carrie genzel

Live In Simple Sentences

We all have stories that dragged on too long. Stories we should have ended that we held onto because we hoped they would somehow turn into what we had imagined, or worked for, or stories that used to be good but haven’t been in a long while that we cling to because of what once was, and then there are those stories that never seemed to reach their full potential, and we stay thinking that there could be a day that they could change. Without a conscious period, or punctuation mark at the end, those stories can go on forever, leaving us feeling unsettled, frustrated and unsatisfied. The more a story drags on the more complicated it becomes, and the more we attach feelings and emotions around the people and circumstances of that story that can make it difficult for us to move on when we should. We too, can hang onto a story too long because we want to be right, we want to prove something or we are determined to make something that is broken work, even when perhaps it never did, but the longer we stay in a story we are not meant to be in, the further we get away from our intended destination.

I have participated in many stories that should have ended long before they did, or perhaps, should have never started. Sometimes out of fear, or adventure, or trying to make things right, when they never could be. I do believe that things happen when they are meant to, but I also believe that we can delay our growth, and those moments, because we don’t take them in the moments we should, and may never get a second chance. Sometimes we do get that second chance, if we’re lucky, and it’s meant to get us back on track and on the journey we are meant to be on. When we live in simple sentences we are living in the now. We are checking in and making sure we are doing what’s best for us today, and working toward our next destination. Living in simple sentences clarifies things, it cuts away all the excess, the things that distract us, or the things we hang onto that complicate an otherwise simple story, it helps us focus on what we want and what we need to do to get it. It keeps us looking forward instead of backwards, and helps us describe our past in simple sentences as well, which keep it in perspective, and keeps the lessons pure and simple.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a story with many run-on sentences, it’s during those times we need to start editing and adding some punctuation. Life can get complicated all on it’s own without us dragging some excess baggage with us on top of it all, keep things simple, and at face value for what they are, not what you think they should be, could be or would be. Stop watching the reruns in your life and end the stories that need to end, it’s when we let go of those old distractions that our future becomes clear, right before our eyes. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you hang on to stories that you should have ended? Name one. Why should you have ended this story? Why haven’t you? What can you do to end that story in your life? Why should you? How has hanging onto this story harmed you? How may it have stopped you from finding what you are looking for? What are you looking for? How can you go about getting it? Do you believe you deserve to get it? If not, why not? SLAYER, we all deserve good things, but we need to make sure we take the road blocks out of our own way so those things can come our way. We need to let go of the past and end those stories that hold us back from becoming what we are meant to be in the future.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! All you can change is yourself, but that can change everything.

New blog goes up Tuesday, until then…SLAY on!

State Of Slay Beautiful

Just Look For The Green Lights

Everyone, at times, goes through periods where it’s hard to see the positive in our lives, maybe that lasts for only a few hours, a few days, or perhaps a few years, or more. I know, for myself, there were many years that I only saw the negative, and even when positive things did happen, I would find something negative to wrap it up in.

I was listening to someone share their story the other morning, a story that was much like mine, and she was talking about a time in her life when she couldn’t find the good. She had said that someone had suggested to her to count the green lights on her way home. She said she did, and when we got home she called that friend and said, “six, there were six green lights,” and she noticed when she said that she had a smile on her face. She had, even just for that moment, found something positive. I will put that one in my tool box for a day when I may need to count the green lights on my way home.

My life today is much more positive than negative, but my mind always looks for the negative. It will try to ruin any good day with fixating on things to bring some darkness to an otherwise great day, and if my guard is down, that darkness may just cloud over the brightness of that day. My disease is also very cunning, and as much as I’ve learned over the 13 plus years about myself and my disease, so has my disease, so it’s always looking for ways to work around that hard work I’ve put into living a happy and healthy life, something as simple as looking for green lights can turn that around.

It’s about focusing on the good. We, if we take our power back, can change our thinking, or mood, by what we choose to look at, surround ourselves with or engage in, sometimes it may just be a moment of relief, but it’s there for the taking if we take it, but the more we choose to take it, or the more we try, the easier it becomes to look and find the good, and the more we do that, the more the bad doesn’t feel good anymore. It’s also about believing we deserve the good. And we do. We all do. We have to believe we should have and do have good in our lives and we need to actively seek out positive things. Trust me, they’re there. The fact that you’re reading this right now is positive.

As I write this and think about the green lights in my life, I realize that I have always appreciated those green lights, and when I hit a string of them, it does always make me smile, but it’s also not attaching negative feelings to a red light, because we can look at those as a gift as well, a moment to exhale, to pause, before we restart our journey. I do still really love the green over the red though. But it’s about looking for the good in everything. Nothing happens to us without there being a reason, we may label it good or bad, but there is always something to take away from every event, experience or relationship, we learn, we grow, we are challenged to rise to the occasion. Nothing changes in our comfort zone, so when those difficult challenges come our way, they may have been sent to us to get us to change, to reach out or move forward because we’ve stayed somewhere too long.

