling customers that it might be cheaper for them to get a medication if they did not go through their health insurance.
So, thank you, Senator Susan Collins and all of the other involved parties, including President Trump, for getting this ridiculous, shady rule removed.
The cost of so many prescription drugs is appalling.
Shining a light on the problem is one small step toward change.
I could not believe it!
Karen Creamer
