Nothing But Respect A True Victim-to-Victory Story Book Review

Hello Divine Diva’s,

I’m happy to share with you a review of my friend Julie Anne’s book, Nothing But Respect A True Victim-to-Victory Story .

Nothing But Respect captivated me from the very first page of the main event which starts out with Julie’s suicide attempt. As I read the first few pages, my heart broke reading how Julie Anne thought that her family would be better off without her and I wondered what possibly could have happened to her that lead her to this place on her life. I was especially drawn to her story because like Julia Anne, I also live with chronic illnesses and saw myself in her.

As she starts to take us on the journey of her early childhood and teen years, they seem pretty normal to me. I found myself really enjoying reading about her adventures in school, sports, and the typical things we all go through as children and teens. Her story was talking me on a trip down memory lane which came to sudden stop as I read about how her innocence was stolen from her at the tender age of 17 when she was raped. As I read about how she thought it was her fault, I wished I could reach through the pages of the book and tell her, it was not her fault.

I have to say throughout the book, Julie Anne shows such courage and a willingness to be honest about every thing she has experienced in her life, no matter if it was good, bad, or ugly. She really hides nothing from the reader and doesn’t gloss over anything and her decision to share such personal details about her life is done for the sake of helping others and I applaud that she chose to do that for the sake of the book.

Many things she shares in the book are very personal and are about real life experiences that happened to her and she shares them with the reader to show us the lack of respect she had for herself with the hopes that the reader who may be going through similar things in her life will learn from it.

Without giving too much of the book away, I will say that Julie takes on her journey of depression, chronic illness, and her suicide attempt. She shares not only the highlights of her life, but also is very real is sharing her very dark days as well. She shares her stories of love and of loss and is very open about everything in her life.

Her book really shows the reader that no matter what you go through in life and no matter how bad it gets, you can change you life and you can find your way back from even the darkest days. It takes courage and willingness, but it can be done. We all have obstacles in our life and though some of have bigger obstacles to get around and things we can’t control, we all have the power to change our lives if we choose to do so.

Her book really shows us that God loves broken people and he can take the events in our lives and teach us lessons along the way, and he has the power to take even the most difficult things that happen to us and use them to help us create and even better life then we could have imagined for ourselves. If he can do that for Julie, then he can do that for you to.

Click the link to order Julie’s book.



You can visit Julie’s site at Julie-Annes Journey

Always Remember that you are Beautiful, Strong, Powerful, Fearless, Amazing, Divine, and most important of all YOU ARE ENOUGH! Divine Diva Donna

Activate your Goodness by Shari Arison Book Review

In her book Activate Your Goodness, Shari Arison offers inspiration and wonderful tips for improving your life and the lives around you and shows you that in doing good for others, you also do good for yourself.

Forbes magazine ranked Shari Arison one of the World’s Most Powerful Women but from a young age, Shari always felt that there was something more out there and wondered what it was. After being a full time mom for years and being married and divorced 3 times she found herself trying to understand her life and started on a path of self discovery.

Like most of us who find ourselves on a path of self discovery and those of us who have dealt with adversity, she realized that there never seemed to be a shortage of obstacles, twists, and turns that come at us, no matter how hard try to escape them.

On her journey she always felt she was learning her lessons the hard way and after what seemed to be a life of fighting, she decided she wanted to do good, think good, and feel good.

She decided to figure out what she had to offer to the world and took her skills and life experiences and set out on a path to do her part on improving the world. She had a vision, a passion, and a concept of doing good which mixed together turned into a great recipe for promoting goodness in the world.

I related to her story so much because I went through many years of painful ups and downs in my life and for many years thought my life would continue to be one terrible thing after another and experienced some very dark times in my life in which I thought there was no light in sight. I knew there had to be more to life then obstacles, difficulties, and adversities, and I desperately longed for a life that had meaning to it and to know that who I was mattered in the world.

It took many years of feeling lost until I was diagnosed with 2 chronic illnesses and finally discovered my gifts and talents and what part they would play in my life and the world.

Shari believes that good starts with each of us and she invites us to start this journey with her. She says all you have to do is think good, speak good, and do good. It sounds so simple, but yet I firmly believe that if we all were to incorporate these 3 things in our daily life, amazing things would happen in the world.

