Heart-Full Moments – May 2019

A monthly feature of “Listening with Heart” blog, sharing wise words, meaningful things read or good things found, to help warm your heart.

These are the most impactful quotes I have read or heard this month that give me pause, or uplift my heart. Wisdom spoken in just a few words. They reflect what I’ve been reading or learning, or values I share, or what’s been going on in our world.

It’s been another very challenging month, and I know we each need some insight and encouragement to keep carrying on. I am happy to share these quotes – that speak to self compassion, silence, forgiving, heartache, race and ethnicity, free-speech. Take a moment to go through them and maybe highlight a few that speak to you. Enjoy…

• Amelia Earhart once said, “There’s more to life than being a passenger.”
• “A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life.“ -Christopher Germer
• “When you can quiet the fluctuations of your mind and drift into stillness and silence, you can finally hear the whispers of your heart.” – David Ji
• “Shout out to my grandmom’s, who carried us in their arms, or on their back’s, or in their hearts as they entered strange terrain to grant us the opportunities they never had.” #Mother’sDay – CA Immigrant Youth @CIYJA
• “Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is remembering without the pain.” – Celia Cruz, Afro-Cuban singer
• “I like the distinction that forgiving is not forgetting – it is not giving in or capitulating without honoring what one has gone through. Instead it is an act of liberation, especially for oneself, to own one’s experience but not carry the burden of the heartache or pain of it forever. Forgiveness sets our own hearts free.🙏🏽” – Cindi Rivera, Marriage, Family Therapist
• “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” – Desmond Tutu
• The Trayvon Martin Foundation is headquartered in Miami Gardens, the district Fulton will represent should she be elected to the Miami-Dade County Commission. The organization’s primary goal is to provide “emotional and financial support” to families who have lost children to gun violence, according to its website. – Sybrina Fulton (Trayvon Martin’s Mother) and Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, founded the organization as a way to “channel their immeasurable heartache into the immense strength needed to elicit positive change.”
• Did you know there are more CEO’s named David than all female CEO’s combined in the US? Not only that, but in 2017, women of color working full-time earned only 66 cents on average for every dollar white, non-Hispanic men earned. – Thinkific
• “When ‘I’ is replaced with ’we’, even illness becomes wellness.” – Malcolm X
• “Second, the colorblind approach interferes with our ability to fully know the complex ways race and ethnicity is lived by our friends, neighbors, classmates, and even other family members. But equally as important, by not allowing others to tell their stories, share the histories, process their grief, or celebrate the joys that emanate from that complexity, we constrain their humanity.” – Rivas-Drake, D. & Umaña-Taylor, A. J. (2019). Below the Surface: Talking with Teens about Race, Ethnicity, and Identity.
• “So with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings radiating kindness over the entire world.” – The Buddha
• “All of this is to say that words matter, and can have consequences for safety.
  For those who believe in “free speech”: whose free speech do you believe in?
  Bc some folks using free speech to defend racism are also supporting folks passing laws to allow running over protesters.” – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• “Someone ought to do it, but why should I?” — “Someone ought to do it, so why not I?” Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.” – Annie Bessant
• “It took me a while to understand my water lilies… I cultivated them without thinking about painting them… The landscape doesn’t captivate you in just one day… And then, all of a sudden, I had a revelation – there was a magic in my pond. I see is my palate. Since that moment, I scarcely painted any other subject.” – Claude Monet
• I invite you to check out how I’m doing on #The100daysproject and to join me in presenting your own #everydaymindfulmoments or daily struggle as you try to move yourself forward. My Instagram feed is here: https://www.instagram.com/cindiriveratherapy/

I look forward to seeing you there!

So that’s this month’s short list of Heart-Full Moments that holds some meaning for me. I hope your month has been graced with self-compassion, forgiveness and beauty.  And that you might take a moment of pause to connect with what consoles you and replenishes your soul.

If you or someone you care about is struggling to find moments of full heartedness, please contact me for a therapy appointment.

For more ideas on how to bring more calm and less worry into your life, click here for a free email course on Mindfulness.