When your Dean asks you to share something you’re grateful for in a meeting there is a certain amount of internal pressure to say something. Of course, request like that cause my brain to immediately become a vast wasteland of irrelevant thoughts. Worse yet ask me when I’m working on accreditation reports and massive sarcasm floats to the top.  I remained silent for fear of saying what I was thinking,  “I’m grateful CCNE only comes every 10 years.” Ah, sarcasm my defense mechanism to sharing my true feelings.

Now that I’m home and I have a solid draft of the CCNE self-study I have time to reflect on the year and be grateful. Let me begin with the things that are truly important as I get older. I’m grateful for the scientist and the pharmaceutical industry that invented and manufactured my ACE Inhibitor, Motrin, and Tums and the federal government that provides the vast majority of the money for the research that makes such miracle drugs possible. I’m also grateful for being a nurse and having the skills to monitor my own blood pressure and adjust my meds when CCNE self-study stress causes my blood pressure to rise from the combination of stress and stress eating french fries at lunch with all the associated comforting fat and salt.

I’m really, really, really grateful that I work with nurses who by their natures are nonviolent, compassionate, and don’t harm me when I make repeated request for the same data, but divided by the various different dates that don’t align for USNews & World Report, CCNE, the Tennessee Board of Nursing, and PhD self-study and all the other people that make requests and seem to have absolutely no idea how much time all the reporting eats up.  I would be more grateful if they would all learn to share and pull the data from one source and cut it whatever way they want for themselves so I could actually focus on curriculum and making things more efficient for students and faculty.

I’m grateful to have five cats. When I get home they could care less about data. They care about food, bird watching, letting me know about all the ladybugs they found in the house, and of course standing in front of the computer screen to remind me they are much more interesting than anything on the screen.

I’m grateful for amazing friends that have stuck with me throughout my life. I’m grateful my friends are so diverse and keep me grounded in the reality that what seems true to me isn’t always true to them. Long ago I forgot what it feels like to struggle financially, but some of my friends still do and they remind me to be a good friend means to share. I’m grateful to those of color who remind me that what I experience as a white woman is not what they experience and I need to work every day to check my own privilege. I’m grateful for those that are progressive and conservative because their friendship reminds me that good people see the world differently and their difference do not mean they are any less children of God or any less deserving of my love and respect. I’m grateful to those of faith for lifting me up when I struggle with my spirituality and am grateful to those that are atheist because they remind me it isn’t faith that makes one a moral person. Friends make the world a much more beautiful place and I love them all.

It should go without saying that I’m grateful for a good job that I love, a husband who is the love of my life, a family that brings joy, and all the may blessings that I probably fail to notice every day.

Happy Thanksgiving and may you be blessed with amazing food, family, friends, and gratitude. As I enjoy a good meal I pray:

This food comes from the Earth and the Sky,
It is the gift of the entire universe
and the fruit of much hard work;
I vow to live a life which is worthy to receive it.