Shari's mission to activate goodness has encouraged thousands of people all over the world to activate their goodness by doing a good deed and in March of 2012 more than 250,000 people around the world participated on Good Deeds Day.

We all go through ups and downs in life and sometimes it’s hard to imagine reaching outside ourselves and doing something good for someone else when we’re feeling bad in our own lives. But the magic is when you do reach outside yourself and do something good for someone else you start feeling better regardless of what’s going on in your own life.

We all have the power to activate goodness. There is no age requirement required, it doesn’t take allot of money, and it doesn’t matter where you live or who you are.

We all have the power each day to make a difference in the world by doing good and this book is a great starting point filled with helpful tips and inspiration to not only improve your life, but the lives of those around you.

(I was not financially compensated for this post. I received the book from Hay House for review purposes. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience. I am also an affiliate of Hay House Publishing and Amazon.)

Everyday Angels

Hello Divine Diva’s,

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted here and I’ve been working on some projects. So if you don’t see anything here, you can always find me at my community page for women at www.facebook.com/divinedivainspiration. I would love for you to stop by. I also have some exciting things coming up and I will be posting about them soon.

I’ve still been out sprinkling my Seeds Of Hope cards and it’s so much fun to leave them out for others to find. It got me to thinking about the first card I created many years ago and this is a story about that.

When we think of angels the first pictures that often come into our mind is a heavenly being with golden hair and a light that shines bright enough to light the world. We've seen pictures of angels in books and photographs of all different shapes and sizes. There seems to be no end to the beauty they project, and they have comforted many people at just the right time in their lives. But I have often wondered to myself, what does a real angel look like?

I had never had an angel encounter myself, but have enjoyed reading the many stories that have been written about angel encounters through the years. They have always fascinated me and I always felt like there must be a way for the average person like me to have an angel experience. The question was how would I go about it? Do I call on my angel to show herself to me? Do I pray to God and ask for him to send me an angel?

Several years passed since I first started thinking about angels, and my life has changed in so many ways. At 32 I was diagnosed with a chronic illness called Fibromyalgia, and my life took an unexpected turn. I was given this sentence of an incurable illness and there was not a thing I could do to change it. I went through the usual denial, and then the anger of wondering why did this happen to me? No matter how many times I asked there seemed to be no answers of why this illness chose me.

Always Remember that you are Beautiful, Strong, Powerful, Fearless, Amazing, Divine, and most important of all YOU ARE ENOUGH! Divine Diva Donna

After I got over the initial shock of all of this, and started taking medications to manage the symptoms, I still had angels on my brain. There were days I felt so alone and I felt like nobody understood what I was going thorough, and I had no idea what to do with all of these feelings I was having. It really opened my eyes to a new world that was about to change for the better.

Of course I didn't know how at the time, I felt like I must have been given this illness for a reason, the key was to figure out why. Then it dawned on me that I was not the only one who must be feeling like this. There are millions of people each and every day who are dealing with an illness just like I was. And knowing how it felt to feel like nobody understands, I thought there must be a way to let other people know that they are not alone and that someone does understand. I knew that angels have always been comforting to people so I decided I would write an inspirational poem that I could send out to let others know that they have an angel watching over them.

My first poem was called Your Secret Angel. I started sending it to hospitals, cancer centers, homeless shelters and anywhere people may be in need of a few comforting words. I sent it out with just the name "From Your Secret Angel". I was excited to be able to do this, and I went on to write several more inspirational poems that I have sent out to strangers through the years. Through my research I have found that there is no shortage of organizations and places that people are in need of comforting word. And although it took an illness for me to find my gift of writing, I also learned some very important lessons along the way.

You see the world is full of everyday angels just like you and me. Just because we don't have wings or wear a halo doesn’t mean we can’t be angels. You don't need to fill out an application, and there are no special tests required for this job. We all have special gifts and talents that we can share with the world. For me it’s writing, for you it might be something else. If you look inside your heart, I know that you will find that special thing that lies inside every one of us. We don't have to look to the sky to find that shining light, because that shining light is in each and everyone one of us, and we should all let that light shine bright for the world to see. We all need a little divine intervention at sometime in our life.

Let today be the day that you decide to be an angel to someone. We're all on this journey together and what better time to earn our wings and become the angel that we are truly meant to be.