Monthly Archives: September 2020

Relationship Rescue – Learning To Trust Again

Posted on by

By African American Book Writer, Denise Turney

happy family smiling from relationship rescue
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

All types of relationships, face-to-face and long-distance, can benefit from relationship rescue. Fear of rejection, fear of not being in control and especially fear of failure can be released after the rescue, a shift that centers the union on love. Barriers are replaced with hope, trust, care, patience, joy and love.

Learning to Trust Again as Part of a Relationship Rescue

For all of its rewards, love has barriers to get through, which is a reason why getting to a good relationship requires patience. Fact is, despite its benefits, love is viewed as weak. This belief presents a relationship barrier, whether you are seeking a friend or looking for a marriage partner.

It starts in childhood. Pre-teens push their mothers away when they go to hug them. “Don’t baby me. Don’t make me soft,” are demands children make of their mothers. At first glance, it appears sensible.

After all, the world isn’t going to baby, pamper or be soft on kids when they grow up. The world doesn’t coddle adults seeking relationship rescue with colleagues or couple’s therapy. In fact, even while undergoing relationship rescue, the world can feel like a gigantic foe that won’t stop swinging.

Getting off of this mean merry-go-round starts with introspection. It calls for the ongoing practice of self-love. And it requires learning to trust again. Actions that help you learn to trust again include:

  • Releasing the need to control
  • Letting go of the need to know everything

More About Relationship Rescue

Other actions that support learning to trust efforts are practicing forgiveness, accepting reality and grieving the loss of previous relationships. This includes family, friend and romantic relationships. For example, to release a former relationship, you could write your inner self a letter. In this letter, express your love for yourself. Also, share how you will be patient with yourself as you adjust to life without the previous relationship.

You might list specific ways that you will continue to work through grief. For instance, you might do three things a day that cause you to feel joy and peace. Listening to music that causes you to feel happiness and peace is one way. Meditating in a peaceful area and spending time in nature are other options. Additionally, you might stand in front of a mirror and say “I love you” to yourself in the morning and at night. This is important. Because believe it or not, loving yourself is key to any relationship rescue.

Even more, loving yourself is at the core of learning to trust again. And it’s this lesson that can make a relationship good. Yet, there’s still the belief that love is weak. In fact, men still get teased for “being in love”.

Made to be Loved

But if you get to know a man, you know better than to believe that men don’t want deep love, affection and care. In fact, a survey reported in Reader’s Digest reports that men fall in love faster than women. When it comes to falling in love at first sight, men get hooked 48% compared to women, who fall in love at first sight 28% of the time.

Also, men who responded to the survey shared that it bothered them if their partner wasn’t romantic enough. Despite what some men may say and how loudly they voice it, men want and need love. The trouble is that some men are raised to be so outwardly tough, they can come off as emotionally cold.

If men are taught to avoid loving emotions at all costs (least they be perceived as weak), they could go into conflict each time feelings labeled as “bad,” “soft,” or “weak” surface. That alone could produce conflict.

Art of Falling in Love

Yet, if you’re an expansion of love, it’s not possible to be satisfied with anything less than love. That’s why it’s critical that you love yourself. In fact, self-love is a start to the art of joining in love with someone else. So, before you seek a new relationship, work on the relationship you have with yourself.

Practice self-awareness. Become aware of what you really want. Take smart risks. There may be no better way to learn that “nothing outside of you will make you happy”. This includes the image (or illusion) you’ve created of your “perfect match”.

Therefore, in addition to self-love, the art of joining in love calls for failure. Along the way, you may have to invest in relationship counseling. You also might have to invest in psychotherapy to improve the relationship that you have with YOU.

Why not now?

Love and Trust in Rescued Relationships

Succeeding at love is about more than romance. It encompasses all of your relationships. The most influential of these relationships has nothing to do with romance. Yet, this relationship has everything to do with love. It’s the relationship you have with your parents.

