Month: February 2022

The Importance of Saying Encouraging Words to Your Children

Post author By Heidy De La Cruz
Post date February 28, 2022
4 Comments on The Importance of Saying Encouraging Words to Your Children

Children are like sponges; they absorb their environment. If their environment is negative, they will be negative and vice versa. Children mimic what they see and especially what they hear. I read online, I cannot remember where right this moment, for parents to listen to their children when they play pretend, so parents can know how their children feel. Because children absorb so much, it is important to tell them encouraging words.

By telling your kids encouraging words, you will build up their confidence, and by building up their confidence, you will raise confident adults. You know the saying, “if you think you can, you’re right, and if you think you can’t, you’re also right?” The same applies to kids. As a parent, if you are telling your children that they cannot do something or consistently telling them negative words, they will never have the confidence to do anything and not think of themselves as worthy. And the consequence of the negative words is that it affects their self-esteem.

For example, I didn’t grow up hearing too many encouraging words. I heard that I could never do anything right, or I wasn’t using my head to think. As a result of hearing that, I got to the point that I didn’t think I was worthy. It was like, what’s the point of me trying to do anything if I can never do anything right? So, my self-esteem was nowhere to be found, and I needed validation from others consistently. I also copied and wanted to be like my peers to try and find worth in myself.

These emotions usually lead to people putting themselves into dangerous situations trying to fit in. Luckily for me, that wasn’t my case. I mean, I wasn’t the most innocent teenager, but I didn’t put myself in harm’s way. But because of the negative words I heard all the time growing up, I do the opposite with my daughter.

I try to always tell my daughter positive words. For example, I tell her she’s beautiful, smart, and can do anything. And I remind her that I love her. As a result, she will randomly tell me I’m beautiful and that she loves me. Why? Because she’s mimicking what I say to her. I want to build her confidence because it starts at home. I want to make sure she is confident in herself to do anything she sets her mind to. I also want her to be sure of herself so she doesn’t have to find validation in others.

We should say things like this to our children:

“You are smart”

“You can do anything”

“You are beautiful”

“I love you”

“You are strong”

“Be kind”

“It’s okay to make mistakes”

“If you couldn’t do it this time, try again”

“Don’t give up”

One of my favorite verses is Psalm 139:14 NIV, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” This is a great verse to share with your kids as it serves as a reminder that God made them perfectly.

What are some other positive affirmations you can share with your kids?

With Love,

Heidy

Let’s Connect!

Twitter.com/HeidyReynoso13

Instagram.com/Heidyspoems

Instagram.com/Heidy.Delacruz13

Facebook.com/Heidyreynoso13

Like this post? Subscribe with your email to receive my free 5 minute journal prompts and weekly newsletters on my upcoming posts! 🙂

Check out my new Etsy shop! https://www.etsy.com/shop/WithLoveHeidy

Journals for sale!

You can get one or both of my journals on Amazon! Links are below! 🙂
My Prayer Journal
Into My Thoughts Journal

Tags Blogging, Children, Encouragement, parenting, Positive Affirmations

Blog Book Review

Book Review: You Are a Badass & We Should All Be Feminist.

Post author By Heidy De La Cruz
Post date February 21, 2022
No Comments on Book Review: You Are a Badass & We Should All Be Feminist.

You Are a Badass By Jen Sincero

This self-help book was gifted to me last year, well in 2020, but came around to reading it at the end of 2021. I enjoyed reading this book, and Jen really makes me feel like I can do anything and because of this book, I started doing daily affirmations. I wrote them down, and I say them every day.

She is the author of You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth and You Are a Badass Every Day: How to Keep Your Motivation, which I have added to my reading list.

Have you read any books by Jen Sincero? What did you think of them?

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This book is her TEDxEuston talk that she gave, I believe, in 2013. If you haven’t seen it – you definitely should. I cannot remember when I first saw this Ted talk or what brought me to watch it, but while I was watching it, I realized part of it was used in Beyonce’s song, “Flawless.” I then googled her and found this book and others that I added to my reading list.

I received this book as a gift from an Instagram book exchange I participated in. I was super excited because it was on my reading list. Although I had heard the Ted talk, while reading the speech, I caught a few things that I had missed.

First was, she mentioned how her American female friends were so invested in being “liked.”

“They have been raised to believe that their being likable is very important and that this ‘likable’ trait is a specific thing,” she wrote. And this instantly brought me back to Mark Manson’s book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*%k, and how he mentioned the fact that in western culture, people try so much to be liked that they change who they are depending on who they are with. I am going to assume that this really is a western culture thing.

The second thing that I had missed while hearing the speech but caught while reading was when she was talking about marriage; she wrote, “The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership,” and this is so true. We often hear about how wives belong to their husbands. And sometimes, in my experience, family members ask my husband, “why would you let her do that” or “why would you let her wear that?” As if I need to ask my husband ‘permission’ to do anything. Of course, I’ll always be respectful to him, but I don’t need to ask for ‘permission’ to do anything.

