Gratitude and Acceptance Speeches

Today is Thanksgiving and for the last few weeks I've been reflecting on how much I have to be thankful for. Of course I'm thankful for my home, enough food to eat, my kids and my family. I'm grateful for new kittens, hot showers, pecan pie and my friends. I'm grateful for you, for my husband and for my job. This has been a year full of huge risks, scary decisions and tragedy- but we are all still here thriving, happy and moving forward.

What I am most thankful for this year- no surprise- has to do with the all consuming venture we started this year, our business. Despite all of my doubts and fears, we are succeeding. And I'm just so thankful and in awe of it all.

I was in the shower the other day thinking about gratitude and for some reason I starting thinking about acceptance speeches at award shows. They are always full of thank you's and yet seemingly empty to me. I wondered why they were thanking all of the people they work with or who work for them. My previous thought was that they were thanking people just for doing their job. Which is fine, but not very meaningful.

But when I put myself in their position- I realized how NOT empty those thank yous are. When I think about the success of Nickel & Suede thus far, all I can think of is thanking people. We haven't been in a position yet to hire anyone- but we have required so much help over the last six months. The amount of work far exceeds what Soren and I can do and so we have been forced to rely on the service of our friends and family. And oh, how generous they all  have been!

I can't begin to describe all of the service, love, and thoughtfulness we have been shown. From physically coming over to help us ship orders and assemble earrings to watching our kids to throwing us parties to bringing us dinner to working late into the night. I'm realizing that behind any success- like a movie or a movie star- there are countless people who believe and love the cause (or the people) enough to serve, support, work and give far beyond what is expected. Or deserved.

We can never pay back what we have been given from our friends and family and so- we are just thankful. And ultimately, everything we have, from our friends to our business, comes from God. And we can't pay Him back either. He has blessed us with so much more than we could possibly feel like we deserve.  I want to be better at being grateful everyday.

And the most amazing thing of all? We are happiest when we are grateful. The more we consider the things we do have, the happier we will be. And in the day to day stress of life right now- I could use more of feeling happy in the present.

I hope you have a wonderful day with the people that are important to you. Happy Thanksgiving!