24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being: December 7
Send gratitude.
Welcome to 24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being, a digital Advent calendar for slowing down and making space for presence, creativity, and gratitude. This is a seasonal offering for paid subscribers of the Creative Fuel newsletter. Thank you for being here. If you missed a day you can catch up here.
Two weeks ago, I sat down with my favorite pen and a stack of sheets of paper. I had just gotten back from a swim and was warming up in front of the fire. Placing a book on my lap so that I had a hard surface to write on, I set about writing a letter to a dear friend.
It was a final letter, a goodbye letter. He was coming to the end of a cancer journey and time was dwindling. Now was the time to pen my words.
I wrote a letter of gratitude.
Gratitude for all the things that I had never said out loud, for all the things I had already said but wanted to be sure that I emphasized. It wasn’t a letter of correspondence. I knew I wouldn’t receive anything in return. I wanted this letter to feel like receiving a gift, with love and gratitude and friendship scrawled all over the pages.
To sit and reflect on almost two decades of friendship also felt like a gift to myself. Ruminating on memories, taking time to feel emotions. The words weren’t perfect—they never are—but that wasn’t the point. It was the rawness, the unedited nature that made it personal, made it true.