Category Archives: Heart

by | October 14, 2011 · 2:06 pm

Rescue Animal of the Week on The Veggie Stand

At The Veggie Stand, we’re creating a new weekly feature “Rescue Animal of the Week.” If you (or any of your friends) would like your pet to be our next Rescue Animal of the Week, please provide us with the following information by emailing it to me at HRH@TheVeggieStand.com

A picture of your pet

Your pet’s name

Your name, city and state

Where did your pet come from?

How did you come to adopt/ rescue your animal?

And anything else you would like us to include about your animal.

Come back on Monday to meet our first Rescue Animal of the Week, Kya, a Yorkshire terrier from Vancouver, Washington!

Comments Off on Rescue Animal of the Week on The Veggie Stand

Filed under Animal Rights, Friendship, Healing, Heart, Inspirational, News

Tagged as , ,

by | October 3, 2011 · 12:58 pm

Disproving Free Will, Again

For a while I have been thinking about free will versus destiny. I believe that in a way they both exist, but I also believe that using free will isn’t always in your best interest. I see destiny as the path you’re meant to take and free will as the option to go off course. In my experience, going off course has only led to set backs, that for myself, resulted in wasted money, time, and opportunities. I had the free will to do what I wanted, to go off my path, and made decisions that I knew were bad for me at the time. I did what I wanted, and ultimately destiny’s pull was too strong to resist, and I ended up back on it’s path. I believe that following your destiny is in your best interest, and that while free will exists, utilizing it is not always a good idea. Below is an example of what I’m talking about.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Destiny, Heart, Life Lessons, Love

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | September 30, 2011 · 12:56 pm

You Cannot Kill My Spirit

 

…..or as Mel Gibson so eloquently put it in “Braveheart” “they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!”

He is right, but even after we die, memories of us live on such as those of his “Braveheart” character, William Wallace. Memories are powerful thought energies that hold our essence and spirit- hence the phrase about someone who was absent “She/ he was there in spirit.” Looking at new pictures of myself from a recent outing, smiling and having fun with friends, I was amazed to acknowledge that in them was the same person who experienced rape and abuse. People always say to me that they had no idea and that they never would’ve guessed those things happened to me probably because of my attitude. Continue reading →

Comments Off on You Cannot Kill My Spirit

Filed under Destiny, Growth, Healing, Heart, Inspirational, Life Lessons

Tagged as , , , ,

by | September 12, 2011 · 8:30 am

You Could Be My Silver Springs?

  Silver Springs? Hayley Rose 2011

 

Have you ever been exhausted from dating? I have! At first it felt great- to have so many dates lined up with men that seemed decent, were often cute, and successful too! And even better, they wanted to go out with me! Ah, naivety, it never goes away does it?

What ended up happening during this time in my life was much more bleak than the excitement I just exhibited (surprise, surprise). One lying man-child, two pretentious professionals, a normal guy, and a drug addict. Let’s start with the lying man-child who barely put effort into our dates. On the second date, we met at a sports bar, he showed up as if it was Super Casual Friday wearing track pants a purple T-shirt! Ugh. Then the professionals. We never made it to a second date. The first, a doctor, talked about himself the entire night and barely made eye contact with me. Then when he walked me to my truck, he tried to kiss me! He was extremely pissed when I didn’t let him. Then there was the lawyer, who also happened to be in love with himself but was considerate enough to ask questions about me, occasionally. He abruptly stood up while we were having coffee and cited that he had to get up early the next morning for work. Right. I didn’t feel bad, he was an atheist, I always question their motives. I feel like they are not so much non-believers as they are individuals who are angry at God for something and retaliate by denying his existence. Then there was the normal guy. We still talk, meet for coffee, and go for hikes together. We have become friends and have great conversations about all sorts of things like Native American spirituality and nature. Now for the drug addict, here’s where the story gets interesting.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on You Could Be My Silver Springs?

