Absorbed

By Joanne Silver

You are never alone and are always encouraged to improve within the readings of Joanne’s compilation of short stories and simple self-help steps. Joanne Silver uses short relatable stories to remind readers that you are not alone in some of the difficulties and pleasures encountered in life. Readers are cheered on with ways to become more self-aware and mindful within the self-help guide. This book contains all the essentials needed for a good read, a good laugh, and maybe even a good cry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796026672

Book preview

Self-Awareness

The Little Pink Pill

Ever since I could remember, I had always felt the urge to help others. I could remember being in kindergarten, I had already made a best friend. I’ll call her Shelby. Shelby was my very best friend, and I had certainly grown a love for her even in my youngest years of life. I was five years old when Shelby missed her first day of school. I was sad and alone. I had grown so close to her I never had time to become friends with any of the other kids in my class. I grew worried, and the worry grew when my teacher had let me know that Shelby would be out for another day because she had a stomach virus. My immediate thought was I need to help. That night while my family was enjoying a lovely meal, I snuck off to the restroom and shut the door behind me. I climbed my little body on the bathroom sink and scrummaged through the medicine cabinet. I found the tiniest pill I could find because—hello—we were only in kindergarten; I couldn’t imagine us being able to swallow anything much bigger than the one I had in the palm of my hand.

The following day was awful without her. But just one more day, and she will be back in school, I reminded myself. I skipped through the day the best I could. Today was the day she was coming back, and I was so excited. Upon arrival at school, I was so sidetracked from focusing on anything going on around me, and I had tunnel vision. I looked for Shelby. It wasn’t long until I had spotted her.

Shelby! I exclaimed. How are you feeling? She returned a smile and responded that she was feeling okay.

I pulled her aside and handed her the tiny pill, and what do you know? It was pink! Shelby’s favorite color. I was a people pleaser from the very beginning. Please tell me how grateful you are, Shelby. Tell me how I am the greatest friend any little girl could ever ask for.

At such a young age, I wasn’t sure of the function behind my desire to please and my desire to care for others and cater to their needs and wants. I just knew it was an impulsive desire that needed to be fulfilled.

Anyway, let’s cut the short story shorter. I gave Shelby the pill. She smiled, walked away, and continued with her day. The next thing I knew, I was having a meeting in the office with my teacher, the principal, some other important people, and my mom. Helping, caring, and loving led me here. The principal’s office was on the verge of suspending a mere five-year-old girl.

This is the moral of the story: we care and love to the extent of negative consequences.

This is just the earliest point in my life where I can recall caring so much and trying so hard to help someone, and it ended up hurting me in the long run. It is damaging to learn something so important at such a young age. Of course, we want to care about those around us, and we want to love them with no concerns for the repercussions, but we need to be more cautious along the way. We need to be more concerned with ourselves. If we are not whole or we are not completely supportive or loving to ourselves as well as aware of some of the consequences that may come with our choices, we will continue to end up hurt.

It has been twenty-two years since that occurrence. I no longer know or speak to Shelby; however, I am still very much so absorbed and wrapped up in the lives of those I love and care about. I’ve been this way for years. I’ve burned my hand on the stove that others were cooking their own meals on just trying to help. I’ve hurt myself in more ways than I can count feeling the pain of those I love.

I tend to forget we are all walking our own paths, and regardless of the amount of compassion I feel for others, it’s best for me to learn to walk my own path and let others do what they will because that is going to happen anyway. There are just some things and people that are out of our control.

Some of us have grown accustomed to feeling as though because we love someone so much and because we care so much, when those emotions are not reciprocated, it becomes their fault that we feel pain.

I am not trying to teach you how to live. There are millions of people who think they have the keys to living a happy and peaceful life, and for this reason, there are so many self-help books. I don’t have the answers. All I know is all that I’ve learned something in every phase in my life. I’d just like to share them with you in hopes that they can help you in the ways that they’ve helped me.

I have been a product of my own journey in life. I am learning every single day how to understand the human mind, not only for my career, but also for the well-being of my own mental health. I also work hard every day learning, reading, and trying to understand human behaviors so that I may someday be in the best position to pull others out of their sadness. I would love to help people identify the root of their issues and help them rise above them. With this book, I’d like to take you on my journey as well as the journeys of people that I have loved, cared about, and experienced. Maybe I’ve absorbed lessons from their stories, maybe I’ve absorbed compassion for their pain, or just maybe I just could have been absorbed in their lives in general. I am thankful for the lessons, I am thankful for the pains, and I am thankful for my overwhelmingly huge heart that has compelled me to become empathic and in tune with others’ needs. No matter what path I’ve been choosing to take for all the years leading up to this one, I have finally decided to take a different route. This new route includes a whole ton of self. The time now has come to focus on self.

Watch Your Mouth

Over the years, we have been cursing ourselves more than any other person could ever do to us. We joke and fear that women around us are doing bruja stuff on our lives, causing our lives to forever be doomed and bring us nothing good. In the morning, when we wake up and the coffee we are making just so happens to spill across the entire counter, our first thought is It’s going to be one of those days. In this very moment, we are already setting the tone for our day—we throw those thoughts into the universe, and they hear us loud and clear. Walking to our cars, we realize we have locked ourselves out of our houses and don’t even have our house keys on us. Our next thought or even this time the frustration has caused us to say aloud to ourselves, This day can’t get any worse. The universe responds, LOL! What do ya know? Ending the day, you could not have had a worse day than the one you claimed would be terrible. What we think is what will be. I have learned this the complete hard way. For years, I would say stupid-ass shit like Why me? Just my luck! Fuck my life, If it isn’t one thing, it’s another, When it rains— Nah, stop that. When it rains, a beautiful rainbow pops up soon after!

You truly cannot afford to put all this negative shit out into the universe. Your mind is your semiautomatic gun. Fuck that, it is your bazooka. It is your most powerful weapon. I’m sure there are other weapons much stronger. Imagine your mind as whatever that weapon may be. I am less experienced in the weapon field, so I guess my mind is a bazooka. Either way, it has the power to alter life-changing events in your life. Understanding this is a practice. You won’t stop thinking negative shit overnight, and you won’t stop speaking negatively right away. I used to have the mouth of a trucker, like fuck this, fuck that, fuck him—you get the point. Clearly from my writing, you can tell that I have not completely dropped this specific kind of vocabulary, but I have certainly learned to limit it where it counts. I work with children in a childcare setting, and the last thing I need is for the little kids to go home saying I was the one who taught them to use to word fuck at two years old. I didn’t stop using the word; I just started to spell it out. Point is, I was able to learn to filter it in a way that was more suitable for my environment. Well, people, the life we live is our environment twenty-four seven, and I’d like to think we care enough about it to limit the possibility of creating our own negative events.

Imagine if we could change our lives and the way we live simply by changing the way we think or the things we say. For me, I have found that once I started changing the things I said or thought, my life started to adjust to the positive things I would think. Now this was not an easy process, and it certainly took time, but I started to do this aggressively. My best friend taught me to repeat cancel, clear, delete whenever I slipped up with a negative thing to say, and I truly found this to be helpful in remembering that as long as we remember to go back and imagine ourselves erasing these thoughts or sayings, we could still work on positive words daily. It’s not like we’re failing if we slip up; we’re continuing to learn each day that nothing and no one is perfect and, despite the setbacks or mistakes, we are still growing.

Gratitude vs. Attitude

The ways my life has changed since I started practicing gratitude, I can only attempt to explain it, but how beautiful and