Today I am grateful for perspective.  I thought I always had to be serious to be taken seriously—as if being taken seriously was the goal.  Years of insecurity plagued me in relation to how I looked and ideas I had that were never allowed or fully expressed because people assumed I was younger, that I couldn’t possibly understand the big picture.  Or that I was somehow to delicate.  I ventured on a decades long quest to validate myself through proving what I knew and what I was capable of, how strong I was, what I could do on my own.  All that did was leave me exhausted and frustrated and yearning for more.  Recently I learned something about life: it doesn’t need to be taken seriously.  The only thing we need to remember is we live in the natural laws of the world and anything that comes outside of that, any conditions man puts on us are that of man.  We are fallible creatures and we are allowed to change our minds and make adjustments when things go wrong.  We don’t need to be validated for anything.  And we don’t need to take everything as a life or death situation.  I’ve met some new people who have shown me that we can take our business seriously, how we interact, and how we care for others can take top priority—but we don’t need to take ourselves seriously.  If we put too much stock in how we look and what we accomplish, we lose sight of our functionality and what our talents can bring to the world.  We miss connection and fun and creativity and joy.  It doesn’t matter how seriously people take us-we are worthy exactly as we are and we will find much more value and joy in our lives if we learn to enjoy them.  Life is short, we must do what we find joy in and that becomes a source.

Today I am grateful for recognition.  This isn’t usually one that I feel much gratitude for because even though I like being acknowledged for my accomplishments, I often feel funny about it.  I’ve had a particularly difficult client at work the last two weeks.  The most challenging part is that the issue this woman was having legitimately wasn’t with our company—this wasn’t something we could help her with on any level as the billing was done outside with a company we have no access to.  Regardless, it turned into hours of my time and my employee’s time and a lot of frustration as we repeated the resolution over and over again and new issues continued to raise as it was evident the thought spirals were getting out of control.  I came to find out that this patient had also approached administration and wanted to speak with our president—like she walked directly into their office without an appointment demanding to be seen.  As I was dealing with the last phone contact from this woman, I saw a call come in from someone I knew was in administration.  It turned out that this was the woman who the patient had ambushed trying to see our president.  The admin called me to thank me for all of my work with this patient and to commend my team and I for dealing with a really difficult situation.  I had been so incredibly frustrated with this patient that I was on the verge of quitting my job in all seriousness and the last think I thought I wanted was any form of recognition on the matter.  But hearing those words thanking me for my work actually did mean something to me.  I can’t say that it erased all feelings of anger and concern, but it made me feel better knowing that my best was absolutely good enough and that I knew enough of my work here over the years that I made the right choices with this patient.  It felt good to feel like I was in the right place for a moment, doing the right thing.  Sometimes that’s all we need—a little reminder we are doing the right thing.  

Today I am grateful for remembering fun and flow.  I didn’t talk much about my New Year’s Eve this past week but I want to share a few key reminders I learned that night as we rolled in 2025.  We had no plans for that evening because it was the middle of the week and my husband had to work on New Year’s Day but I received a text as I was finishing up my work inviting us out that evening for a last minute get together with some new friends.  We decided to accept and we went there for dinner and ended up staying until nearly 3AM.  We ate and drank and sang and played putt-putt and we told stories and laughed and had an amazing time.  I found myself in awe a few times as these people discussed their business and their standards became clear to me: it’s perfectly acceptable to go for what we want and to say no if that isn’t what we really want.  We must embrace life by saying yes to what we actually want instead of always trying to make things work.  And we should never be embarrassed for the things we want in our lives, we aren’t proving anything to anyone else.  We are meant to enjoy life.  As I said above, we don’t need to take ourselves seriously, we should take our business and our purpose seriously but the rest, how we get there is all a game.  So when we get those last minute invites, when we have that feeling that something sounds fun, we should dust off and go with it. Say yes to what we want in life and enjoy it and be grateful. 

Today I am grateful for life.  We celebrated our son’s birthday this past Friday and seeing him grow is a gift.  As a parent there are times I wish I could pause and just stay where we are and life in that moment forever.  As much as his birthday (and any birthday) is about celebrating the emergence of life into the world, I celebrate my birth as a mother that day.  I remember the before and after, finding out I was pregnant, the surreal nature of feeling a new life, the struggle I faced during that pregnancy, and then his arrival.  That unreal moment when we were no longer connected but still so incredibly entwined with each other.  Now I think of the time passed since that moment and it feels like a dream.  I think of the person he is now, how smart, how independent, how impulsive, how like me, how like his father, he is.  How I want to give him all I can and how much he means to me.  How he will never understand the depth of what he means to me.  When we become parents, we see life differently.  We value aspects differently, often we see how we value another’s life more than our own.  There is nothing I wouldn’t do for that child that would improve his chances of a good life.  My hope is a fulfilled, long, healthy, happy, and abundant life filled with adventure, purpose, joy, peace, excitement, faith, and follow through on his dreams.  My hope is to witness all that I can with him, to be present.    

Today I am grateful for connection and understanding.  This is a different one for me—not the gratitude for connection and understanding but the reason behind it.  I’ve become more in-tune with my instincts over the last few months and I know I am on the right path for several pursuits I have at this time.  2024 saw a lot of in-between and uncertain moments but that taught me to make choices and in making those choices I got more comfortable with who I am and what felt right.  I am one of those people who follows signs and believes they are there to guide us as long as we interpret them correctly—and if we do interpret them, we will receive more signs and so on and so on.  I’ve always had a connection with cats and I was devastated after the loss of my Maine Coon back in August.  Near immediately after losing him, two additional cats came into my life—one a local stray and the other my Aunt’s cat.  The stray had been roaming around us for a few months and we had decided to start letting him in because the only reason we kept him out in the first place was because Loki was sick.  The integration started off rough with our last remaining cat but they slowly started connecting.  The stray is incredibly friendly and affectionate so I knew it wouldn’t take long for them to become friends—our last cat had been wanting a more active playmate anyway.  Then we suddenly lost my aunt and we found ourselves with another cat—this one very different than the stray as he was incredibly timid and nervous and had just undergone his own trauma.  I really didn’t know how I was going to integrate these animals at first, but I did it.  All of my cats follow me like a real pride and I am honestly weirdly proud of it.  They are connected to me because I understand them.  I think they came into my life, two totally opposite little souls because I needed to break the fixation on the hurt of my loss.  Animals are a gift and I am so grateful to connect with them.  They make my heart feel better, and it’s another way to get out of my head.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.