Authentically Joycelynn

Living My Best Authentic Life

Joyce Harrell

by 10 Comments

Faith & Loss

Faith VS Cynicism

I heard a speaker the other day talk about people having a naivety when it comes life if they have not ever experienced a trauma or tragedy. He spoke of what happens to people when they face a tragedy and the veil of naivety lifts. After a tragedy or real traumatic event, your faith or actually naivety is shattered and you become cynical. He goes on to say that after you become cynical you are actually more wise than you were before. That in itself may not be good because as a cynical person you are not as optimistic as before and not as filled with hope. The speaker is the controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson.

To be honest…that was and somewhat is still true in my life. You see, the first few months after our son died, my faith was strong and unwavering. However, as months went on, and the rawness of my loss continued, I began to lose hope and I became cynical. I began to see God in a different way. I lost trust and faith. I mean, if I couldn’t trust Him, the Almighty, to keep my son safe here on earth, after all the prayers I’d prayed and believed wholeheartedly in being answered, how could I ever trust Him with anything?

Seeking Guidance

A side note to expectations of how my healing would unfold… I reached out to Kay Warren when Brandon died. See, her and her husband Rick Warren are very public figures as pastors of Saddleback Church. As very public figures, when their son committed suicide, anyone who had heard and followed Saddleback Church, new of their son’s suicide. I reached out because I wanted a perspective of her as a ministry wife, and how they were able to heal, or start their healing. She didn’t answer me personally, but had her secretary send me an email, with links to some of her videos where she speaks about their journey.

They took a sabbatical from ministry for about 4 months after losing their son. At the four month time period, they went back into the pulpit. They shared their story, and how at 4 months they had come to a time of acceptance. Well.. Four months. I suppose I thought magically at four months, things would start making sense to me and I’d be at a point of acceptance. When four months came and went, and I was still in a fog, and just as raw in my grief as the day it happened, I became disillusioned. This was my turning point, and when I began to question my faith, and all I’d ever believed in. (I realize now everyone’s journey is different, and there is no timeline on grief and healing…but at the time…who is thinking clearly)

Self Condemnation

Maybe this isn’t anything you’ve ever encountered in your life. Maybe you are reading this and wondering how I could be so shattered in my faith. Or just maybe, you have encountered such pain that you’ve experienced losing your emotional innocence or child-like faith. Don’t think this takes God by surprise. Don’t even be ashamed of it. I mean, if you are having this struggle, God already knows, so just own it. It’s a time to take inventory of your beliefs, and renew your faith, albeit different than before your world was torn apart in front of your eyes.

Honestly, I’m trying to understand why I’m so compelled to share my faith struggles. The only thing I can figure out is that during all this time, even when I really felt like God had totally abandoned me…there was a little small voice somewhere deep in my spirit and I still knew there was a God. I could never just abandon my faith. I could not walk away from it totally. I wanted to. Believe me, I did. However, I could not…would not.

A Light in the Darkness

I must admit, the only thing which made sense in my life…the only thing shedding any understanding on this whole thing was a movie many Christians found extremely controversial. That movie is called “The Shack“. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. The basic overview is the struggle of Mack in his faith after his 5 year old daughter went missing during a family fishing/camping vacation. Missy, his daughter, as you find out later in the movie, was taken and killed by a man who was watching the camping area. Mack’s faith hit an all time low, similar to how I felt. I have been able to identify with Mack and his struggles.

My endless “why” questions. If any of you know me personally, I’m never without questions. This is the one trait of mine which has driven my husband crazy with me during our almost 40 years of marriage. I’ve always felt the need to understand the “why” of how anything works. I don’t just blindly do things because someone tells me to. I’ve got this need to understand why I’m doing something the way I’m doing it. That’s actually the mind of someone with critical thinking skills. In the movie The Shack, Mack’s eyes are opened to how God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit actually work in our lives and how the Godhead really love’s him. Not only how God loves Mack, but how God loves His creation.

The movie came out about a month after Brandon died, and I went to see it with a good friend. It helped to watch this at the time, but then I fell into a raw depression, and the fog in my mind was so thick. It’s over two years later, (and two long years of my faith struggle), and I am back to the beginning. Thinking of God’s pure love for me and even though I still do not have questions answered, I am believing I will have more of an understanding into the why of it all.

Expectations

I also have an expectation of a more complete understanding. I’m praying that God share with me in a deep way how to take this pain and grief and create Beauty Out Of The Ashes. I don’t know where you are in your journey. You may be right there with me, ready to begin the journey back home. You may be the person who has had unwavering faith even in your darkest hour. If you’ve never wavered in your faith, bless you.

If you’ve had a time where your faith was shaken to the core, I’d love to hear from you. If you are there now, trying to put the pieces of your life back together, I’d love to hear from you. Oh, by the way, in The Shack, the ending was something I didn’t see coming. The story-line was fiction, but based on spiritual truths from the author’s understanding of the Love of God toward us.

