Question for Bernie
I read your article today. I love what you wrote. When I met you I was very angry, and full of self-pity. I thought that you were from a different world. I thought that you didn’t know much about the world of abuse. Well, today after many, many years, I call you my CD, or Chosen Dad. My whole family chose not to live leaving me alone.
I have been living with a serious autoimmune disease all my life. I have learned how to see the Light through the Darkness. You cared, and I was born again.
Bernie’s Answer
God bless you—and we have been teaching each other ever since. You are truly an exceptional human being who chose the difficult path to healing versus the one which blames everyone and does nothing.
You are loved,
Bernie, Your CD
Question for Bernie
If someone was very nice to you and then very mean to you, and ignored you after you thought you had a nice relationship with him/her, it wouldn’t upset you at all?
Bernie’s Answer
It might for the moment, but then I let go, understand, and forgive. I do not judge as you are doing.
Being a love warrior is my ideal. You demonstrate caring behavior by practicing it all the time—consistently.
Peace,
Bernie
Question for Bernie
I’m always considered the healthy one in the family. I love to exercise, eat healthy, and follow a healthy lifestyle, but I’m always the one who is sick. In the past year I’ve had teeth removed and am waiting for the implants, and I have been diagnosed with an unknown connective tissue disease which maybe Sjogren’s syndrome (I’m currently experiencing mouth and eye dryness); then I had the flu and fell, breaking my arm three days ago.
During this time my mother had a stroke and had to enter a home, which she didn’t want to do, and my mother-in-law had a major heart attack and died suddenly. I feel like there are a lot of negative things happening to me.
I meditate and say affirmations, but it doesn’t seem like anything is working for me; starting to feel pretty down. Every time I feel things are getting better something else happens. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Why is all this happening to me?
Bernie’s Answer
It is called life. To live is to suffer. Viktor Frankl put it this way—“To survive is to find meaning in the suffering.” Read his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Ask what you are to learn from events in your life.
Enjoy the day and don’t live in a worrisome future. Find a way to love your life and your body. Learning to diminish looking mostly at what you see as negative in your life will boost your immune system.
Life is not easy, but it is filled with choices that each of us can make for ourselves—one of the most important being whether we are going to accept and understand that we can direct our lives by keeping our powerful Mind-Body-Spirit connection intact by using it.
Keep up the positive mantras, and keep some of those laugh-out-loud moments you have experienced at any time in your life as your daily tonic. Your body will get the message that you intend to LIVE and find happiness and value in all the gifts of our world.
Peace,
Bernie
Question for Bernie
My father is struggling with two types of cancer and is beginning a new treatment for each. I feel good about the attention to his condition he is getting from his doctors, but I know that underneath this immediate struggle he is feeling isolated, lonely, and under a lot of stress from his life in general in addition to the stress of the cancers.
I want to help him in any way that I can to become a survivor and to embrace what only he can bring out of himself to choose life. I don’t want to tell him what he should do, and I don’t want to impose on him what I would do, but I have to say something to help him.
Can you suggest an immediate action I can take that can help a loved one make a sure step towards being a survivor, towards switching away from passivity?
Thank you for your help.
Bernie’s Answer
Give your dad some of my books like Love, Medicine & Miracles, The Art of Healing, and Faith, Hope & Healing. Also, browse through my CDs to help your father with treatment, like the title Getting Ready and others for quieting his fears.
You are letting him know you care and can coach him. What is within him is the issue. The best coach needs people to show up for practice, so his reaction to what you give him will tell you where he is at in terms of responding to you as his coach. Remind him of his potential, and keep up hope by helping your dad, as well as yourself, see this as an opportunity to learn from his experience and teach others how to deal with life’s difficulties. This is survivor behavior.
When you come back to my website to browse through the CDs, go to the Quick Links menu at the top and select the “Immune Competent Personality Test.” Share it with your dad as a way to get him thinking about being a survivor. Keep loving him and get energy from being the supportive, sensitive person you clearly are.
Peace,
Bernie