Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...   It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

—Melodie Beatty

I had never heard that quote before last week, and last week I heard it twice, on two separate days and under totally different circumstances.  I decided that somebody out there wants me to hear this.   Have you ever had that experience where you hear a new concept or idea, and suddenly you keep hearing it everywhere?   I guess that when we open our mind to new possibilities, the possibilities come flooding in, or when we hear something that resonates with us, the world colludes to reinforce that concept for us, to remind us of what is important.

Of course the timing of this is perfect, with Thanksgiving fast approaching.  Gratitude, giving thanks, that’s what this wonderful holiday is about, right?  As I am sure you know, Thanksgiving is not an Irish holiday, but upon moving here I gladly embraced the much-needed vacation days in November, and it fast became my favorite holiday of the year.  For me it’s about family.   Family, however you define it, coming together without gifts, without fuss... well, apart from the annual power struggle between my mother-in-law and my husband over control of the small kitchen in our house, the wrestling with a 22-pound turkey, and, inevitably, the forgetting to take the oyster dressing out of the oven until after dinner.   I am sure my mother-in-law will interject here to remind me that all I ever have to do is mash the potatoes, but that is the beauty of convincing people you can’t cook and, being Irish, all you really know about is potatoes!

But family quirks and quarrels aside, Thanksgiving truly is a beautiful holiday, marking the beginning of the season, often taking place in perfect fall weather, and providing a time to rest, and simply be together, before all the craziness begins.   This is a time to give thanks.  No matter what the past year held for you, and we know it's been trying, the beauty of this life is that you will always find something to be grateful for, if you look for it.  And choosing to be grateful — and it is a choice — can change everything.  As Melodie Beatty says, “It turns what we have into enough”.  How powerful is that?  The moment when we know we have enough!

As we all know, not everyone has enough, and that will be the subject of my next post, but for now, take some time to remember what you have to be grateful for.  Try for just one day to find something to be grateful for in everything that happens, and I mean everything, the good and the bad.  Try it and let me know how it feels.

By the way, all joking aside, I am extremely grateful for my in-laws.   I am lucky to have the most supportive, loving, and appreciative in-laws in the world, and I look forward to telling them that, next Thursday, after I’ve mashed the potatoes!

A Thing of Beauty

If anyone asks me where to go in Ireland, I have to say Connemara. Connemara is without a doubt the most beautiful place in the world. When we were kids, our family used to go on “Sunday spins” (i.e. a Sunday drive) throughout the summer. Living in Westport, we found plenty of places for our Sunday spin: the wildness of Achill Island, the unspoiled woods of Tourmakeady, and, some days even the big city, Galway! But I always asked to go to Connemara. We would follow the route winding around Kylemore Abbey, by Killary Harbour, and through the tiny village of Leenane (of “The Quiet Man” fame). At that time of year, purple rhododendrons lined the road, beckoning to us that there was more beauty to come. We always found that beauty in Clifden. Clifden is a market town, set between the Atlantic Ocean and preserved bog lands. Driving into the town, the Twelve Ben Mountains rise up, surrounding the town as if to both announce and protect this, the most beautiful place on earth.


Whenever I hear the word “picturesque,” I think of Clifden. My brothers soon tired of the Sunday spins, but I never did. I still drive to Clifden with my parents whenever I am home. I recently learned that this was also my grandfather’s favorite place, and there is something comforting in knowing that – to think that he used to drive this route too! I wonder what he saw, what he felt. Did he love the drive through the rugged, sometimes barren landscape, giving rise to purple and green hills? Or did he prefer the beauty and stillness of Killary Harbour, surrounded in mists of gray? I’ll never know because I didn’t get the chance to ask him before he died. But I can picture my grandfather standing at the harbor’s edge, staring at the beauty stretched out before him, and sometimes, when I need to, I can close my eyes and go stand there beside him. Together we breathe in that sense of peace, that sense of utter contentment that I know he must have felt too, that sense of pure happiness that can only come from holding your grandfather’s hand, standing together in silence, surrounded by the wonder of the most beautiful place on earth.

Happiness is found along the way, not at the end of the road

In June of this year I embarked on a journey to find something new.  I knew I had to close Nuada, the small retail business I loved.  The time had come, and I knew this would be tough.

When I started on this journey, I had no idea what was next.  I knew I needed to work, earn money, and pay the bills, and I wanted to do it as quickly as possible.  I was also finding it very hard to let Nuada go, but I didn’t know why.

A few months earlier, a friend recommended that I go to CTC, the Career Transitions Center of Chicago.  I thought it would be a good starting point, and I really wanted to take action.  I desperately wanted to move on.  At the first orientation meeting, Laura, the CTC Director of Programming, after listening to my particular story said to me, “You know, someone once told me that nothing is a waste, that everything leading up to this point was meant to happen.”  She also said to me, “You’re tired,” and I almost burst into tears.  Up to that point I was trying to pretend Nuada was over and that I was fine.  I wasn’t.  Holding onto Nuada and the sense of failure that came with closing it had so drained me that while I desperately wanted to move on, I didn’t know how--and I was tired.

For me, and I suspect for many others, opening my business was a manifestation of who I was and who I wanted to be.  I could be creative, which I never could in my previous jobs.  I could be interactive, meeting new people, introducing artists to customers, getting involved in community groups.  I could be strategic, making plans, searching for new products, holding events.  I loved it.  But now it was gone.

When we have a setback, lose a job, or “fail” in a business, the inclination is to reprimand ourselves, ask what we did wrong.  What we don’t do, or at least what I didn’t, is ask what I did right.  All I saw was something I needed to fix, a “failed” business and a lack of income and I needed to fix it fast.

I now know that there was nothing to fix.  Nuada wasn’t the goal; it was part of the journey.  It was an invaluable experience, one that has opened up all kinds of new and exciting opportunities, but closing Nuada was also part of the experience, and the part that has allowed me to move on.  Through taking the time to learn more about me, my strengths, and what I love to do, I have opened up my life to a whole new set of possibilities, but I could not have discovered those possibilities if I had not closed Nuada.

But it wasn’t easy.  I couldn’t move on from Nuada until I first acknowledged how much it had meant and how I really felt about losing it.  Be gentle with yourself.  When you lose something in your life, big or small, allow some time to grieve.  But remember that it’s all part of the journey, the good and the bad.  Each point on the journey serves a purpose.  Nothing is a waste.