Filed under Addiction, Friendship, Heart, Life Lessons, Love, relationships

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | August 17, 2011 · 8:26 am

The Lump in My Throat

I have been writing pretty irregularly this week because I’ve been going to a lot of doctor’s appointments. One of my concerns happens to be a lump in my throat. Every time I swallow I can feel it. I told the doctor a little bit about when I started to notice it.

Around the time I broke up with the guy who almost killed me, I began having trouble breathing. It would only happen when I was driving alone in my car and when there was nothing in the car for me to drink. At first my throat would become dry and I’d begin to choke.Then I wouldn’t be able to breath. I’d begin to panic, and inevitably my breathing would come back, except for one time, where no matter what I did I could not breath. I became terrified and gasped for air as I choked on nothing.

A friend pointed out that it was interesting that I was having panic attacks in which I was unable to breath because when my ex-boyfriend almost killed, it was through suffocation.

I ran into a friend yesterday, a cancer survivor. Talking about her illness and surviving stage three cancer, she spoke these poignant words, “You just never think it is going to happen to you.” This is how I felt about almost being murdered by my ex-boyfriend and ending up in a domestic violence situation in general. Like an unexpected diagnosis, no one ever thinks it will happen to them.

Continue reading →

10 Comments

Filed under Heart, Life Lessons, Love

by | August 12, 2011 · 9:00 am

Embrace Your Failures

I remember a while back when one of my friends broke up with his girlfriend. He was really upset. At the time I had just broke up with some one as well. I told him to think about how he was feeling -right at that moment- and to embrace all the pain, because that is what it is to be human. I told him to think about how human he felt at that moment and acknowledge those negative emotions. Feeling the feelings and consciously processing them would inevitably allow him to move past them rather than if he ignored them or refused to face them.

Once we have surrendered ourself to acceptance of failure- that there is no getting (or getting back) what we want, all we are left with is feelings of pain and disappointment. This is what many self-help writers refer to as “growing pains.” During our biggest disappointments and our most painful moments we are provided with unlimited potential for the growth and strengthening of our spirit. On the other hand, some people view failure and pain as the only lens through which we would be able to appreciate the good things in our life; that we wouldn’t appreciate the good if we didn’t have the bad.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Embrace Your Failures

Filed under Friendship, Growth, Healing, Heart, Inspirational, Life Lessons

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | July 26, 2011 · 10:05 am

Where the Heart Lies

I find a lot of times in the Blogosphere people are passing around a lot of Haterade. Though most of the comments left on my articles are positive and encouraging, I do get some nasty ones, every so often. Under my most recent article,  “Confronting My Rapist,”  one person wrote the following:

“This is a tremendous step in your life, and I applaud you for it. But lady, your grammar is horrible. Pronoun-an tecedent agreement errors, run-ons. You get paid to write? I wish I could write this poorly and get paid for it.”

There are so many things that are wrong here. First of all, there is the insensitivity factor. I wrote an article about confronting someone who raped me and this person has such little respect for people in general that he feels that a post about confronting my rapist is an appropriate place to air his grievances about my grammar. Obviously, he is trying to knock a survivor of rape, whom he has never met down a few pegs. (In case you were wondering) he didn’t succeed. I actually just rolled my eyes because people have said worse to me and I know that these types of comments are often the nature of the Blogosphere due to the blanket of anonymity one can easily hide behind.

What truly struck me about this was the insult itself. What he said is absolutely correct. I have horrible grammar. I cannot spell to save my life, and to be honest with you, I’m not even sure what an antecedent is. The run-ons, however, I consider my signature. He ends his small rant with, “I wish I could write this poorly and get paid for it.”

I don’t know what this individual does for a living or if he is successful or even happy. I do know that he is missing the point. Before I dropped out of art school, I had the most awful professor you could possibly imagine. He was a graduate student who was just out of college. He was extremely full of himself and a total jerk. One day he instructed our class to go out and “spend our parent’s money” on the most expensive paint brushes we could get our hands on— the ones that cost $18 each.

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under Art, Heart, Life Lessons, Sexual Assault, Writing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,