The great gratitude letter-writing campaign.

At the beginning of the New Year I made a resolution.

This was unique among my New Year’s Resolutions in being absolutely nothing to do with how fat, skint, lazy, selfish or otherwise unsatisfactory I may or may not be, and everything to do with trying to cast a wee bit of positivity into 2018.

I found 2017 a bit troublesome overall; for one reason or another the world always seemed to be a bit of a grim place, filled with grim people, grim opinions and grim events.

But I decided to look at 2018 differently, and instead of chasing about in ever decreasing circles complaining about the overwhelming rubbishness of modern life in general (and me in particular), I decided to pay attention to the many ways in which it’s actually wonderful.

Thus the #52letters campaign was born!

I resolved to handwrite one nice wee letter a week to a person in my life or from my past, to whom I have reason to feel grateful. It started in week one with a letter to Dawn Thomson, EFT practitioner and therapist extraordinaire who helped me let go of a great deal of emotional rubbish that was holding me back. Then in week two I wrote to my old English teacher from High School to tell her how glad I was that I’d learned to write fluently under her guidance (and also to tell her about my book deal, but that’s a story for another day…)

This afternoon I came home from a snowy and freezing cold school run, feeling a bit tired out and slightly crabbit, and there was an unexpected envelope waiting for me. It turns out that #52letters works both ways, and I was most cheered to find a beautiful card with a really kind reply from my now retired English teacher in the envelope. In all honesty the whole thing made me tear up a wee bit, because how often do we really engage with that sort of simple lovely stuff these days?

So long live my great gratitude letter-writing campaign of 2018. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year has in store.

#somethinglovely