Even if this relationship was fractured or bruised, you can still experience love and trust. Start practicing self-awareness, take full responsibility for yourself and make choices that help you to release unhealthy relationships. Focus on doing what causes you to feel joy and peace. Make this a priority and you may develop a sharp emotional compass.

You could spot when someone is devaluing you. And you may lose an attraction for people, including current and former lovers, who mistreat you. In fact, as you practice self-awareness and self-love, you may stir up the confidence to make choices that attract more love to you.

Finding Real Love

If you believe that love is weak or that love is only real in a romantic form, you could spend a lifetime searching for love and thinking you never found it. Fact is love is strong. It may be the only true strength. And love is limitless. It’s not limited to romance.

So, if you really want to experience love, start by getting to know and loving your true Self. And love every aspect of creation. It’s going to require forgiveness, as we all make mistakes. For sure, experiencing true love requires patience. But, if you’ve ever been loved, you know that it’s worth it.

Another thing, each relationship you have impacts every other relationship that you have. Wishing you the strength of love everywhere you are, everywhere you go.

Love Pour Over Me

If you’re struggling to love yourself or if you think love is weak, consider Raymond Clarke’s story. Raymond was told that love is for weak people. He was raised not to need anyone. But he didn’t create himself just as we didn’t create ourselves. Raymond needs love. He just doesn’t know it.

Can you imagine being told not to let something happen, then the experience keeps happening? Don’t want love. Working hard not to let anyone get close to you. You could get hurt. You might feel like a failure every time you start opening up to another person, which could cause more conflict, more problems. This seesaw experience causes Raymond Clarke to create emotional, psychological and, later in his life, physical barriers, shutting out nearly everyone who tries to get close to him.

Fortunately, love doesn’t give up, proving that love truly is patient, forgiving and strong. Each of us has to open up to love, letting it flow through us. Everyone has to give and receive love. It’s our core. It’s what we are.

It takes Raymond years to accept love’s lessons. How long will you let it take you?

Get your copy of “Love Pour Over Me” Now

Barnes & Noble – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/love-pour-over-me-denise-turney/1109600654

Three Great Ways To Connect With Online Readers

Posted on by

By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

a romantic setting in the bathroom with a book and candles
Photo by Taryn Elliott on Pexels.com

It’s no longer simple. Ways to connect with online readers are growing, expanding. Reasons readers turn to books are also changing. In fact, entertainment is only one reason why readers choose engaging novels. Technology finds people reaching for books to be entertained, educated, to watch videos embedded in stories and brain train with audiobooks.

Connect with Online Readers on the Hunt for Good Novels

Keeping up with these changes is important for authors who want to connect with readers, introducing their stories and selling more books. Also, knowing why someone seeks books to read can reveal the best ways to connect with these readers.

For example, if someone is looking for books to unleash their imagination, joining fantasy discussion forums could be a good move for an author. Good events to attend are offline and virtual fantasy events. Mystery dinner theater plays, especially plays that encourage attendee discussions before or after the play, are also great events to connect with readers who are looking to enter a world of imagination.

Fortunately, bookshelves are lined with great novels, stories ranging from the classics to modern mysteries to family sagas to cultural depictions. Yet, if you’re an avid book reader, you’ve come across good novels that, had you not accidentally found the books while rummaging through a library or local corner bookstore, you may never have had the chance to read the books.

If you’re an avid book reader and an author, yours is a two-prong goal. In addition to finding great novels to read, you want to do what you can to help book lovers find the novels you’ve written. Following are three great ways to connect with readers online. As a tip, I’ve also included several ways to find and connect with book lovers offline.