I do love that my marriage is a partnership. We don’t follow ‘gender roles.’ We both cook, clean, pay bills, etc. There are a few exceptions, though, my husband doesn’t let me take out the trash, he always says it’s his job, and when something needs to be done for the cars, he takes care of that. But other than that, we don’t do gender roles here, we are in this together, and we take care of each other.

How do you feel about the word feminist? I wrote a post about feminism and some information I found about the history of the word and the movement. I do believe in the equal rights of both genders.

Alright, these are my takeaways from these two books – let me know if you have read them or what is on your reading list! Thank you so much for reading.

With Love,

Heidy

Let’s Connect!

Twitter.com/HeidyReynoso13

Instagram.com/Heidyspoems

Instagram.com/Heidy.Delacruz13

Facebook.com/Heidyreynoso13

Like this post? Subscribe with your email to receive my free 5 minute journal prompts and weekly newsletters on my upcoming posts! 🙂

Check out my new Etsy shop! https://www.etsy.com/shop/WithLoveHeidy

Journals for sale!

You can get one or both of my journals on Amazon! Links are below! 🙂
My Prayer Journal
Into My Thoughts Journal

Tags Book Review, Feminism, Reading, Self-Help Book, Ted Talk, We Should All Be Feminist, Women Empowerment, You Are a Badass

Blog

Happy Valentine’s Day – Our Love Story!!!

Post author By Heidy De La Cruz
Post date February 14, 2022
No Comments on Happy Valentine’s Day – Our Love Story!!!

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

Yesterday was my and my husband’s second wedding anniversary and my birthday. So, in celebration of our wedding anniversary, I want to share a little of our story.

I cannot pinpoint exactly when we met; I feel like I just always knew of him. He worked at the same company as my uncle and aunt, he knew a few other of my family members, and we had mutual friends.

At the beginning of 2017, I found a prayer on Pinterest for “My Future Husband” I downloaded it to my phone and read/prayed it every day. Although at this time I wasn’t looking for a relationship, nor did I think I would get married anytime soon, I prayed everyday. Nonetheless, during the summer of 2017, our “friend anniversary” came up on Facebook. I sent him the alert via messenger. He responded, stating that he couldn’t believe it’s been a year already because he felt like he barely knew me, and he gave me his number because he said he didn’t like talking through Facebook messenger.

From there, we started texting on the regular, and in November, I invited him to a Jay-Z concert, which became our first official date. After the concert, we went to grab a bite. In December, I asked him to spend Christmas eve with our family (Christmas Eve or Noche Buena is when we really celebrate Christmas), and you can say from that point on, we were officially dating. However, he never officially asked me to be his girlfriend. LOL, I joke about it with him all the time.

Around October of 2018, I asked him to move in with me; he lived in a city an hour away and would only see each other on the weekends. It got to the point where he would stay the night on the weekends, and I didn’t want him to leave anymore. At the end of the month, he was all moved in, and we started our lives together. 🙂

This was the first time he lived with someone he was dating, so I knew this was serious, and within a few months of him moving in, we started talking about marriage. So, in those talks we had about getting married, I told him that we should do it in 2021 because that gave us time to plan and save up. Unfortunately, in September of 2019, we got the bad news that his mom was diagnosed with cancer.

Shortly after, I thought, what if we do a small intimate wedding, just our families, so his mom could be in attendance? I brought up the idea to him, and he told me that his mom had actually told him that she wanted to see him get married. So, it was set, we would get married and soon. For some reason, I wanted to get married on my birthday, which is in February, so five months away from when we decided to start planning a wedding.

I started looking up wedding venues to see which ones were available on February 13, 2020. We were planning a small wedding for only our immediate family members, so we estimated about 25 to 30 people. Of the three venues, we saw we decided to go with the last one, and they were actually running a special for the following year (2020); we were allowed up to 100 guests with the package they offered. This opened our guest list, and our wedding became more significant than we initially anticipated.

Since the venue took care of many things, like the decorations (all we had to do was pick our wedding colors), tables, chairs, staff, etc., that helped tremendously with planning everything in less than five months!

Well, to shorten this story, we ended up marrying on February 13, 2020 – my 27th birthday and it was the perfect day! I never imagined myself having a wedding like that, but thanks God, we could have a beautiful wedding. I am forever grateful that I found that husband prayer on Pinterest! 🙂

To my hubby – baby I love you SO much! Thank you for being my answered prayer! <3

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you have a fabulous Valentine’s Day and that you find your partner in life! 🙂

Let’s Connect!

