Tag: Self Care (Page 3 of 3)

Are You Walking Through A Storm?

July 30, 2013 / Sarah Boucher / 0 Comments

Are You Walking Through A Storm?

Nothing you or I do can EVER effect the forces of nature or the unpleasant circumstances and trials we will walk through in our lives. All we can do in the midst of any storm, is take a deep breath and remember that in this moment today, we are okay. We are breathing and our life is still a gift. We have survived many storms in the past, maybe not this ferocious, but this storm, just like every other storm, will eventually pass and the sun WILL shine again.

Perhaps this storm will leave behind a horrible path of destruction. If that is the case, all we can do, is take a deep breath, and make a choice. Are we going to let the devastation consume us along with its other victims or are we going to continue to breathe, be thankful for the good things that remain, and move forward POWERFULLY one day at a time?

The ONLY thing I can control today is how I CHOOSE TO BE in the world.

My heart is FLOODED with love and concern for you when I think about the storms you are seeking shelter from today. All I can do from here is take a deep breath and tell you how much I care for you. You ARE truly a POWERFUL woman. I am amazed by the strength we were all created with that gets us through the storms of life.

Don’t try to face this storm alone. Reach out for support. Remember the POWER of Self Care. One day when this storm is a memory, you will be able to support another POWERFUL woman, feeling scared and alone, who is going through a storm of her own.

Self Care is the resource that has helped me through major trials in my own life, especially within the last year. I love to learn from other women. What thoughts, actions, people, or resources have been a comfort to you in times of trial? Let me know below.

I love you!
Sarah

P.S. Feel free to share this post with anyone you know who is walking through a storm.

Sarah Boucher happily encourages women to find their power at I Am A Powerful Woman. Come join the conversation there.

Take A Smile

May 19, 2013 / Sarah Boucher / 0 Comments

Take A Smile
If your husband has a bad attitude today…take a smile.
If your kids aren’t listening to a word you say…take a smile.
If your car is in the shop or
your washing machine is broken…take a smile.
If someone you love dearly is in the hospital…take a smile.
If someone you care about is addicted to drugs or alcohol…take a smile.
If you are a single mom…take a smile.
If you are a widow…take a smile.
If you are sad…take a smile.
If there’s no money in your bank account…take a smile.
If EVERYTHING seems to be going wrong…take a smile.

YOU are a POWERFUL woman. YOU are breathing and life is still a gift. We are all connected. This smile that you take, will lift your spirit and you will bless the next person. All of those circumstances above happen to us and go on around us every day. We can’t DO anything about them. The ONLY thing we have any control over is the way we CHOOSE to BE in the world. So…know someone cares very much about you and take a smile.

Self Care is the resource I turn to daily that helps me smile even through “tough” times.

YOU are going to be okay…one day at a time.

I want to hear what you have to smile about today, even if you are walking through a trial.
Let me know in the comments below.

~Sarah

Sarah Boucher offers encouragement for women to grow in their power daily at I Am A Powerful Woman.

You Are Not Stuck

May 12, 2013 / Sarah Boucher / 0 Comments

You Are Not Stuck
I hope you are having a very happy experience of life, but some of you are in a different place than that. Your thoughts are filled with pain, worry, and maybe even hopelessness. You are not stuck.

I was greeted this morning with the terrible news of a suicide. A sweet, red headed woman who always had a big smile on her face. I barely knew her but the news hit me like a ton of bricks.

POWERFUL woman–listen to me. There are ALWAYS choices available to you in ANY situation. YOU ARE NOT STUCK! YOU ARE NOT TRAPPED! HELP IS AVAILABLE ALL AROUND YOU. Reach out and take the hand of a stranger even. MAKE THE CALL. People all around the world care about YOU and we are cheering you on.

There are so many stories of success–of women who took that first step to make the change for herself and her children.

Depression
If you suffer from depression, please call your doctor, get free counseling, and even learn techniques to change your thinking. If your depression is not severe, look for something you can do for someone else or look for the next thing that needs to be done. Get up and get to work. Find the next thing that needs to be done and do it. Don’t sit and think for hours (I’m a thinker, so I know how easy it is to get stuck in this place. I struggled with depression for about a year, maybe longer than that after my fourth child was born. I didn’t want to accept the fact that I was depressed. Learning that I had more control over which thoughts I put energy into, proactively filling myself up with grounded, positive thoughts and a daily Self Care routine made a world of difference in the way I experience my life whether the circumstances around me are “good” or “bad”.)

Single Moms
You are definitely not alone. There are many resources available to single moms–grants, state programs, single parent groups in your community and in churches. I did a search for single moms on Pinterest and found all kinds of encouragement there. Check out this article as a jumping off place if you are feeling overwhelmed or need extra encouragement. 10 Single Mom Secrets.

Addiction
If you struggle with addiction, check out Sisters of Serenity and Sobriety for daily encouragement and start your journey to recovery. Katie has quite a survival story.

