Interdisciplinary Psychology:

Gratitude Letter and Visit

            The challenge for me with the Gratitude Letter and Visit exercise was to think of someone locally for whom I hadn’t already done this because I tend to be quite acknowledging of the people in my life.  Then I thought about my former office manager, a woman named Ruth.  She still works for the company I used to own and operate, although I’ve since sold out and gone back to school.  We have maintained our friendship although we don’t see each other often.  As a boss, I was frequently annoyed by her because she moves at a much slower rate than I do and is chronically 15 minutes late to work.  She also has a demanding daughter and grandchildren who often called her during the day to talk about things I considered trivial.  I never considered Ruth one of my best employees, but she was very loyal and always brought her keen sense of humor to the job with her.  My life back then was a crazy roller coaster of high octane stress and I know I was often very difficult to work with but she hung in with me through thick and thin.

I met her at her favorite restaurant for lunch.  I told her I had a school project and needed her help, and that I was buying lunch.  She was expecting me to interview her about some aspect of her life that might be relevant to my studies in psychology.  The gratitude letter completely surprised her.  I read it aloud to her, and acknowledged her for her patience, her loyalty, her sense of humor, how well she treated our customers, her quiet compassion, and her willingness to invite me and my ex-husband to her home for the holidays when we had no friends and no place else to go.  Ruth is a quiet homebody who finds joy cleaning out her chicken coops, training rescue puppies, and tender her vegetable garden.  She is rarely the center of attention.  It felt really good to finally acknowledge her for the positive impact she has had on my life, both professionally and personally.  I know I was sometimes hard on her when I was her boss, and I acknowledged this too.  It was a little hard for her to hear, but she took deep breaths and hung in with the process.  We both cried a little and then enjoyed lunch.  At the end of our visit, she told me she felt really good about herself and that no one had ever done something like that for her before.  I was very pleased to express my gratitude to her, because she is someone I think I often took for granted.

Three Blessings

I am an avid journal writer.  I chose a new journal, a small handmade book with a beautiful cover, to use for this exercise.  I wanted to start a new journal specifically for this process because I find it to be so useful.  I call the journal my little book of blessings.

There was only one out of seven days when it was slightly difficult for me to come up with something that went particularly well that day.  In the past when I’ve done exercises like this, I usually write three things that I’m grateful for, which is easier because there is so much in life for which to be grateful.  To focus instead on three things that went very well was a little more challenging. 

Most of my blessings involved other people in my life and positive experiences I shared with them during the week.  Some of my blessings related to things I did on my own, like having a particularly good work out or doing particularly well on an essay for another class that is challenging me because the writing project is quite difficult.  Most of the things that contributed to why my blessings occurred had to do with my own effort or my willingness to do what Reivich and Shatté refer to as “reaching out.”

To my surprise, when writing about what led to my various daily blessings, two unexpected people made their way into my little book this pas week: my father and my ex-husband.  This surprised me because these two men have caused me so much agony and grief, not to mention fairly high therapy bills!  My father passed away 18 years ago, and my ex-husband and I split up 3 years ago, yet their influence is still part of my life.  How can this not be true; they provided important lessons in my life despite how much opportunity they provided for me to get really angry!  It was interesting to me to find myself acknowledging them as part of the reason certain things went well for me this last week.  The one thing I tend to be very hard on myself about is my past, because it hasn’t been all that great and I still have hurdles to overcome.  Yet I’m very happy in my present life.  This exercise was another reminder that the past is part of us, and even a so-called “bad” past can help create a useful or even excellent present.  My grandmother used to say, “We weave our tapestry each and every day, and some of the colors and prettier than others.”  It felt acknowledging for me to realize these two dark colors in my life help to make a tapestry that I enjoy today, and in fact I wouldn’t be who I am if it weren’t for every single aspect of my past, even the parts that are conceptually difficult. 

I wasn’t able to dream specifically about any of the things I wrote about, although one of my blessings was about helping out my friend John with a resume for a job that is absolutely perfect for him.  That night, his chocolate lab Sophie visited me in my dream.  She came up to me with her smiling face and wagging tail, and we were both so happy to see each other.  It was sweet, and confirming of the heart connection between me and John.  He was raised in a highly dysfunctional family with the whole “boys don’t cry” thing, and he has a hard time being affectionate or expressing his emotions with other humans.  We often joke about how his dog and horse, both of whom are extremely affectionate, do this for him.  I think Sophie’s presence in my dream was a symbol of the affection between us, and how we are always genuinely pleased to see each other.  We our blessed to have a true friendship between us, and we both cherish it in our way.