Why I Actually Hate The Holidays..

Chantelle
December 1, 2018
Minimalism / Personal Development / Vegan / Zero Waste

The older I get, the more I hate the holidays; Especially Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a holiday that essentially celebrates genocide, and we do this by killing 300,000,000 turkeys a year. That’s right... Three hundred million! Then, before the night is over after we get done saying how grateful we are, we go and spend a shit-ton of money on gifts for the people we’re grateful for. Some of us even put ourselves into debt because of this. It’s a huge consumerism trap, and I’m finally breaking free. Some people may think I’m just crazy, but hear me out. Without giving a huge history lecture, basically, a group of white refugees came to a new country fleeing their corrupt government. The natives greeted them with a feast and blessings, welcoming them with open arms. Then the white men went on to almost wipe out their entire race, raping their women and stealing their land. Now, we celebrate these events by buying a turkey. Here’s a little history video about that. After…

My First Trip To the Emergency Room (Pancreatitis Series #1)

Chantelle
October 28, 2018
Healthy Living / Journaling / Mental Health

The last few weeks have been such a blur and I have been trying really hard to piece together the fragments of memories I have of this time frame that I spent in the suite at Riverbend Peace Health. It all started with my trip to the Emergency Room. To clarify my absence, I was in the hospital with pancreatitis the last 2+ weeks. I have never felt pain like that before. In fact, one of my many nurses during my stay told me that the pain I was feeling at the time was comparable to a drug-free childbirth. She came to this conclusion by the amount of Dilaudid they had to give me to get ahead of the pain. Because my memory of what happened was so bad, during the final days there I went through text messages I had sent to family members and coworkers and sat down with nurses that were in my care, in order to get some sort of timeline together. I was on so…

Family Isn’t Always Blood

Chantelle
September 18, 2018
Gratitude / Law Of Attraction / Personal Development

Coming from someone who has had a small family their entire life, along with being an only child, I can safely say that “Family” isn’t always blood. Family is what you make it, and who you choose to be your family. This is especially true if the people you are blood-related to have no interest in you, don’t support you, or have been abusive* physically or emotionally. I have so many people in my life that I consider family that aren’t actually related to me, and I love each and every one of them like they are blood. Family is a feeling that comes from the heart. We all want to have that feeling that is advertised around Christmas with the family sitting around the tree; Everyone is smiling and engaging with one another. I feel like this isn’t true for the most of us though, right? Christmas is stressful! Most families argue around the holidays, and there’s a lot of financial/consumerist obligations if you have a large family. If…

What Network Marketing Taught Me

Chantelle
September 16, 2018
Entrepreneur / Law Of Attraction / Personal Development

. Even if I was not extremely successful in Network Marketing, learning the skills needed to be successful taught me so much about owning a business and about life in general. It was almost a year ago when I joined DoTERRA, a network marketing company that sells high quality and medicinal level essential oils. I was really big into essential oils at the time and natural forms of health care. I was looking for natural ways to help with my mental illnesses, and good quality oils really seemed to work. After finding a local DoTERRA team, I dove in head first into the world of network marketing. I had a great and enthusiastic leader, a loving and supportive team and was putting 110% into building my business. I was doing everything I was told to do and I was reading what I was supposed to read. Dutifully, I was going to all of the events, and hosting X amount of classes a week, recording videos and doing live Facebook feeds.…

Your Gut Is Your Second Brain

Chantelle
September 13, 2018
Entrepreneur / Intuition / Law Of Attraction / Manifesting

Today, I got a swift reminder to always follow my gut. It is the second brain in our body and will guide us in the right direction. Letting go has been one of the hardest things for me to learn. I repeat lesson after lesson on letting go and somehow always fail the same test that is given to me. Life has a funny way of doing that, you know. Testing us. I always have this feeling when something isn’t right for me, and sometimes I listen to it. Other times, out of fear of the unknown, I won’t listen to it, and that’s usually when something bad happens. Either way, I get that feeling ahead of time and I have the choice to listen to it or not. Sometimes, in certain circumstances, bad things do happen without warning, However, a lot of times the universe has sent us a sign and it’s up to us to listen to it or face karma that's coming. It might be that wrenching,…