It quite honestly feels like a lifetime ago when we rolled out this year’s initiative of GRATITUDE at the back-end of Quarter 4, 2021. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and 2022 has been another challenging year for me personally. As we head into October it feels like the right time to take stock and consider what I have been most grateful for in 2022 so far.
My family, friends and colleagues would be number one on the list. I’m not sure how I would have made it through this year without the incredible support and kindness shown to me. After being in a pandemic and personal lockdown for two years, I am grateful I had the chance to travel to America and be there on hand to support my cousin, as needed, after her hip replacement surgery. I am grateful that during that time I was able to have some long-overdue routine health check-ups and because of one of those checks I had surgery in June. I am so grateful to be able to share that the surgery went smoothly, and the results came back clear – it is wonderful to be healthy! I am grateful for the incredible support of my family before, during and after the surgery and will be forever thankful – the irony is not lost on me that I was actually there to offer my support and ended up as the one needing it! I am also grateful that netlogx offers a best-in-class benefits package which absorbed the vast majority of my medical costs. This experience was a wake-up call to me in many ways. Firstly, NEVER put off medical check-ups, if at all possible, they could quite literally save your life. Secondly, life is not a dress-rehearsal – live each day to the maximum and make sure you can look back after a life well-lived with great memories looking at you in the rear-view mirror!
Life comes at you fast and so I am incredibly grateful to the netlogx family and the internal team for their continued support this year (and always) and going out of their way in offering to pick up tasks for me, in doing so making sure I did not have to work during my recent bereavement leave. This was hugely appreciated and meant I could take my time working through other items on my list. All the beautiful sympathy cards, emails, kind words and donations to Dementia Research meant more to me than you will ever know.
Back-to-back family funerals are not for the faint-hearted. Somehow, with the unlimited love, support (and endless supply of tissues) of my family and friends we not only made it through, but we truly celebrated the lives of our recently departed – precisely what they deserved and would have wanted!
As I try and process the avalanche of emotions I am presently feeling, I am fundamentally grateful for having 45 years of wonderful memories with both my mum and my uncle, who was like a father to me. I am thankful for all the quality times, the vacations, the lovely meals, the unconditional love and support they gave me and most of all the fun and laughter we had. As hard as the past few years have been, I am so grateful I was able to care for my mum and like to think I was able to give her a few more years filled with compassion, laughter, respect and countless meals cooked with love!
As heartbroken as I feel, I am truly thankful that neither my mum nor uncle are suffering nor in pain and am grateful recollecting all the stories that have been shared of late, looking back and appreciating their long lives and most importantly lives well-lived – what else could anybody ask for at the end of the day?