Physical or Emotional Abuse
If YOU are being abused or your children are being abused, call the police, get into a shelter, and start rebuilding your life.

Human Trafficking Victim or Prostitution
If you are in either of these situations, you are not alone and help is available to you.
How to Know if You Are a Victim And for those of us who want to fight for our sisters, here’s 20 Ways You Can Help Human Trafficking.

Hookers for Jesus Their desire and goal includes providing transitional support and assistance to the youth and women seeking to leave the sex industry.

Loss of Loved Ones
If you are dealing with the loss of someone close to you, first of all, I am very sorry for your loss and secondly, I hope this site helps you make sense of your grief. MedicineNet.com

Take Action
If the action is calling National Suicide Prevention Hotline, then make the call now. Be your own hero by taking that first step today to rescue yourself. GET HELP! I believe in YOU! YOU are a POWERFUL woman. YOU are not STUCK!

Please comment below if you have encouragement or a resource to pass along to anyone who might feel alone in any of these areas.

All my love and POWERFUL thoughts being sent your way!
Sarah

www.facebook.com/IAmaPowerfulWoman

Find Your Power

April 21, 2013 / Sarah Boucher / 0 Comments

Find Your Power

Do you feel like all you have ever known is struggle? Even though you can count your blessings until you are blue in the face because you do realize you are blessed, at the end of the day, you still feel like you are struggling–struggling to live peacefully with your spouse, to be consistent with your parenting, to encourage your children to get along, to stay on top of things at work, to keep the house decent, to pay the bills, to make ends meet, to ever get ahead? Are you ready to Find Your Power and move beyond struggle? I sure as heck am.

I have written blog posts that talked about the reality of my situation where I said, if you want expert advice in finances, organization, business, or healthy eating, don’t come to me. When J.K. Rowling said, “And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life,” I can relate. I know my situation could get worse, but I’m at rock bottom of what I have experienced in my life so far. I am 34 years old and I feel like someone just handed me an encyclopedic sized book entitled How To Be A Grown Up.

I feel ridiculous when other women compliment me on my parenting, “Girl, I don’t know how you do it? Five kids!” The whole time we’re conversing, I’m thinking how glad I am that they can’t see what a wreck my house is or my bank statement. My neighbors know all about my parenting because they see the ugliness my kids display in the front yard as they yell all sorts of obscenities over who gets shotgun. Guess what? My teenagers aren’t allowed to cuss but they do it anyway. Compliment me now. Since my husband left 8 months ago, my children and I have had more McDonald’s $1 menu meals and bowls of cereal for dinner than I care to admit. I make $100 a week babysitting. Yep, that’s right. The face behind I Am A Powerful Woman is a babysitter probably making less than my teenage colleagues.

All of that to say that I don’t have it together. I’m surviving, but I don’t want to survive. I want to give my life my best shot. I want to have a plan for my family’s success and if I don’t make it, who cares. I will have tried my best and had fun doing it. I am ready to find my power in each area of life that needs work (which is every area honestly, and I think we all would agree that parenting needs to be first on the list of areas to tackle, what with the cussing kids in the front yard and all that) and excel.

Find Your Power

My strengths going into this Find Your Power phase of life are that I use Self Care daily to stay grounded in my well being in the midst of some pretty major trials, and I REALLY believe in possibilities for myself and others. If there was a Queen of Possibility, I would be it or next in line for the throne behind Oprah.

My focus for the rest of 2013 is Find Your Power! I will be sharing my own journey in finding my power, resources that I find useful, and ideas that I implement that work. If you also are on a journey to Find Your Power, please stay connected. Comment below or come to I Am A Powerful Woman and share where you are and what has worked for you.

I Am A Powerful Woman was never about me and how powerful I am. It was always my intention to encourage others to grow in their power as I was growing in mine, because this power is in all of us.

This is our year POWERFUL woman! Find Your Power!

I believe in you!
Sarah

How Did You Cope?

October 10, 2012 / Sarah Boucher / 2 Comments

The Boucher Family

When I started I Am A Powerful Woman on facebook, my biggest problem was that we were a family of seven with very little income. I was on top of the world emotionally. I was no longer a victim of my own thinking. I was creating my days instead of reacting to them. Nothing could bring me down or so I thought. I was living through tough financial times and I wasn’t freaking out over everyday challenges. In all our years of marriage I felt like we always had our priorities straight. We didn’t have money but we had each other and five healthy kids. We were rich indeed. And it was just getting ready to turn around for us financially. My husband was promoted to management and we finally had enough money to get on top of our financial situation.

My husband moved out of the house a month ago. I was completely blindsided. My well being flew out of the window and I crashed hard. I am not angry–just very sad. We are not at each others’ throats. Our communication is civil and the situation could be much worse than it is, but it is still not at all the way I would choose for my life to be going. I was CRAZY in love with him and my life was completely intertwined with his. I am still scratching my head over this turn of events and what is to become of me.

