Hello, it’s Thankful Thursday.

Thank you for showing up, and keeping me accountable, appreciative, and grateful for things big and small. Attention attracts gratitude, and gratitude expands joy, and my gratitude grows when shared with you.

Some days are more difficult than others, to find the good, to comb through the junk. Here’s what I've found to appreciate this week.

* * *

Remember the Love Languages? I never read the 1990s bestseller but knew right away which was mine: written words.

Write me a letter and you have a friend for life.

This week I’m thankful for a full mailbox, a full heart.

1.
Still Here

Every week for six years, a friend sends me an email.

Sometimes ten lines, sometimes two. Sometimes funny, often punny, and always kind.

What began as a thoughtful check-in during the pandemic, has endured and lifted, and made me strong.

It’s a weekly hello that says more than the message. In every word I hear: I’m still here. And you are, too.

2.
Write On

Praise the bounty of words that arrive at my door! What a treasure to hold a book from a face you know, a voice you can hear, a heart you hold:

• This Is How I by Riley Danvers

• Junkie Boy: A MotherWork by Linnea Wortham Harper

• 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts by Tarn Wilson

3.
Time Limit

From a new friend, a letter arrives. The envelope is damp, the penmanship sloppy.

Nothing is happening, she writes, but how little time we have to know each other.

In the unfurling, there is a refreshing directness, a welcome urgency. Line by line of nothing much, and yet with tenderness every small thing is made whole.

4.
Art Tee
A package arrives — wearable art. The newest delightful design from artist-farmer Tracy Weil.

Get yours here.

5.
Letter Poems

I love poems praising mail. It’s a niche, I know, and I’m always on the hunt for poems to add to my collection.

Some of my favorites are This is a Letter by Rebecca Dunham, Postcard by Olena Kalytiak Davis, Salutations by Luisa A. Igloria, Elegy for the Personal Letter by Allison Joseph, and this one:

Letter

Today I did almost nothing.
Read a little, tried to write a sentence
to make another sentence seem necessary.

I wasn't unhappy. Everything
I could will myself to do I'd done,
so I said I'd done enough.

Now I'm looking out my window:
white pine, ash, a single birch,
the leanings and crossings

of branches. And then the sky:
pale, undecided. Years ago
you wrote to me about a matter

that worried you, and you said
at the end, "That's probably the best,
and most true, way to think about it."

I kept your sentence in my notebook.
I liked its shape. I admired the way,
young as you were, you could feel

one kind of thinking
adjusting into another, one truth
becoming a better truth.

Now you're far off, and alone, and I
have no advice you haven't already
given yourself. What can I tell you?

That I'm here? That today, when I saw
how tenderly the light was moving
among those trees, I thought of you?

— Lawrence Raab

Please join me in Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things. Big or small, pea-sized or profound. What are you thankful for today?