No matter what happens remember this: I have always loved you ” ~ Papa God

When I began writing this particular article, I didn’t know I would be led to share about the love of God or The Shack.  I began sharing my faith struggles. This morning when I woke up, and continued to write, I was reminded of the book and movie. My heart was warmed I remembered how I was touched by God’s love for us. As I’ve finished, my heart of full of joy as I ponder on the way God loves me…but even more important to me in my grief…how he loves my boy Brandon. Right now, in this moment, I feel at peace. It’s time to watch The Shack again. Thank you God for the ability to understand again how much you love me unconditionally…even when I’m angry, when I’m cynical, and when I question “why”.

Authentically Joycelynn

 

by

Art for Creativity and Healing

Creativity & Healing

A blog I’ve written on for years has a category called Creativity, or Art for Creativity and Healing as I like to refer to it. I began that wellness blog as a way to write my own nursing burn out story and I shared the things contained in my own healing toolbox, or healing basket. I don’t consider myself artfully talented but I love anything I make with my hands. There is something about creating that releases stress in my life. My mother and grandmother, and all the women in my family ancestry could sew and quilt. Sewing and quilting are creative art forms.

The first dress I made was out of feed sack fabric. I was 8 years old. My grandmothers taught me to knit and crochet around that age too. If you have never heard of feed sack fabric, it was very colorful cotton cloth that grain came in when I was a child.  I tried to find pictures and could not, but I found a page on Etsy where someone has vintage feed sack fabric if you want to see what that looks like.

Paper Crafting

The particular art for creativity and healing I want to focus on today is paper crafting and creating memory books. A month after Brandon died, I organized a scrap booking gathering at the Wellness Center where I was partial owner. Looking back, I was grasping at straws to keep my mind from going crazy. Grasping to DO because I was fearful just to BE.  Do you ever find yourself keeping busy just to keep from losing your mind over something?

After that first gathering, I didn’t do it again… I just continued to wander in a fog for quite a while after this. At work, it was easy to concentrate and maneuver through the day. At home I did color in coloring books for adults. Year two I began to branch out and I wanted more from my life. I joined a program to be a facilitator for Red Thread Circles and this included intuitive intentional creative art. A few months later, I found Cosmic Smashbooking. This is an intentional creativity program combining smash booking, art, a bit of journaling, and visionary work.

Now that I’ve made it through the two year mark, and I’m working with a Life Coach to get myself back into a better place, the arts are really calling my name. I’m honestly not an artist. However, I love to create. I’m working on being less critical of myself, so I now have an easel and canvas and have a desire to work on that… In the meantime:

Scrapbooking & More Paper Crafting

It seems I’m back to square one in regard to papercrafting. I’m ready to begin creating memory books again. I will start with Brandon. He has two children and I desire to preserve his memory and share with them what he was like growing up. They don’t know anything about him when he was younger. So I joined a company to get coordinated items and be able to start creating scrapbooks/memory books again. I really got into this particular creativity project about 20 years ago, but got away from it.

A few Saturdays ago I went to  a stamping group and totally loved it. I’m not sure if it was the interaction and group community I experienced, or the actual card making (I think maybe a combination of both), but I really enjoyed this so much. It has energized me to work on those books about Brandon and do some other creative things as well.

Art for Creativity and Healing

As I mentioned the stamping group I went to a few weeks ago, I want to point out that art for creativity and healing is a real way to help with stress, grief, pain, and burnout.  As I researched for this article, I found a few nice articles on art for creativity and healing. One is from US News, called the Power Of Creative Arts in Health and Healing.  I found another great article on Creative Wellness.  In this article the author shares how creativity promotes wellness. I was so interested in her article, I’ve just ordered her book, Craft to Heal, (found on Amazon).

What do you like to do as your art for creativity and healing? I have friends who quilt, friends who sew, friends who paint, friends who scrapbook and stamp… what is your favorite way to create?

Why I Write

As I write more in Authentically Joycelynn, it’s not my goal to talk people into doing what I do, or to show what I am doing is the “way to heal”. I’m sharing the best I can that I’m at a point in my life where I want to just be me. I see so many women hiding in a shell of who they want to be, but are afraid to BE who they are. Maybe you are concerned with what others think of you. Maybe you are afraid people won’t like who you really are inside. I’m here to share that it’s OK to be who you are. It’s OK to follow the dreams you have inside. It’s OK that everyone doesn’t agree with your choices.

I’d LOVE to hear from you. What is it you want to do with your life and you are afraid no one will understand? What is stopping you from letting go of self judgement and doubts? Email me anytime!