Some of my first thoughts were that I would be okay one day. I will get through this and it is an opportunity to explore my life independently. I was a young wife and mother and have never been independent from another grown up. Some days I have been just fine. Other days I don’t know how I could ever be happy again.

I thought recently about how much pressure he was under to provide for such a large family and how unhappy he was in that struggle–especially the last couple of years. During his darkest days was when I learned I had control over my thoughts and could be happy regardless of other people’s emotional state and actions. I soared. He sunk.

My feelings of despair have really shaken me up. Will I ever be happy again? How is it possible that I was able to feel happiness in the midst of his stress, but I can’t feel it now? How can I separate my life from his and find myself again? Where did my POWER go?

Have you been in my position? Are you here now? I am very curious as to how others coped through these hard days of learning a new way to live without sinking into despair and not functioning. The best advice I have been given for really rough days is to ask myself, “Am I breathing?” and then ask, “What’s the next thing?” With five kids, there is always a next thing to be done.

I cannot change the past. It is what it is. The ONLY thing I can control is the way I CHOOSE to BE in the world today.

I made a list yesterday of all of the things that I have done for myself or that others have done for me that have encouraged me during this time. Here are a few of the things on my list.

* Self Care

* bubble bath

* candles

* an $8 purse

* Pumpkin Spice Latte

* dinner with a couple of friends (Yummy Mexican food!!!)

* my mom took me to the movies (a lovely distraction–We saw Dark Knight Rising. Nothing like fighting and killing to get over a broken heart.)

* I bought a puppy for my kids

Puppy Power!

* Loads of love and support from friends and family–texts and calls. These have meant so much to me.

How did you cope? What did you do (or are presently doing) to make it through a similar situation? What helpful books did you read? Comment below or come over to fb and share.

Unleash Your Power With Self Care

May 22, 2012 / Sarah Boucher / 5 Comments

Self Care helps me get centered–grounded in my well being. When I approach my day this way, I have a better experience of life. Circumstances that would normally send me over the edge are easily handled and life moves on. I have experienced a major shift in my life because of practicing self care.

We are taught that the world is an outside in deal–that things outside of us make us happy. When I get this thing I’ve always wanted, then I will be happy. The truth is that happiness is ALWAYS an inside out job. This is why self care is crucial. Michael Neill says, “We think we are experiencing reality but what we are really experiencing is our thinking.” Making Self Care a habit has definitely helped me with my thinking.

Self Care is a very personal practice. You have to find the right combination for you, but I will offer you the same starting place that was given to me.

These four Self Care thoughts come from Bill Cumming. His organization is called The Boothby Institute. Bill recommends spending time each morning thinking about these four main points and then reading a couple of pages from authors like Marianne Williamson, Don Miguel Ruiz, and Greg Baer, whose books reinforce the main ideas of Self Care.

Self Care Thoughts

We live in a miracle.
We are ALL interconnected.
The ONLY thing I can control today is the way I CHOOSE to BE in the world.
Be gracious with yourself.

When I first started self care, I thought about these four thoughts and then tacked on The Four Agreements too.

Be impeccable with your word. (Don’t use your words to hurt yourself or others.
Don’t take anything personally. (Nothing others do or say is because of you. It’s their own drama.)
Don’t make assumptions. (Don’t assume you know what others are thinking or that they know what you are thinking.)
Always do your best. (Your best changes from day to day.)

Doing self care that way worked for me, but now I do it differently. I pray about the Self Care thoughts and then pray about whatever else I want to pray about. It just seems natural to me in thinking about the miracle of life, to thank God for it right then and there. That may or may not work for you. There are no rules. I only know that taking time to dwell on those four points does make an incredible difference in the way I experience a day.

If you find yourself in the middle of the day ungrounded–do self care. It makes sense that if it works in the beginning of the day that it would work in the middle too.

I want all of us to go through our days with MORE JOY, MORE PEACE, and MORE POWER and Self Care is a very effective way to do so. I created a one page Self Care Guide that you can print off. I use it from time to time to help my wandering mind stay focused. I even skip around from one section of the page to another as my thoughts roam, filling out whatever part of the page the thought fits into.

In addition to the Daily Self Care Guide, here’s a link to an AMAZING video that leaves me feeling like I’ve just done Self Care every time I watch it.

I hope you enjoy these resources and please feel free to share them with others!

Sarah Boucher happily encourages women to grow in their power daily at I Am A Powerful Woman. Come join the conversation there. If you have questions regarding the 12 week program What One Person Can Do or the online version What Every Person Can Do, you can get in touch with Sarah here.

Tag: Self Care (Page 3 of 3)

Are You Walking Through A Storm?

Take A Smile

You Are Not Stuck

Find Your Power

How Did You Cope?

Unleash Your Power With Self Care

Self Care Thoughts

LET’S CONNECT!

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