For years I’ve been the person who circles birthdays and work anniversaries or sets email reminders for the bosses. I make sure the cards get passed around, that everyone has a chance to sign them, that no one is accidentally overlooked. It’s one of those small, invisible things that helps people feel seen and important to us. Ironically, this past Saturday marked my own fifteen-year anniversary with the company, and while there was a card because that’s what we do, no one actually remembered that it was fifteen years.
I’ll admit, it hurt more than I expected.
Not because I wanted a party or a speech or some grand display of appreciation. Fifteen years just feels significant. It’s not one project or one busy season or one good year. It’s fifteen years of showing up. Fifteen years of solving problems, learning new systems, adapting to new leadership, celebrating victories, surviving disappointments, and quietly carrying responsibilities that rarely fit neatly into a job description. When I stop to think about everything the last fifteen years has held for me it makes me want to weep.
For most of the weekend, I found myself waiting for someone to notice. Someone to say, “Fifteen years…that’s a long time. Congratulations.” When that moment didn’t come until I reminded someone this morning, I realized how easy it is to let other people become the keepers of our accomplishments. We wait for someone else to decide whether what we’ve done was meaningful enough to acknowledge.
But maybe that’s asking other people to do a job that belongs to us.
No one else has lived my fifteen years. No one else knows the mornings I walked into the office carrying burdens no one could see. No one else remembers every challenge, every deadline, every difficult conversation, every time I stayed because leaving wasn’t an option. No one else saw the tears shed in the car on the way home or behind a closed door. I know what those years cost me. I also know what they taught me. If anyone is qualified to decide whether they were worth celebrating, it’s me.
I’ve spent much of my life believing that recognition had to come from somewhere outside myself. A promotion. A compliment. A thank-you. A remembered anniversary. Those things are wonderful when they happen, but they’re unreliable places to build your sense of worth. People get busy. Calendars get full. Good intentions get lost. If I leave my value in someone else’s hands, I’ll spend far too much of my life waiting. I already have spent too much of my life waiting.
So this year I’m choosing something different. I’m choosing to tell myself congratulations. I’m choosing to recognize the woman who kept showing up, even when it was the hardest thing to do. I’m choosing to honor the years of faithfulness, resilience, and perseverance that no one else fully witnessed because I was the one living them. There is something surprisingly freeing about realizing that I don’t need permission to be proud of myself.
Maybe that’s one of the gifts that comes with experience. We eventually learn that while it’s wonderful to be celebrated by others, it’s just as important to become someone who can celebrate herself.
So here’s to fifteen years in one place – through storms and life’s ugly curveballs. Good job!! You built a career one ordinary day at a time. You weathered seasons that would have made other people quit. You kept going when it would have been easier not to. Whether anyone else remembered the milestone or not, it was real.
And that’s worth celebrating.
Blessings y’all – Amy