3 Great Ways to Connect with Online Readers

To begin, social media is a way to connect with online readers. But you need to try different social media platforms to discover which platforms yield the best results for you. Also, stick with a few social media platforms. Why? As an author, you want to be able to invest enough time in each social media platform to build genuine connections with readers. And:

  • Develop and distribute a weekly or a monthly newsletter. Spotlight your new books in the newsletter. Also, you could include questions that readers submit to you in the newsletter along with your responses. It’s another way to connect with online readers.
  • Post details about your books at book club and book directories that accept book listings. And, if these sites have discussion forums, participate in the forums by asking and fielding questions.
  • Attend book festivals. Bring a signup sheet with you to book festivals. Make it easy for readers to share their contact information with you so you can send those readers details about your new books, discounts, coupons and details about upcoming book events you plan to attend.
  • Speak at colleges and universities. Before the close of your speaking, let attendees know that a good way to learn more about topics you just spoke about is to read your book.
  • Treat people who buy your books to holiday postcards, birthday announcements and other communications that say, “Thank you”.

Finding Great Books

Sure. Word of mouth is one proven way to find great novels. But your family, friends and colleagues can’t possibly read every book you’ll love. Therefore, you’re going to have to search for good books on your own.

If you’re fortunate, you’ll find clever ways to connect with authors. Many authors are seeking ways to find you so they can share their stories with you. If those authors write from their soul, their very essence, you’ll be in for a real treat if you find one another.

When I think back to my childhood and challenging times as an adult, there were books that helped me to keep going, to get over the hump. They weren’t motivational books. Instead, they were entertaining stories with characters I cared about, characters facing long odds who left me with no choice except to root for them. It’s those types of stories I hope authors of great novels help you to find.

Great Ways To Say I Love You

Posted on by

By Books Author Denise Turney

Rose against backdrop signaling love
Wikimedia Commons – Picture by Laitche

It takes courage to say, “I love you.” After all, love can feel like the most elusive thing in the world. Doesn’t matter how you define it. Finding this sweet truth, let alone keeping it, seems impossible.

Great Call for Joy

Yet could it be that love, also referred to as truth and joy, feels elusive because you search for it in time spaces that do not exist? Check this out. The great writer, Leo Tolstoy, shared that “Future love does not exist. Love is a present activity only. The man who does not manifest love in the present has not love.”

So, if you’re never present could you be missing joy’s splendor? And, more importantly, could you be missing evidence that demonstrates that you are worthy of love? Because isn’t that the thing? You want to feel and believe that you are loved.

Being present means you don’t give into temptations to try to live in the past or future. Mistakes, embarrassment, economic shifts and community and work demands can tempt you to dismiss the present. So too can investing too much time on social media, texting, watching TV and living in the virtual world.

Give and Receive

In the world, it’s almost as if the goal is to pull you out of the present. There’s this illusion that being present causes you to miss something. However, if you notice how much you miss by focusing on future or past events, you’ll see what a trick the illusion is.

Not being present while you’re with someone sends a message that the person doesn’t matter as much to you as a device you’re using or whatever else you’re investing attention in. Show someone you value them by being present with them.

Give them your attention, and your time. Keep at it and see if they don’t start to return your investment, putting aside their devices and being present while they’re with you. Let this happen and it won’t be with words, but instead with actions, that you tell someone you love them.

Great Ways to Say I Love You

When you give love, you receive it. That’s why valuing people and investing appreciation in them is so important, creating an ongoing cycle. Love may not appear as you imagine, but it’s there. If you’re giving it, there is no way it can be absent.

To start giving and receiving love, consider adding one or more of these great ways to say “I love you” to your daily actions. Many of these actions don’t involve talking:

  • Visit friends and relatives. Don’t stop at telling people how much you care. Show up in people’s lives. Let them know they mean so much to you that you don’t want to go long without seeing them.
  • Call friends regularly. Demonstrate that you value them to the point that you want to communicate with them frequently.
  • Invite friends to lunch. Interrupt your routines so you can include friends in your day.
  • Mail family and friends holiday cards, letters and vacation postcards.

Keep Expressing Appreciation

  • Create and share hand crafted gifts. Add a note that expresses how much someone means to you.
  • Enjoy walks and bike rides with people you appreciate.
  • Write and share poems.
  • Share holidays with people who you’re close to.
  • Invite those you adore to your home. Focus on those people while they are in your space. This means you’re not surfing the Internet, texting or watching TV.
  • Say “I love you”.
  • Do at least three things a day that confirm value yourself
  • Get outside and play with people you care about
  • Laugh and have fun without worrying about what someone is thinking about you

Cause and Effect

Each time you love, you help someone to heal. Therefore, don’t just search for truth or joy. Give love. Also, accept that you are worth joy. You should be happy. In fact, you deserve it.

