Being Grateful

Wow, it is already November. One thing that I have done each year around this time of year is to really reflect on my life over the previous year and to think of people that have strongly influenced my life that year. I want to make sure to always be grateful for the people that come into my life. I try and let these people know how I am feeling too. I would like to try and live my life in a way that if our paths cross that you can say your life may be a little better, a little brighter. Now, I don't always achieve that goal, but it is one that I set for myself many years ago. Kip and I were talking about that the other day too, how our actions and reactions can influence people around us. We are both making the effort to be kinder people; to each other, to our families and friends and to people that we only have fleeting contact with, servers in restaurants, clerks in stores. 

I know this is a blog about having a healthy lifestyle and being frugal, but I think all health begins with good mental health. One way to get there is to be aware of and grateful for the things that we have. So for the rest of the month and then randomly as I feel like it, I am going to be posting about things I am grateful for.

Today, I am grateful that I have the privilege to vote. We women have only had that privilege for 90 years, since 1920. I personally feel that if I shirk my duty to vote, it is a slap in the face to all the women that came before me that could not do so. A slap to women like Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and so many others worked tirelessly for many years to help establish this right for me. I cannot imagine a time where I did not have that right because I would have been too frail, or too limited in my thinking to be able to vote. I hope I never take that right for granted.