Be Well, Be Authentic. Be You

Joycelynn

 

 

 

by

Let’s Talk About Hair

I don’t know too many women who are excited when their first grey hair comes in. I remember my first grey hair. It was sometime in my early 20’s. My dad went premature grey before age 30, and I guess it was in my genes to do some of the same. I wasn’t going without a fight though.

What happened with my hair that I thought was much worse than going grey was I lost tons of hair after I had my third child. I kept a perm. (everyone pretty much had permed hair in the 80’s) We were going for the big hair look, and I had it!

After my third child was born in 1983, I asked my sister in law to give me a permanent. I’m not sure what happened, but two weeks after Jenniss was born, I got that perm, and my hair fell out in the tub for three days! In the back it all grew back, but I stayed a little thin on top after that. I wasn’t a nurse then, and the doctors didn’t care to pursue WHY my hair came out like that, but imma thinking this had something to do with hormones. I had cysts on my ovaries from time to time, and while I now know this is PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome, and can cause thinking of the hair), the doctors didn’t care about this either since I had my tubes tied and wasn’t going to have anymore children.

Due to some blood loss from a c-section, and heavy periods, I pretty much stayed anemic (low red cell count) from that time over the next 18 years. The doctors didn’t do anything about that either. They chalked it up to heavy periods and really did not seem concerned with a hemoglobin that hung in the 8’s (normal for women is 12-15) Iron deficiency anemia is another reason hair loss can happen. I had great energy, so again, they really didn’t care to explore further.

I was and still am a cancer nurse, and we see many anemic patients. About 15 years ago I decided to refer myself to our clinic and have a hematology workup. Low and behold, my iron stores were less than 3%. I was like…are you kidding me! I received venofer infusions, and felt like a different person. I didn’t realize how tired I was until I got my hemoglobin back up to normal.

By that time the damage had been done to my hair, and I STILL have thin hair on top to this day. Through the years I’ve had people ask me if since I worked with cancer patients, did the chemotherapy I handled cause my hair to thin… UGH!!!

I got the bright idea to dye my hair blond! I knew nothing about doing this process so my hair turned more yellow until I got to a cosmetologist. My thoughts on the blond hair was my scalp would be less visible than with my dark hair. So, from age 40 till recently, I’ve been blond.

I was only covering up who I was. I wasn’t happy with what I looked like, so instead of embracing myself and loving myself for who I was, I tried to HIDE who I was…

As the years of coloring my hair continued, the grey began to creep in ever so quickly. Now I was coloring my hair to make my scalp less noticeable, and to cover the grey. Grey makes a women look old, right?

In 2018 I decided I was tired of my thin hair, so I purchased a hair topper. I kept the color blond, with low-lights. My hair was dyed identical to my hair topper, and only those who knew me well, knew what I was wearing was a human hair topper to make my hair look full and thick. I was really excited to have the appearance of thick hair.

After I started wearing the hair topper, I stopped coloring my hair. You could not see it under the hair topper, so it became easy just to keep my real hair trimmed so it wouldn’t be longer than the topper.

One day recently I took a good look at my own hair growing out. It was a beautiful silver grey with some dark hair in the back mixed in. I really thought it looked beautiful. I started toying with the idea of just letting it grow out and letting go of the hair topper. This of course was in the mix of my pursuit of living more “authentically”.

I took the plunge a few weeks ago and didn’t wear the hair topper to work. I’ve not had it on since. I mentioned on Twitter that I was thinking of letting my hair just go grey. Someone reached out to me and shared a few groups on Facebook where women were transitioning to grey. I joined a few groups.Some of the women were in their 20’s. What I noticed was the confidence and beauty of these women being authentic to who they are. It gave me the confidence to just DO IT!

So in the true adventure of being Authentically Joycelynn… I’ve set the hair topper aside. I had my hair trimmed today. There is purple and blue shampoo and conditioner you can use to tone down the yellow or gold tones in the hair and brighten the grey/silver. I bought purple shampoo and conditioner last week, and I’m amazed at the transformation! My eyes look brighter. It does NOT make me look older. I feel it makes me look younger.

I’m embracing and loving ME…. All of Me! It’s so freeing!

I’m Authentically Joycelynn!

A Ministry Wife’s Transparent Journey of Life, Loss, Doubt, & Faith

by

Authentically Joycelynn

 

This blog has been a very long time in the making. It’s not that I’ve been developing the site a long time, or that I even have written much on it yet. What I’m trying to say is much life has happened and a shift in my mindset to birth this work.

I’ve been on a journey. A very long painful journey; finding my way after the death of my firstborn, Sargent Michael Brandon Harrell. Brandon as he is known to everyone. I’ll share his story later, but he went to be with the Lord on January 17, 2017.

My husband and I were already realizing we needed to follow a more minimal lifestyle. We had read Marie Kondo’s book about the KonMari method of only keeping things that give you joy. This was in the fall of 2016. My life was too fast paced and I was thinking about what I could do to bring more peace and happiness into my life.

