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Thanksgiving is this week. It’s one of my favorite days of the year. It’s not from growing up and enjoying it. In fact, I have few memories of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is all about gratitude. It’s such an easy word with big meaning. What does it really mean to be grateful?

I believe it means knowing and believing that, despite challenges, we are blessed and lucky for all we have. I don’t mean things, necessarily. I’m thinking more about gratitude for health. Gratitude for love and my loved ones and friends. Gratitude for a warm house and food on our plates. So, gratitude really is simple but complex.

Back to Thanksgiving. The day so special because we’ve built our own traditions as a small family, especially when it was just me and Madden. One of the companies I worked for early in my career gave each of us a turkey in advance of Thanksgiving. We made traditional fare and we did it together more and more as Madden got older.

Now add my husband, Rob to the mix. He’s a turkey aficionado. He says he gives the turkey lots of love. And it works!

Add to it part of Rob’s family traditional foods like rice, and add some of mine like sweet potatoes and roasted root veggies.

Another tradition that Madden and I started and that we do now is to go around the table and say what we’re grateful for. It’s one of my favorite traditions.

Most recently, Rob and I tend to travel on this day. That also makes it special for us and has become a bit of a tradition.

But as a family, celebrating Thanksgiving and being together over food is one of the best things. I’m grateful for my little family most of all!

Wow! There are only six weeks left in 2025. Time has passed so quickly. It’s amazing that 2026 is around the corner.

2025 was both wonderful, frustrating, painful, chaotic, boring, creative, etc. etc.

At this time in the year, however, it’s perfect to consider what I can accomplish in the next six weeks and in early 2026.

First, for the next six weeks:

• Finish my blogs through the end of the year
• Share my skill and availability to be a fractional communications leader
• Schedule mammogram and annual appointments

Looking ahead to 2026:

• Finish my book
• Take the right supplements for my health and fitness
• Consider a career pivot to grant writing

There will be more opportunities into the new year for me to accomplish more. And it all starts right now!

In years past, when I wanted to find a new job, I knew the process and had success typically within a relatively short period of time. It was easy for me. Now, the job hunt and job market are completely different, and so am I.

Today’s job market is cutthroat. Jobs are not as plentiful. If they are, tons of people apply, given the number out of work. Companies are in control. However, the tables will turn eventually. Then, they will need candidates.

I’ve written here in prior blogs about the sorry state of staffing and recruiting. They are a dime a dozen and ghost, belittle and ask for unreasonable “assignments” or “work.” These staffing or recruiting types judge for a living. How miserable!

I think they forget that candidates are not only people, they make decisions about companies based on how they treat others. Whether employed or not, candidates have networks through which they can out companies that treat people like commodities. Candidates can decide whether to use the services or products of the company, too. It really is quite short-sighted of organizations to ignore and treat people poorly.

Additionally, as someone over 50, ageism is alive and well in this country.  That’s discrimination, pure and simple. I also believe a staffing person or hiring manager looks at someone in this age group and figures he or she is more skilled than them, and, therefore, a risk to his or her career or job. Again, this approach is very short-sighted.

As I try to make connections regarding part-time, full-time and contract work, it works about as well as a cold application. Not at all. Here’s a recent example.

A company I worked for in the past (for 5 years) posted a part-time communications specialist role for about seven months to support a change in part of the organization. Even though I reached out to a former colleague about it, I didn’t even get an interview – for a communications SPECIALIST for goodness sake!

Icing on cake? This sentence from the former colleague: “We received many applications and had limited interview slots.” Limited slots? What? I’m so much better than that.

Another challenge for serious consideration for a role is a career gap. I’d think a lot of job seekers have a gap on their resumes today, given the market as it is. I have one, perhaps longer than others. That doesn’t mean my skills have disappeared or that I can’t excel at the work I did for more than 30 years.

And don’t get me started on the trend to start the process with AI interview by a bot or cartoon character. I just won’t do that. If a person can’t talk to me, then that’s not the role for me. I won’t interview like that.

I still write. This blog is an example. As for me, I’ve removed myself from the job hunt for weeks at time. It’s a mental health play for me. Peace is precious and I protect it. If I needed a sign to protect my peace and hold fast to my boundaries, all these j0b challenges and issues is it.

This week is our 6th wedding anniversary. It feels amazing. While six is a good period of time, it sometimes feels like we’ve been married longer. We have been together for much longer than the six years married.

We were together for eight years prior. After a blip of 15 months apart, we got back together and were married about six months later. It’s our love story and I love it.

When it comes to what I give Rob each anniversary, I look to the traditional gifts like paper, cotton, wood or, this year, candy or iron. I’ve been on the hunt for just the right gift. I started in early October.

Usually, we celebrate our anniversary in other ways. For example, if we take a trip, we go out for a special dinner. Maybe we go for a walk together. It’s simple things that mean the most. We are about experiences, not expensive things.

Happy Anniversary to my love. Our love is easy, true and fun!

