Sending Christmas Cheer to Soldiers Overseas
Guest post by Isabella York
We feel the holiday season before we see it. There’s a skip in our step, a hint of joyousness in people’s voices, and just a general cheeriness that is quite infectious. But for those with a loved one serving in the army, Christmas can be a painful time. When these families are struggling to cope, it can be a great comfort to know that generous programs exist that are giving a semblance of a family Christmas to soldiers as well as their families.
I know that there are thousands of families out there whose home has an empty chair this holiday and who don’t have the resources to stay in contact. I hope that these exceptional charities help these families and let them know how thankful we all are for the service of their soldier.
The idea for this charity came from the lack of cards with a patriotic theme, as well as those which expressed gratitude for military men and women for their work and sacrifices. The goal is to provide cards that allow patriotic Americans to thank their heroes and the military families who play such instrumental roles in their lives. Cards 4 Heroes donates 10% of their proceeds to military-related organizations.
This family-run, non-profit sends care packages and letters to soldiers whose families can’t send letters or packages, or those who do not have any family left. AnySoldier.com provides donors with names and needs of soldiers who would greatly appreciate letters of support and care packages. Troops register with Any Soldier, and when packages are addressed ìAttn: Any Soldier” by donors, volunteer soldiers in one of these troops distribute the letters or packages to soldiers who never receive mail.
Since it stated in 2003, Any Soldier has served over one million US troops and now includes other members of the Armed Forces, creating websites such as AnyMarine.com, AnyAirman.com, AnySailor.com, and AnyCoastGuardsman.com.
In 2007, Specialist Evan Housley noticed that not only do many soldiers receive no mail, those who do get sent care packages receive generic items that do not address needs specific to their gender, location, and a variety of other factors. Evan and his brother Ryan developed Herobox which became the only online system that sends customized packages to deployed soldiers. Herobox offers several ways for Americans to support the troops, from organizing a group to pack and ship HeroBoxes, to donating to HeroBox simply by buying or selling on eBay.
Turning discarded cell phones into prepaid calling minutes for U.S. troops overseas, the Cell phones for Soldiers Program connects soldiers and their families during Christmas. Cell phones for Soldiers sells donated phones to ReCellular, using that profit to buy one hour of talk time for soldiers abroad. Since its inception in 2008, Cell phones for Soldiers has raised $2 M in donations and distributed 500,000 prepaid cards to soldiers overseas. During Christmas, phone calls to loved ones lift the spirits and morale of not only the troops, but of families as well.
Perhaps my favorite charity of the lot is the Freedom Calls Foundation, a wonderful not-for-profit entity that is “Deploying State of the Art Technology to Keep our Troops in Iraq in Touch with Their Families”. Run entirely on public donations, they established Freedom Call Centers at military bases on the front lines. The Foundation provides video conferencing and telephone calls to soldiers and their families for free! This allows families to reconnect with each other on everyday basis, and special occasions such as birthdays and Christmas. Soon, the Foundation will be able to set up video conferencing in military hospitals to enable soldiers to interact with their newborn or sick family members. With the distance being such an obstacle, these services are priceless.
Christmas should be a happy time for families. But those families who have soldiers stationed abroad are instead left with a void which is why these charities are godsends. With the help of these groups, the pain of a loved one’s absence at the Christmas dinner table is at least alleviated by knowledge that he or she, and many others, know that they are loved.
Image courtesy of The U.S. Army
Isabella York is a mother and wife who greatly appreciates the service of our military men and women. Recognizing the importance of her family in her own life and the struggles of friends with soldiers who are overseas during the holidays, she has made it a mission to learn about any and all ways to reach out to service men and women during these times. Along with raising her son, she works for Balsam Hill, a purveyor of Artificial Christmas Trees.
CommentsPhotos, Facebook Like, Links - Try Them Out
Did you happen to notice that there’s something a little more fun and festive in Thankfulfor these days? That’s because we added the ability to upload photos! Try adding some - it makes your journal come to life in a very vivid way.
Also, if you see a post you like in the public stream, just click on the time it was posted and it will take you to a page with that post, the picture (if there is one) and an option to like it on Facebook.
We’re having a lot of fun with these features and hope you do too.
Today, we’re thankful for farmers markets and fall fruit - apples are just spectacular right now.
CommentsLiving Life as a Thank You
About a week ago, I was introduced to one of the authors of the recently-released book, Living Life as a Thank You: The Transformative Power of Daily Gratitude. They’ve been spreading the message of gratitude far and wide with their book - which is right up our alley. We talked to co-author Nina Lesowitz about how the book came to be and here’s what she had to say:
While researching our book, Living Life as a Thank You, we asked dozens of people throughout the United States to clue us into the secret to cultivating gratitude. We heard some powerful stories about people who have been transformed by the power of thankfulness in their lives.