After all, if you’re giving love, you obviously have love inside of you. The aim is to share that goodness, expressing appreciation. Here’s to hoping this list of ways to say, “I love you!” make their way into your frequent communications.

And it’s probably not a stretch to believe that the people you appreciate and let know will demonstrate their appreciation for you as well. Keep the cycle going.

About the Brilliant Love of a Good Family

Posted on by

By Books Writer Denise Turney

picture of family of birds love in tree
Wikimedia Commons – Picture by Touhid biplob

The ongoing rewards and peace that come from growing up in a good family are immeasurable. There’s this sense of safety that, though possible to be found in other places, rarely is. Also, because loved ones supported you as you were maturing, catching you before you fell, you may have the ability to trust. You may even be open to taking smart risks that lead you into relationship, social, business and community successes.

Growing Up in a Good Family

Of course, there are instances when good family relationships start late. For example, years may pass before you meet a biological sibling, a brother or sister who becomes your best friend. But if the connection is strong, within months or just a few years, the bond that your sibling and you share may be unbreakable.

It’s these strong family bonds that can help you get through life’s toughest challenges, hard times you may not see coming. Grow up in a good family that practices honesty and you can also be entrusted with your parents’, grandparents’ and aunts’ and uncles’ real-life stories of failure, resolve, trust and success.

You’ll carry your ancestors’ stories with you everywhere you go, for the remainder of your physical expression. At times, their stories will surface in your memory like long lost gifts.

Family Past That Gets You Thru Tough Challenges

My great-grandmother’s story of failure, tenacity, persistence and eventual lifelong success inspired me to keep going during one of the toughest times of my life. In fact, just knowing that a woman in my family had overcome a trying early adulthood convinced me that I could get through whatever came my way.

It’s due to family goodness that Portia doesn’t quit after her family doctor, a physician Portia has known since she was a kid, long before she became a successful Chicago defense attorney, tells her that she has breast cancer. And, before she turns forty, Portia ends up needing her family more than she realizes.

Fortunately, Portia shares rich, rewarding experiences with her relatives. Her mother is a respected secondary school teacher who works at a school on Chicago’s South Side. Even more, her father has a history of putting courage into action.

Family Love That Last

Throughout the 1960s, Portia’s father was active in the Civil Rights Movement. He stood on local and national front lines when doing so put a leader’s life in danger. He didn’t even back down after other Civil Rights leaders were threatened and attacked.

By the time the 1980s rolled around, the work that her father did was paving a way for Portia. In fact, it’s the Civil Rights organizing that her father engaged in that inspired her to become a defense attorney. But it’s the love she received from her family that sustains her during the lowest points of her life.

No way could Portia’s ancestors have known that their love, care and kindness for Portia would suffice, would actually be enough, as Portia faced mortality, as she faced the potential end of her physical experience. How good for Portia that they loved her at a time in her young life when it appeared as if hers would be a traditional life, free of intense struggle.

Read Portia – A Book About the Power of Good Family Love

And who could blame them. By the time Portia was a teenager, the 1960s were beyond her. In fact, her family appeared to have turned a corner, a long arduous corner. But life in this world is filled with ups and downs, highs and lows.

How fortunate Portia is to have received love from a good family. There would come a time when the love of a good family would seem like all she had. Who knows? Maybe that time comes for more than we imagine.

Read Portia to explore the power of good family love. Let yourself be inspired to be there for your family. One day you may need the family stories that you create with your relatives. They just might help get you through your life’s greatest challenges, hard times that you don’t even see coming.