Life can get difficult at times, especially during periods of change, but if we look for the green lights, the positive things in life, we start to see more of the good we have in our lives. Next time your out, count the green lights on our journey. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you typically look for the negative or positive in your life? If you find yourself in a negative place, how do you look for the positive? How do you find your way out of the negative? What happens if you don’t? What do you typically find as the reason for those negative times? What can you do moving forward to change that? When are minds get dark, that is the time to actively look for the light, it is always there if we look for it, and we no longer attach ourselves to the darkness of our past. Focus on a positive future.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Your silence does not protect you.

New blog goes up Sunday, until then…SLAY on!

State Of Slay Freedom Ends

When You Don’t Speak Up, You Set Yourself Up To Blow Up

I was just sharing the other morning with a group of women I meet up with regularly that before walking this path I would never share how I felt. I often shared my opinion, especially if it made me look good, or smart, or better than you, but I never shared my feelings, my fears or anything I felt was negative in my life. I stuffed down anything I thought was bad, but those feelings and thoughts didn’t just go away, they may have sat there for a while, and watched as I piled on other thoughts and feelings, and then, BOOM, there was an explosion and they would blow right out of me. That blow up can manifest itself in a lot of ways, it can take form of a verbal assault, it can manifest itself in self harm, self medicating, or physical abuse, it will take whatever form you are willing to give it, but it will take form eventually.

Keeping things inside doesn’t make them better, in fact, most of the time, it makes them worse. Holding in what you feel and think will cloud your decisions and result in actions that do not serve your best interests, and not only can they get you in hot water in life, they can also be the cause of health and physical ailments which will further aggravate how you feel and cause you to sink even lower to a depression. No matter what may be bothering you, it is important to always find a way to let it out. Talk about it, cry about it, walk it off, laugh it off, work it off, share it, pray about it, write about it, but get it out, let out those words, those thoughts and let them go, the moment you do, they lose their power of you.

At some point we must come to a place where we can trust someone enough to share who we really are, what we really are, and what we’re thinking. It took someone sharing their true selves with me, who recognized himself in me, to get me to open up, and once I did, a huge weight was lifted off of me. After a lifetime of stuffing down my feelings, numbing them or masking them as something else, it felt incredible to just let it all out. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone, at times, feels they’ve failed or have found themselves in places they never thought they’d be, but when we share those things with another individual it restores our humanness, it gives us permission to learn, to keep us humble and to allows someone else to see our vulnerability, it’s in that place that we get our power back, and we’re able to share that power with someone else.

We hold the key to our own relief. Let out your truth, no matter what it is, before you blow up and it all comes out in a way that you may need to apologize for later, or, maybe in a way that you can’t take back. When you speak up you release the pressure giving yourself time to heal, to exhale and to find a way back on the right path. We are all human, we all make mistakes, we all have feelings and we all struggle from time to time, when we share our true selves, in the moment, we open ourselves up to be teachable and we allow ourselves to connect with someone who may need to hear what you have to say, or, may just understand exactly what you’re going through. Accept that you will make mistakes, or feel hurt, or don’t know what to do, allow yourself to experience those things, to be those things, and to let those things go. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you tend to share how you feel or keep your feelings bottled up? How do you feel when you don’t share? Do you tend to keep things under wraps until you explode? How do you feel after an explosion? What can you do stop the next explosion from happening? What scares you about that? Why do you feel you can’t share your thoughts and feelings with others? Have you had bad experiences in the past? What made them bad? How can you change that moving forward? Release the pressure and share what you may be holding inside that can cause the next blow up, that bomb can always be diffused with the truth, your truth, and can help you avert the next disaster.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Loving yourself is the greatest revolution.

New blog goes up Friday, until then…SLAY on!

State Of Slay Love Yourself 2

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Love yourself so much you fill in all the cracks.

SLAY on!

State Of Slay Love Mirror

Bringing Love To Your Wounds

Often times we are the ones who hurt ourselves the most. And even in times when someone else may be hurting us, we allow them to do it, whether directly or indirectly, by engaging with that person or putting ourselves in the situation to begin with. But, most times we are the ones who do the most damage to ourselves, we suffer the most by our own hand. Sometimes we do it by not giving ourselves credit for something we’ve achieved, by punishing ourselves for doing something wrong or not knowing better, for missing an opportunity, missing a deadline, or not speaking up for ourselves. We continue to bully ourselves for these things and keep picking away at a wound that is already there. We get ourselves into a viscous cycle of self-attack, self-defense, self-imposed guilt, and self-imposed blame. But it’s important to seek out the right within the wrong, or even question whether the act was “wrong” in the first place and not merely just a chance to learn or do it better next time. This journey, this path, we are on is about learning and growing, if we all knew everything and did everything perfectly every time, none of us would know how great it feels to find success after a previous failure. It’s those “failures” that build our strength and show us who we are, if we’re able to use them as tools to build a better us.