Faith, in its broadest sense, is the strong belief or trust in something, often without proof or evidence.  It can refer to a specific religious belief system, trust in a person or thing, or even a general principle. In religious contexts, faith often involves belief in God or some other divine being.

For example, I have faith that life is always working in my favor. I have faith that what’s meant for me will not pass me by. I have faith that everything works according to a divine plan.

This week is Halloween or All Hallows Eve or Samhain.

Samhain was an ancient Celtic festival celebrated on Halloween night. It marked the end of the havest and the beginning of winter. It was considered the Celtic New Year and an imporant time when the boundary or the veil between the living and the dead or spirit worlds was believed to thin, allowing for interaction with ancestors and spirits.

The festival involved bonfires, feasts, divination, and costumes to ward off spirits, and is considered the origin of modern Halloween with traditions, like trick-or-treating and Jack-o’-lanterns.

I believe this is the time when you hear from those who have gone before you. It’s when you can connect to faith and those on the other side. It’s not about watching horror flicks (I won’t judge, I just hate them and do not watch) but about the spirit world.

In this moment, at the end of October, you just need to take care of you, and have faith that life is unfolding in your favor.

I didn’t want to post this right away. I needed time to process a shooting at a local Catholic school.

In late August (Aug. 27) in the early morning while school children were at an opening Mass at Annunciation grade school, a person started shooting through the church windows. The bullets were meant to kill children.

Two beautiful souls died. They were 8 and 10. The gunman then turned the gun on his/herself.

I struggle with events like this. Obviously the shooter had a mental health crisis. A lot of us struggle with mental health from time to time. It can be relatively normal. It just boggles the mind why someone would want to hurt, maime and kill others, especially children, before taking their own life.

As a Catholic and someone who sent my daughter to Catholic schools from kindergarten through high school and supported her as she went to a Catholic university, too, I believe in the power of Catholic education. So many, like me, sacrificed to send children to Catholic schools. Beyond the tuition, it’s a commitment to faith in action and in daily life.

This is another reason why this school/church shooting really hit home.

Also, Rob works at a group of inner city Catholic sch00ls. He was deeply affected, too, based on his work. He had to communicate difficult messages to key groups that day. Additionally, his two boys went to a Catholic grade school and high sch00ls.

Because this took place at a school in Minnesota, we had more news on the event than other places in the country. We had constant coverage for days and weeks. Obviously that makes sense.

I hate to use that word, “sense,” because events like this make no sense at all.

We c0ntinue to pray for the Annunciation community, its students and families, and especially those who were affected by injury and death.

I found an amazing gem on HBO. It’s called Somebody Somewhere. I’ve watched it over and over again. And I laugh so hard and cry at all the same parts, over again.

The series follows Sam, a Kansan on the surface who, beneath it all, struggles to fit in. As she grapples with loss and acceptance, she finds her saving grace in singing.

It leads her on a journey to discover herself and a community of outsiders who don’t fit in but don’t give up, proving that finding like-minded people and a voice is always possible.

The series explores the themes of change and growth against all odds.

It is partially biographical of Sam. The other characters are equally bold and rich including Joel and Fred Roccoco. They are my other favorites.

Some of the lines are hilarious. Some of the images are a hoot.

We just returned from a trip to Notre Dame. It was the first trip back for me for many years. That’s a complicated story for another time. Suffice to say I now have a love/hate relationship with the University.

The reason we went back was for a wedding. My long-time roommate’s oldest got married on campus at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. I’d never gone to a wedding there, so that was fantastic.

Likewise fantastic was seeing Melanie and Brian and their now adult children and other family. It was also great to see other former classmates.

Probably the best part was being back on campus with my husband. We walked around and saw all the construction on campus.

We flew there, after an almost two-hour delay and almost flew home. Our flight was delayed almost eight hours in the end. Well before that, we rented a car and drove home. We got home before the eventual flight.

I was also sick all weekend long, after at least two weeks of the cold crud.

So, while the wedding, reception and dancing (yes, Rob danced with me!) was wonderful, the travel, not so much.

We’re happy to be home.

Earlier this month, Charlie Kirk, a conservative voice who engaged with college youth, was gunned down and killed. Many have said it was a political assassination. I didn’t know about him before his death.

Charlie Kirk was an American conservative political activist, author and media personality. He co-founded the conservative organization Turning Point USA in 2012 and was its executive director. 

Whether you agree with him politically or not, he opened conversation and talked to those who didn’t agree with him. He welcomed it.

We have lost our way as a country when we can’t have polite political discourse, regardless of your political persuasion. When conversation depends on only those you fully agree with, it’s easy to demonize the other side.

For example, calling others Nazis or a Hitler or Gestapo other name calling makes no sense in a free society. It’s incendiary verbiage that leads to political violence.

We are Americans. Whether Democrat or Republican, we are part of the same country. We need to start acting like it.

After all, the Declaration of Independence says, ” We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I’m praying for Charlie Kirk, his wife and his two very young children.