Gratitude Letters - Give Everything; expect nothing

 Gina Hamadey, author of I Want to Thank You: How a Year of Gratitude Can Bring Joy and Meaning in a Disconnected World, writes a "How to write a gratitude letter" in the New York Times. 

She has some apprehensions about awkwardness and vulnerability that she has to overcome. One of her mantras for the year is "Give everything. Expect nothing. Don't keep track of responses. Keep them, but never go back to the list to check or follow up."

In Joe newsletter, author  Jenny Rosenstrach gets a note from Gina and writes about it:

Turns out, she is Gina Hamadey, a writer and content strategist, and a mother of two who lives in Brooklyn. She told me the project came to her after she and her son, Henry, 5, wrote thank-you notes for a City Harvest food drive she organized in 2017. There were 31 notes to write (and 31 days in January, which felt fortuitous) and she wrote many of them while commuting to a freelance job in New Jersey. (Henry would add his part later.) “When I was writing the notes,” she told me, “I realized that I was doing it instead of scrolling through my dumb feeds — so often I’d finish a commute and be like ‘Well that was a wasted hour on this quiet train ride.'” Writing the notes, though, felt positive. “I left the train feeling really good.” When she finished, she missed that feeling so much that she decided to turn it into a year-long campaign, writing one for every day of the year.

She themed each month to make it easier for herself (e.g., neighbors, friends, family, health, food, career mentors, writers), stocked up on some notecards (nothing fancy) and got to work.

She handed off notes to the woman who ran her local bookstore, to her babysitter, to the butcher, thanking him for making a fresh batch of soup for her after running out. She wrote friends she hadn’t seen beyond Facebook in years, reminding them of a memory or just saying “I miss you.”  She wrote a note to the doctor who delivered her younger son, Charlie, who’s two now; and to the heart doctor who saved her dad’s life. (“Oh my God, that was emotional.”) She wrote a career mentor thanking her for offering advice she thinks about every day. She wrote me! (“Post-kids, your book gave me back my confidence, and laid out a little plan for me in the kitchen… I actually love to cook! Thank you for helping me remember.”)

The letters are not lyrical, fountain-penned missives you’d find in a Jane Austen novel. “A perfect thank-you note is not very long,” Gina says, “But it’s earnest, specific, and from the heart.”

From Cup of Joe: Jenny is the creator of Dinner: A Love Story, a blog based on the fundamental principle that cooking and sharing meals with the people you love — even if those people are less than 36 inches tall and aren’t eating what you’re cooking half the time — will infuse every day with meaning. She is the New York Times bestselling author of four books about family dinner, including, most recently, The Weekday Vegetarians.