A few weeks ago, my young friend, Micah, grad­u­ated from nurs­ing school. She is a sin­gle mom who has worked two jobs to put her­self through col­lege. She did it! All. On. Her. Own. I was so proud to see her walk across that stage, I might as well have given birth to her.

Oh, and it gets even bet­ter. Her first big girl nurs­ing job? She’ll be work­ing in med­ical oncol­ogy. I know she will shine, because she gets it. All the best ones do. I remem­ber as a stu­dent nurse, my feel­ing of “com­ing home” when my oncol­ogy clin­i­cal rota­tions came up. I made that my career choice and have never looked back.

Attend­ing her pin­ning cer­e­mony brought to mind the nurses who nur­tured me and gave me a leg up along the way. And—gasp—even the ones who weren’t so nur­tur­ing taught me valu­able lessons.

In the midst of all this rem­i­nisc­ing, I real­ized I had a dilemma on my hands. What the heck can I give her to cel­e­brate? Noth­ing cutesy or mushy; it’s just not my style. Fig­urines she’ll have to dust? Umm . . . nope.

I wanted some­thing that not only hon­ored her accom­plish­ment, but also the nurses who have men­tored me. I wanted to pay it forward.

Then it hit me: an ONS mem­ber­ship! Seri­ously, what bet­ter way to share tools for prac­tice devel­op­ment AND the oppor­tu­nity to con­nect with a hoard of friends and men­tors?  I can say with­out a doubt my life would not be as rich if not for the many friend­ships forged via ONS.

As women and men in our late 40s and early 50s, we have both bro­ken new ground in our nurs­ing careers and were the recip­i­ents of the efforts of those who came before us. We have the respon­si­bil­ity to take what­ever steps we can to pave the way for our sons and daughters—and our friends’ sons and daughters—to take their right­ful place in the world of nurs­ing professionals.

So what about it? Have you “paid it for­ward” for a young col­league? Have you been on the receiv­ing end? I’d love to hear your sto­ries in the comments!