11 Good Ways to Learn to Love Yourself

Posted on by

By Books Writer Denise Turney

selflove pour over me book
Learn to love yourself

Discover effective ways to learn to love yourself and you could open up to the good you’ve been seeking. However, it’s important that you find the right path. After all, what works for your friend, neighbor or colleague, might not work for you. Yet, there are smart self-love actions that will work for you.

Catch Yourself to Know When You Need to Activate Ways to Learn to Love Yourself

Practicing self-love seems as natural as breathing, as normal as hearing water running through a kitchen spigot. But, loving yourself isn’t always easy. First, there are those nagging judgments to get beyond, thoughts like “you’re always making mistakes,” “everybody thinks you’re boring,” “your mother never was happy with you” or “nothing ever turns out right for you”.

It’s almost as if those nagging thoughts are coming from outside of you, from somewhere else. After all, who would talk to herself in such mean, painful ways?

Yet, think back. Doesn’t that nagging voice in your head sound just like your voice? Could it be that another part of your mind is hammering you with unkind thoughts and beliefs?

Don’t sit idle. Don’t allow the harsh, unloving talk to continue. You don’t want to start projecting those unloving thoughts, creating unkind experiences for yourself. Instead, learn to love yourself.

There are rewards. In fact, happiness and peace are only two major rewards that you gain when you learn self love. Confidence, improved self-esteem, opening to adventure, newness and playfulness are other rewards associated with self-love.

Reverse the Damage – Learn to Love Yourself

Check out these 11 ways to learn to love yourself. But don’t just look over the list of actions that you can take to express love to yourself. Put a few of these ways to learn to love yourself into action.

  1. Speak one loving thought out loud to yourself in the morning while standing in front of a mirror. Also, speak this same loving thought to yourself at night before you go to bed. Again, stand in front of a mirror when you speak this loving thought to yourself.
  2. Live in the present.
  3. Do something fun outside. It could be as simple as sitting on the porch, riding a bike, walking or reading a book outside.
  4. Write about a situation that you feel fear about (e.g. telling a friend that you’re not going to her party) in a journal. See if the fear doesn’t lower.
  5. Sing and dance absent a care, just sing and dance

More Ways to Learn Self Love

  1. Sit down and do nothing for 15 minutes before you go to bed. Treat yourself to a good night of sleep and rest.
  2. Appreciate the light and beauty in others without comparing yourself to anyone.
  3. Write down thoughts and behavior patterns you’d like to change. List actions you will take to change the thoughts and the behaviors. Be honest with yourself. Exercise your power.
  4. Accept full responsibility for your thoughts and behaviors.
  5. Say “No” when you don’t want to do something.
  6. Forgive yourself when you make mistakes. If you do this effectively, you’ll also forgive others when they make mistakes.

Projecting What You Believe About Yourself

Sigmund Freud wrote about the concept of projection. It’s possible to project and not know it, but you will feel its effects. As shared in Psychology Today, projection is the act of “displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal or objects.” And yes. Projection can be positive. Also, projection can occur when you transfer or project lofty thoughts and feelings that you have for yourself onto another person, animal or object.

In fact, this happens when you project inner good thoughts and emotions onto an athlete, actress, business leader or community leader. Before you know it, you may elevate the person into celebrity. Imagine how you would treat yourself if you stopped projecting these positive thoughts and feelings onto another person and focused them on yourself.

Lifetime of Self Love

And if you keep positive thoughts healthy (instead of letting them drift into loftiness), you could start to love yourself in healthy ways. Try it. Incorporate a few of the ways to learn to love yourself shared in this article into your daily practices.

Make three or more of the 11 ways to learn to love yourself part of your inner patterns. Then, pay attention. See if you feel less guilt. Also, notice if you feel more empowered, safe and cared for. And, because self-love is an ongoing choice, be open to adding, removing and changing actions that you engage in to express love to yourself.

One more thing about projection. As you love yourself more deeply, you’ll extend that love to others. And it will be as natural as breathing, as normal as hearing water running out of a kitchen spigot. Learn more about love and its power in Love Pour Over Me.