Each holiday is designed to provide a respite from our toiling and bring friends and family together to celebrate. Because the origins of Thanksgiving are to celebrate a bountiful harvest, this particular holiday always reminds me of the opportunity to be aware and thankful for so many things in my life. While family and friends are on my short list of gratitude, I find it fulfilling and rejuvenating to spend a little time evaluating all that has been “harvested” through the year. The first to come to mind are the simple, inanimate things I often take for granted but am so dependent upon: my cell phone and tablet, the heat in my house, my education, the gas in my car, and other countless conveniences in my life… Then there are the intangibles: the way my husband can make me happy just by the way he smiles, the pride I feel in watching the students advance in our martial arts school, or the emotional rush I feel as each issue of DERMASCOPE arrives in our office. I like to take my gratitude a step further by contemplating the challenges I have encountered through the year, bumps in the road, or wrong turns I may have taken. Thanksgiving reminds me that comfort all year provides no harvest and obstacles are the best teachers in life. Each hardship, or less than optimum decision, provides me needed growth which I would not have otherwise experienced. This is the perfect time to look for the silver lining that I have not yet noticed. I will try to go forward into a new year, thankful for all that my life has to offer – the good, the bad, and the bumpy. I am grateful to all our readers for providing the opportunity to share. I am grateful to all our contributors for providing what we share. I am grateful to all our advertisers for providing us the means to share. I hope each of your hearts become filled with the blessings you have received… And the ones yet to arrive. Happy Thanksgiving! Amanda Strunk MillerAssociate PublisherWant to read more? Subscribe to one of our monthly plans to continue reading this article.