Receiving Gratitude

Acknowledging gratitude as regenerative care for whatever is ahead of us

When I started this project I was coming off of a summer that I thought was a reset. After a year and a half of teaching my design classes online, we were preparing to return to in-person. Our campus had outlined detailed plans for who could be where, when. There was hand sanitizer, "stand 6 feet apart" signs, and thankfully both vaccine and mask mandates. What wasn’t prepared for - either because we didn’t think to, or didn’t know how to - was the mental health impact of returning to in-person university life.  My energy and excitement for writing and producing was suddenly replaced with students in crisis:  in visible ways, invisible ways, irrational lashing out ways, quiet hidden ways. I’d be lying if I didn’t say my imposter syndrome set in - here I am wanting to cultivate regenerative design and regenerative cultures, but instead was losing energy every day as the semester went on.

My last day of classes felt like a slow drag to the finish line instead of the celebration it had been in the past. As I ended my last Sustainable Systems in Design class, several students lingered after. Individually they came up to thank me for the semester. My class (which teaches many ideas I’ve written about in previous posts) had impacted them in some way. Some had a simple heartfelt “thank you for this class”, some with stories of how the class changed them or specific moments and themes they’d take with them, some with cards. At that moment, I was overwhelmed with emotion. So much of my time this semester was reporting concerns to student services, referring students to academic and mental health resources, supporting students through a litany of reasons they couldn’t come to class but still needed to pass the course, while exerting the extra energy it takes to lecture while masked and listening to muffled voices behind them. I had spent a lot of time and energy on what isn’t always great about teaching, but these small moments of gratitude, knowing my class had a positive impact, had made it worthwhile.

In the days that followed my final classes I had little energy to do anything, and especially not finishing the next piece I’d been working on for a month for this column about “designing the how” or the deadline I’m past due on about creative resilience. I wasn’t regenerating anything, I was burnt out.  

I had shared with some colleague-friends my moment of joy upon receiving gratitude from my students, and we wondered if they knew the impact of those small thank yous. So (after watching some Netflix) instead of writing what I was “supposed to be writing” or other work I was behind on, I decided to thank them back for their thank-yous. I let them know how much it meant to me that they took that extra minute to say thanks, especially after the difficult semester. Several wrote back, sharing surprise that they too could impact me.  One shared they always thought of professors impacting students, they hadn't realized students also impact them.

Much has been written about giving gratitude, showing appreciation, and spreading joy. But perhaps just as important is receiving that gratitude. Not just the quick “thank you” - “you’re welcome” script that has become a habit, but fully receiving it- acknowledging when someone is truly grateful, embracing it, holding it. For me, receiving this gratitude, digesting it, acknowledging it, became regenerative. I  was reminded that as much, and as urgently as we want and need the world to change at a mass scale to save us from destruction, these small moments of finding and naming regenerative care are where it starts.  

Yesterday one of my favorite Substack writers, Anne Helen Petersen’s A Feelings Post, eloquently outlined the importance of feelings. Reading her post, I felt seen - sharing a similar experience of overwhelming feelings getting in the way of what we planned to write. She reminds us that “there are seasons of our lives for strategy and action, seasons for resilience and fortitude. But there are also seasons for feelings.” As Petersen points out, and I experienced first hand, reading about others’ feelings can make us feel seen and validated. When someone shows genuine gratitude towards us, this also makes us feel seen and validated. Inspired by her post - having my own gratitude for it - feeling seen in it - I used that energy to write this. In this ongoing time of pandemic languishing it is the grief, anger, exhaustion, depression, and burnout we often need to feel and acknowledge. But in those moments when gratitude breaks through - let us also acknowledge that - grasp it, fill ourselves with it and radiate it in whatever way we can.

We find ourselves now in the frenzy of the holiday season. A time when we are told to spread comfort and joy, cheer and merriment, while also rushing to get our baking, shopping, decorating, and preparing done. As I write out my holiday cards, I keep the ones from my students visible on my desk - a reminder to take the time to receive gratitude when it’s given to you.  I encourage you to do the same, don’t rush the “you’re welcome” but take the time to receive it, hold on to it, find a way to allow it to regenerate you.  We’re certainly going to need it for whatever comes next.  

For the past handful of years, I’ve bought a Christmas stollen for my mom from the kitchen at my kids' school. Stollen was a Christmas tradition my grandma made each year. After she passed away, it never seemed the same. Years later, my daughters’ school kitchen would have a fundraiser selling baked goods. Surprised to see stollen as an option, I got one for my mom. It is not the same recipe, but it's equally delicious in a new way. So when I didn’t see the usual announcement about Christmas bakery orders, I sent the chef an email asking if he was baking this year. He was not having his usual sale. But for me, he’d make one. He had remembered a thank you card that my mom sent him several years ago.