Some came by their enlightenment through an epiphany moment, some through years of training and others by pure serendipity. We learned that saying “thank you” everyday inspires feelings of love, compassion, and hope and can help us transform our fears into courage, our anger into forgiveness, our isolation into belonging and another’s pain into healing. The book includes stories from world-class athletes to business and humanitarian leaders, to cancer patients to ordinary people who took extraordinary action to transform their lives. We also included gratitude practices, a gratitude tool kit, and inspirational blessings and quotes to motivate readers. We are so grateful for the connections we’ve made and would love to connect with the grateful people on thankfulfor.com as well.
Curious? Check out a few of the reviews…
“Co-authors Lesowitz and Sammons demonstrate through life stories, quotes, and tool kits that gratitude can be the key to kicking an addiction, healing the planet, or just staying sane in a traffic jam. A particularly poignant chapter discusses how to find grace and wisdom in good-byes. This compelling book goes beyond Random Acts of Kindness but inspires the same hope and motivation for good. Buy two copies: one for the library and another for yourself.” - Library Journal Starred Review
“In our day and age, the daily practice of gratitude and acceptance is arguably the most important spiritual routine we should all embrace. Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons found an entertaining and wonderful way to make it easy for us to live life as one big thank you!” —Gahl Eden Sasson, author of A Wish Can Change Your Life
Thank you Nina for talking to us about your book. We wish you great success!
Order Living Life as a Thank You: The Transformative Power of Daily Gratitude today.
And make sure to fan them up on Facebook!
CommentsThankful for the In-Between Time
Guest post by Leigh Ann Napier
On Wednesday I was feeling overwhelmed, overtired, and under-rested…as a mom that tends to come with the territory. So when my mom came to visit and asked if she could take our little “angel” home with her for a few days, my hubbie and I eagerly said “Yes”! So she’s off on an adventure at Grandie’s House.
They left Thursday morning around 9 and by 4:30 I was missing her so badly I could hardly stand it.
The day before I was pulling my hair out wanting and NEEDING a break and then after she’d only been away from me less than 8 hours I was ready to have her home again. Not so torn up that I’m not thrilled that she will be with Grandie a couple more days. I NEED those days! That time allows me to get some rest, work on projects that are in need of attention, and enjoy much-needed date nights with my hubbie- without a babysitter curfew or the expense.
You see, I am thankful…OH SO THANKFUL for the joy of extended family that allows me to experience the in-between time. That time between pulling my hair out as a mom and wanting to have her back with all my heart. Thank you Grandie!
As parents we need that in-between time to preserve our sanity, to nourish ourselves, to re-group, and to regain the perspective that yes, being a parent of ANY age child, even an inquisitive, pushing-the-envelope, and always-asking-why 3 (almost 4)-year old, is an AMAZING gift! Yes, it comes with more than its fair share of stress, worry, work, and exhaustion but it is SO completely and overwhelmingly worth every minute of it. I’m so blessed. I’m so thankful. And thanks to Grandie, I can see it all very clearly again!
CommentsThis week’s guest post was written by Leigh Ann Napier, iBloom Life/Marriage Coach. Leigh Ann works with women who “refuse to crash” in their marriages and helps single/engaged women who want to plant seeds for a fruitful, loving & lasting marriage. She provides coaching, encouragement and resources to women and helps them promote intimacy and understanding with their mate.
Have You Read a Good Book Lately?
Guest post by Kim Wierman
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. ~Henry David Thoreau
Books, the real paper kind that you can stick in your handbag or throw in with the beach chair are, I fear, becoming replaced with technology. I saw a newscast the other night about the Ramona series of books by Beverly Cleary and how a mother who loved those books as a child had passed down the love of those characters to her own daughter. The daughter, however, was reading hers on a Kindle! Don’t get me wrong, I am all for new technology. It has opened many doors and makes many books available to us any time, any place – without having a backpack weighing 50lbs. However, there is a warmth and familiarity that comes with holding a real book in your hands and then passing it to someone else’s hands knowing something physical that you have loved and touched is being read and cherished in the same way.
My boys have a book from their childhood that they treasure. It is called, “The Brave Cowboy,” written by Joan Walsh Anglund. It has black and white illustrations with the little boy’s imagination superimposed in red. For example, as he plays cowboy in his room there are Indians outlined in red hiding behind his headboard. A chair straddled backwards has become his trusty horse and we know this from the red illustration. The book was first printed in 1959, the year their dad was born. It was a book from his childhood he wanted to share with his boys. Each night before bed, after reading the story through once, we would go to the inside front and back covers where there were tiny illustrations of cool cowboy and Indian stuff. The boys would hunt for the picture I was describing. It went something like, “find the cactus with three branches” or “find the tomahawk with the pointed end,” and so forth. You can’t recreate that on a screen.
