Vented Uplift Community Blog

I love the holidays! Turning the calendar page over to November fills my heart with love, thankfulness and excitement for the season ahead.The holidays are traditionally a time to express gratitude to those we love as we gather over a Thanksgiving meal and make shopping lists of people we want to remember with a card or gift of appreciation. This holiday spirit of thankfulness is the spirit I’ve tried to carry through my cancer journey every day of the year. When life is ugly, dark, painful and bleak, finding gratitude in the simplest things snaps me out of the dull drums replacing sadness with hope, positivity and healing. During cancer, I spent many days sitting on my patio in the early morning hours, in my pj’s, when the world was still, meditating, watching the sunrise, listening to the song of birds, watching the clouds, listening to the wind, looking at the flowers in my garden and reciting self-created personal affirmations. Not only did I enjoy nature but felt gratitude for my ...

Written by: Chrisie Canny So, for those of you who know me and the fact that I met my husband in a bar in Brooklyn, you may be assuming what  Fitting, My First Was in an Irish Bar  is all about. And I am here (this time only) to tell you to get your minds out of the gutter. This is not a blog about the first time I had a drink in a bar…ha.., did you think I would say sex? Well…anyway… this is about the first time I finally let someone read my chapter in the Anthology Magnificently Made and very fittingly it happened in an Irish Bar, the old Irish Pub in AC to be exact. It’s also a story about the fear of being a writer and putting something out into the world for everyone to pick at and scrutinize. Let me go back over a year ago when my now publishers Jess and Jenn started posting on social media about how they had a dream of bringing 33 women together to write an Anthology. 33 women to share their journeys to help lift other women. Sounded like my cup of tea just by the descr...

  Most of us know that good Nutrition is essential for supporting a strong immune system. Nutrition not only comes in what we put in our body, it is also connected to lifestyle and other factors: Here is just 8 things to keep in mind and to create in your everyday habits: Vitamin D - helps activate immune cells. We do need the sun to synthesis vitamin D. The sun converts cholesterol found under the skin to vitamin D. Vitamin D is known to fight many cancers. For cancers like melanoma, the sun is not always an enemy. Your weakened immune system is your enemy, and your lifestyle has probably triggered your health problems. Low vitamin D has been linked to a weakened immune system, multiple sclerosis, jaundice, cancer, PMS, arthritis, under active thyroid, acute depression, dermatitis, osteoporosis and many other diseases and conditions. If you are unable to get enough sun, please consider taking a vitamin D supplement. Good sources of vitamin D include fatty fish, eggs, and mus...

  Well, it’s January 12th…did you fail at your New Year's resolutions already and you feel like shit about yourself? Or is that just me for like the past 30 years of my life?? Except for this year…because at 3 in the morning, an hour after I went to sleep, I woke up with a thought…New Year, New Me is complete shit! I call these little moments of thought my download from God. It's the things that I need to hear and understand to become a better version of myself. And this thought was just what I needed to break those crazy ideas in my head that have been placed there by society, TV, and the perfect people on Instagram...oh and let's not forget the number one guilty party...me! So the thoughts continued in my head as I tossed from side to side. Who came up with this crazy notion that once we wake up on January 1st that we could be a new person??? Like WTF? (And no, I didn’t give up cursing for the new year.) First off, most of us will be slightly hungover or tired in the morn...

  Hi, I am Meredith Van Ness, founder of Balanced + Well Counseling, a therapist, and a life coach. I support and empower women to overcome their stress and anxiety, release the limiting self-doubt holding them back, and build confidence so they can focus their energy on what matters most.  We’ve all experienced more stress than usual in the last couple of years.  So now normal and everyday stresses may be putting you in a constant place of feeling out of control or overwhelmed. Although some stress is a natural part of life, we must learn to handle it in healthy ways so our stress does not always spiral into anxiety. Being in touch and admitting that we are stressed is a great place to start. It’s when we’re honest with ourselves that we can begin to do the work. Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand or threat. When it is working properly, it helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert. Stress can also help you rise to a challenge. It’s what ke...