Before setting out on a path of recovery, I only focused on what I thought was bad about myself, or inadequate. I had a constant loop in my head telling myself what and who I was not. When someone would compliment me I would quickly point out why I didn’t deserve the compliment and shoot it down. I would beat myself up for having a lack of clarity and or for indecisiveness, which many times came from fear of doing what I really wanted, that I labeled it as a sign of weakness. I could tell you all the things I was not, but I couldn’t tell you why, and the reason I couldn’t was because in reality it wasn’t true, it was a narrative I would tell myself to keep myself sick, to keep myself isolated from those around me and to prevent myself from achieving what I was too afraid to believe I deserved.

It wasn’t until I found the courage to see the right beneath the wrong that things started to change. I had to change my thinking and I had to learn to trust myself. That shift happened by learning to take a compliment, and if I truly didn’t believe I deserved it, to just say thank you, not talk back and try to take it away. I was taught that when I argued and said I didn’t deserve it, that I was actually telling that person they were wrong, or a liar, and that wasn’t something I wanted to do, so a simple thank you helped me through that to start. I learned to trust myself by doing trustworthy things, to be accountable for my actions and words, and be open to the belief that I deserved good things, so when they came my way I could humbly smile and say OK. All of these baby steps took time, along with others, that slowly helped me let go of my self-imprisonment and learn to let myself live, mistakes and all. I had to learn to bring love to my wounds, and it was that love that would eventually let them heal.

We often focus on all the things we think are wrong with us, what we lack, but what if, just for today, you offered yourself some love and acceptance so you can move beyond what you may not have been to what you can do. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you focus on what you think your shortcomings are? Is that all you see? Why? When was the last time you let yourself take credit for something? Do you take compliments from others easily? If not, why not? Do you give compliments to others? How does that make you feel? How do you feel if someone doesn’t accept your compliment? Do you see how when you don’t accept a compliment yourself that the other person may feel that same way? What if today you focused on all the things you are instead of what you’re not, and see how that focus may change your day, you never know SLAYER, you may just try it again the next day just to make sure you were right.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Slay Say

Good morning SLAYER! Monsters don’t sleep under your bed, they scream in your head, if you don’t let them out.

New blog goes up Tuesday, until then…SLAY on!

State Of Slay Shame

Name Them, Claim Them, Dump Them

For a long time, I treated my feelings like enemies. I did everything I could to ignore, numb, or bury them—hoping they’d disappear on their own. Spoiler alert: they didn’t.

Sure, I could silence them for a while. Sometimes for years. But those unspoken feelings came at a high cost. Eventually, they nearly cost me my life.

When We Bury Our Feelings, We Bury Ourselves

The longer I ignored my emotions, the louder they got. The more I tried to push them down, the more they pushed back. And when I finally stripped away the things I used to keep them at bay—addiction, distraction, denial—they all came rushing in.

It felt like I was drowning.

But that tidal wave of emotion was the beginning of something new. Something honest. Something healing. I had to learn to acknowledge my feelings—to name them, accept them, and then choose what to do with them.

Name It. Claim It. Dump It.

That became my process. Name it: What exactly am I feeling? Claim it: This is mine. I don’t have to like it, but I have to own it. Dump it: Let go of what no longer serves me.

Some emotions had roots in deep pain, old stories, or unhealthy patterns. Others were tied to my illness—trying to pull me back into the darkness I fought so hard to escape. But once I named them, I could choose whether they stayed.

Not every feeling deserves a seat at your table.

Feelings Don’t Want to Be Ignored

Even now, years into recovery, those old feelings still show up. Sometimes in disguise. Sometimes dressed in new circumstances. But I know better now.

If I ignore them, they grow. If I pretend they aren’t there, they get louder. But if I meet them with truth, honesty, and intention—they lose their power.

Feelings won’t kill you. But hiding from them just might.

I’ve learned that I don’t have to fear my feelings. I just have to deal with them before they deal with me. And when I stay honest, stay kind, and stay vigilant? That’s when I stay free.

SLAY Reflection

  1. Do you try to hide or stuff down your feelings?
  2. What feelings scare you the most—and why?
  3. What have your feelings been trying to tell you lately?
  4. Are you willing to name and claim your emotions?
  5. What outdated feelings are you ready to dump for good?

S-L-A-Y:

  • Slow down and tune in to what you’re feeling.
  • Label it honestly—no shame.
  • Acknowledge what’s useful and what’s not.
  • You get to choose what stays and what goes.

Call to Action: Join the Conversation
I’d love to hear from you.
What feeling are you finally ready to let go of?
Share your story in the comments. Let’s cheer each other on.

And if you know someone who’s been holding back their feelings, send this to them.
Sometimes, all we need is a nudge.