Twitter.com/HeidyReynoso13

Instagram.com/Heidyspoems

Instagram.com/Heidy.Delacruz13

Facebook.com/Heidyreynoso13

Like this post? Subscribe with your email to receive my free 5 minute journal prompts and weekly newsletters on my upcoming posts! 🙂

Check out my new Etsy shop! https://www.etsy.com/shop/WithLoveHeidy

Journals for sale!

You can get one or both of my journals on Amazon! Links are below! 🙂
My Prayer Journal
Into My Thoughts Journal

Tags Blogging, Engagement, Our Story, Valentine's Day, Wedding, Wedding Anniversary

Blog

3 Things You Probably Shouldn’t Do When Juggling Life (Guest Post)

Post author By Heidy De La Cruz
Post date February 7, 2022
No Comments on 3 Things You Probably Shouldn’t Do When Juggling Life (Guest Post)

Hey! Today I am bringing you another guest post. It’s been a while since I’ve had a guest writer on my blog, so it was overdue. Today I am bringing you my blogger friend Michelle, all the way from South Africa!

While she wears many hats like mom, blogger, YouTuber, career woman and wife – she is just a millennial mom trying figure out this thing called life, as she likes to say.

As she guest wrote for my blog – I also wrote for her blog and you can check out my post here.

Enjoy her post!

3 Things You Probably Shouldn’t Do When Juggling Life

Hi there! Michelle from Growing With Spawn here. If you know me, you probably know me as Shelly – the blogger, YouTuber, corporate woman, wife, and mother who has her life together. However, today, I’m Michelle – the overwhelmed, messy girl who fed her daughter yogurt and bread for dinner. I’ve shared my tips on juggling it all before, but what I never shared was what happens on days like these—the days when I can’t be bothered to take off my pajamas or wash my face. And yes, those days happen frequently. So instead of presenting a perfect picture, I thought I’d share some things you shouldn’t do if you’re trying to juggle … well, life!

Don’t Take Rest Lightly

We all have those moments when we feel like we can conquer the world. For me, that’s usually two hours after my bedtime, after scrolling mindlessly on social media. I’m not sure what is so enticing about the darkroom and tiny screen, but it’s a habit I can’t seem to kick for the life of me. So, every single night without fail, I find myself covered in my duvet, nose poking out and phone in hand.

If you can relate to this, I’m sure you know what’s coming the next-the morning after, the ‘hangover’ feeling!

We sometimes just scrape through the day on caffeine, energy drinks, and way too much sugar. And while this may be okay every now and then, it surely isn’t sustainable. Especially if you are consistently juggling many responsibilities, so as hard as it is, rest is something that we really need to treat with respect – almost like a full-time job.

Hmmm, I see you lowering your coffee mug!

Don’t Allow Yourself to Get Burnt Out

So here’s the thing, I don’t quite have a set routine for anything, which means I always barely get things done. You will find me writing blog posts at 2 am or taking my morning shower at noon. Heck, if I were allowed to, I would probably work on weekends and use my weekdays for – well, nothing really!

But the thing about juggling life is that you need to be strategic about what you do. If you know you have bursts of energy in the morning, get the most work done then. If you know, you have a full-time job but still want to write blog posts, set aside the time for it. And if you have other responsibilities, make sure you allocate the time accordingly.

As the huge hypocrite that I am today (i.e., Michelle, not Shelly), I feel extremely qualified to give this piece of advice. Failure to actually plan things then rushing them last minute can leave you feeling overwhelmed and burnt out. Yes, working well under pressure is really a thing, but it can’t be the thing you do every time.

So please don’t be like me!

You Probably Shouldn’t Skip Your Self Care

People who say that self-care is very easy have no real clue what self-care really is. Yes, I said it – you’re doing it all wrong! Self-care is not just painting your nails or taking a long bath. It’s much more than that, really.

Let me break it down for you.

If you aren’t journaling or finding some way to address your emotions as they come along, then you’re not caring for yourself. If you aren’t feeling great emotionally but would rather have drinks with your friends than see a therapist, you’re not taking care of yourself. And if you are spending way too much time in denial, running through the motions of life, then you are not taking care of yourself!

So, what does this have to do with juggling life?

Simple – if you plan on conquering the world, you definitely need to make sure that the ball between your shoulders and hair is actually doing okay. Take it from me; the gym isn’t just about abs, and sleep isn’t only for babies.

Conclusion

What I love about writing brutally honest blog posts is that I feel like I have to come up with some action plan that will be realistic to both you and me. I could easily advise you to set aside 3 hours a day to focus on the things you love, and I’m sure you would find a way to do it. But what most people often forget to tell you is that it’s okay not to be perfect. It’s absolutely okay to feel overwhelmed every now and then, so always keep this important rule written on the back of your eyelids:

Don’t be too hard on yourself – juggling life isn’t meant to be easy!