This is the 52nd week of the year. The 52nd Thursday. My 52nd ‘Thank you Thursday” post of 2011. I’ve shared a lot of gratitude over all these weeks. Yet, I feel like I’ve barely been thankful enough.
I have the great gifts of an amazing family and a small, but mighty, circle of friends. I have a network of professionals I 
respect and admire and an unending network of fabulous people I’ve only met in cyberspace. I’ve been blessed with overall good health, as have my husband and children. I have a job I enjoy, co-workers I adore, and a hobby I love.
I seem to have a gift for helping people find peace in the most trying situations, and for that I am humbly filled with gratitude. I’ve been told on more than one occasion that my willingness to simply listen, my compassion for the suffering, and my sometimes peculiar way of looking at the world has helped another through a dark time.
I love learning and have been blessed with many opportnites to do so. I’ve had wonderful teachers, coaches and informal mentors. I am thankful for the lessons taught to me by the words and example of the people I work with. I love, love, love books and am fortunate to own many of them supporting my learning; my leadership library is one of my prized possessions.
Of course, not all is perfect. But, by standing firmly in gratitude I am able to embrace challenges and see opportunity ahead, accept pain as temporary and seek possibility through healing. Sadness comes and goes, but I always strive to get through it to the joy that I know waits on the other side.
I can’t possibly quantify all that I have to be thankful for. I just hope that I honored those blessings enough in the past year, and that I never, ever take them for granted.
I hope all of us have a happy 2012; even, perhaps, a year filled with nothing less than joy and gratitude. Happy New Year!
