Indulging in my own gratitude

I try very hard to make every post in this blog about you.  The reader.  The businessperson.  The marketer.  The writer.  I want to infuse value, insights and fresh ideas in every post.

So I hope you’ll forgive me this self-indulgent post.  What I would love is to have you add to it with your own self-indulgent gratitude.  That would make me feel better.  (Does that make this post even more self-centered?)

Anyway…enough prelude.

Over at the Balanced Life Center blog, Nneka has created the Season of Gratitude.  She’s invited other bloggers to share “a gratitude moment” and she’ll weave them all together with links and blog magic.  I couldn’t resist joining in.

Rather than create a laundry list of the incredible and plentiful blessings that I am surrounded with every day, I decided to narrow my focus to my greatest gift. 

My daughter.  She is quite simply, the best part of me. 

Her questions force me to find my own clarity.  Her humor is the perfect salve for a stressful day.   Her fears remind me of my own humanity and her teen-induced insecurities keep my heart tender.  Her zest for life’s delights feeds my spirit and her need to re-charge urges me to slow down now and then.   Her laughter triggers my own (sometimes in the most inappropriate places and times) and her tears show me the depth of my own vulnerability.

Her drive to succeed tempers my own so we can talk about balance and her sense of discovery (both academic and of self) lets me indulge in the same.  Her need to learn about the responsibilities that come along with being given a good life allows me to share my talents unselfishly and take her along for the ride.

Her presence gives me purpose.  Her future gives me hope.  And her faith in me inspires me to be a better person.   

She is my Jiminy Cricket.  She is my legacy.  And she is, every single day, my season of gratitude.