We had decluttered most of our kitchen and bedroom. I had found another word called “hygge”. (creating an environment of coziness in everything you do, a Danish word)

Fast forward to 2019, two years after experiencing the most traumatic thing a mother can experience, I found myself looking back on 2 years of being paralyzed in most all areas of my life. I had no idea how to get moving again. Mike and I had stopped minimizing, and our home looks cluttered again.

I had done NOTHING in my business for 2 years. I had not written much. I had done nothing with my essential oils business. My life consisted of going to work, and coming home to veg in my recliner. I really didn’t know how to move forward in my life. (I felt defeated by that since I was a wellness coach, and was guilting myself for staying stuck in my paralysis and grief.

I had become very angry with God, and my faith had tanked. My house was cluttered. My weight increased to be the most I had ever weighed. I was basically dying emotionally and didn’t care. Actually, I did care a little, and it was having that LITTLE measure of hope which was saving me when one day I received a letter that turned my life back around.

Early in January, 2019 I came home from work and had received a letter from a dear Facebook friend, Jessica Montgomery. She had enclosed a little bag of tea, and instructed me to get comfortable, and when I had time to really read her letter, to make the tea, and get cozy and comfy while I read.

Jessica began to share her life story with me, (she is married to a veteran), and how her life had dramatically changed a few years ago after being introduced to One To One Women Coaching Women. She sensed I may be ready to explore what I wanted my life to look like now. This organization has a component related to caregivers of veterans with traumatic issues. Brandon was no longer living, but I had been a caregiver to him and she felt I might benefit.

I applied for the program and was accepted! This felt so right for me, and I knew I was ready to do the self-work needed. After speaking to a few coaches, and filling out all the paperwork and questionnaires, I was matched with Laurie who is an absolutely awesome coach!

What I was looking for in a coach was someone who believed in a more natural lifestyle and someone who could help me get my business back on track. What I realized in the first coaching session was I needed to get my LIFE on track. ME… Not my business. Not yet, anyway. There was one question Laurie asked me and it has been life changing.

Laurie basically asked me to tell her when the last time I remembered experiencing real joy and happiness in my life. I immediately said before I married. To clarify: I have been basically happy in my marriage, (I mean, everyone works at marriage) and I had three of the best children anyone could have asked for. The reason for this answer was when I married, I officially stepped into a role of ministers wife and I found myself trying to fit into some mold to be accepted. I never felt I measured up to the “role”.

After our first session, it occurred to me that my joy and true happiness had ended long before getting married. I could trace my slow emotional demise back to age 12 when my family moved to a new home. I won’t get into the circumstances about all that in this post, but I began to be bullied when I entered 7th grade and this is something I had never experienced before…EVER. Bullying of some sort followed me all the way through middle school and high school. I experienced this at school and at church.

By the next week’s coaching session I had revisited my childhood mentally and made another discovery. This discovery has been KEY to unlocking years of self hate, low self esteem, and feelings of unworthiness and not being good enough. I decided it was time to address this and no longer allow it to be “my story”.

By the way, coaching is about moving FORWARD not psychoanalyzing the past. If you need deep psychoanalysis, you need a psychologist or psychotherapist, not a coach if you cannot work through this.

My exciting discovery is at some point between adolescence and adulthood I allowed my name to be shortened.  My full name before marriage was Mary Joycelynn Damron. Everyone I grew up with knows me as Joycelynn. My mother and some friends still call me this. As long as I can remember in my early adulthood, I dropped the lynn, and was called Joyce by everyone. I was Joyce in college. This wasn’t a conscious decision that I remember. It happened though. From that time forward until recently, I invited others to have a voice in how I lived my life. At some time in my early adulthood, I lost MY voice…I lost My joy… I lost Joycelynn… And I’ve found her again. I’m not letting go of her…ever again.

There was something very freeing about inviting “Joycelynn” back into my life…

This website is about finding my way back to me. I lost my way long before I lost my son. I settled and said yes when I meant no. I said no when I wanted to say yes… In so many areas of my life. I became someone who wanted to make sure my life measured up to others…To those who didn’t have a vote in my life, but somehow I gave them permission to have a vote.

I know by finding my voice and sharing it, this message will resonate with others of you who have lost your voice at some point in your life. I’m giving you permission to find it and take it back.

When my son died, I thought I did too. I didn’t realize I was already dying slowly. Going through this intense loss in my life has made me realize life is too short to try and please people. It’s too short to live a life that isn’t authentic. I have one life to live and I’ve decided to live as authentically as I can. To let my yes be yes, and my no be no. I’ve taken my joy back.

I’m Authentically Joycelynn…

A Ministry Wife’s Transparent Journey of Life, Loss, Doubt, & Faith