The book was originally out of print so I searched high and low for a copy and found a bookseller with a little shop in Maine who had a copy. I paid $50 for it so my children could have the same vintage of book their father so loved. Since their dad passed away they have each come to me on separate occasions and asked if they could have it for their children someday. They wanted the same book they read as little children. I was pleased to find that since I went on my search for a 1959 edition, they have had another printing and you can get new copies more readily and affordably.
The sharing of a special book with someone you care about is like sharing a piece of yourself. There is something engaging about reading a book someone has lent you and finding they have highlighted or underlined a passage. You can see when they may have turned down a corner to save their place. You can hold a piece of them that meant something and have insight into what meaning they may have taken away from it. You just don’t get that from words on a screen no matter how extraordinary the technology has become.
I would encourage us all to take time to read from real paper books – to feel the texture of its pages and breathe in the scent of the mixture of ink and paper. Pass along a book that has meant something to you to someone you care about, and share the gift of books.
Photo courtesy of Simon Cocks.
Cheryl Nordyke and Kim Wierman are the founders of Waves of Gratitude - a company that exists because of their belief that when life presents you with professional and personal difficulties, a strong foundation of gratitude can help turn those difficulties into opportunities. The owner’s resolve to build a future based on a foundation of gratitude is unwavering. The pair created an online store to give everyone the opportunity to “wear” powerful symbols of gratitude, jewelry and apparel made to personalize the concepts of hope, love, legacy, creativity, optimism, inspiration, confidence and awakening that make everyone beautiful inside and out.
Happy World Gratitude Day!
Last year at this time, we had just launched thankfulfor.com and wrote this piece about World Gratitude Day. How far we’ve come since then - there are thousands more of you posting on our site now, we’ve had dozens of contributors to our blog, we’ve got photos, following, and more. We may not be a Fortune 500, but I’m pretty proud of our growing community.
In honor of this day, tell us what you’re thankful for and please, take the next step and express gratitude to someone in your life. You can say it in person, send a gift, or consider writing a note. As one of our contributors, Art Decker, recently wrote so elegantly on our blog:
…a Wharton School of Business study noted that when people who help someone are thanked in writing, they feel a sense of self-efficacy and social worth. In other words, they feel that their actions have meaning and were valued by the people around them. A written thank you feels so good that people who receive one are more likely to repeat the action for which they were thanked, not just for the person who thanked them, but also for others.
And if you’re thankful for this site, please consider a small donation of support.
We’re so grateful for our growing community, and the amazing things so many of you are doing in the world today. Thank you!
Jen is part of the team behind Thankfulfor, the online gratitude journal community. You can learn more about her here and check out her own personal gratitude journal.
Be a part of Thankfulfor and start your own journal today.
Never Forget
World Trade Center 9/11 Flag
On display at the McCormick Tribune Foundation Freedom Museum
This morning I sat at an airport restaurant, waiting for a breakfast burrito with no less than five televisions on around me. All of them blared with bright colors and sounds of excitement showing thousands of college football fans getting excited to cheer on their teams as the fall football season starts in full force. All of them, except one, which had it’s sound muted, showing live commemorations in NYC with closed captions showing words such as “victims”, “survivors”, “moments of silence” and “never forget”.
Like most of you, I remember the moments of that day with such clarity that it sometimes startles me - mostly because I remember not only the events, but my fear, anxiety and sadness. I watched the live news coverage at work, until my office at AOL, located in Northern VA, was evacuated. The Pentagon was a distance away, but we could see the smoke on our drive home and listened to radio reports the entire way. I didn’t feel safe. It took a while to confirm all my friends on Capitol Hill were ok - and friends in NYC. There’s so much more - we all have our individual memories and stories from that day and the weeks and months that followed.
Today we reflect… I know it’s important to remember that day and how quickly the world can change. But we cannot just feel sadness - we must encourage ourselves to feel gratitude for the force of life that continued throughout that day and in every moment since. Gratitude is an acknowledgment of that life force that allows us to continue - and to thrive, grow, love, create and forgive.
As I sat in that restaurant watching the televisions, part of me was angry that only one of them was tuned in to the commemorations. But then I looked at the thousands of happy fans and the games, which did include small commemorations of their own, and reminded myself, life goes on. People can enjoy their football and have fun on a beautiful September day - it doesn’t mean they won’t have their own private moments and feelings about 9/11. We can all remember in our own way and don’t need to judge each other for it.. that’s part of what makes this country so special - and I’m grateful for that.
Comments
Jen is part of the team behind Thankfulfor, the online gratitude journal community. You can learn more about her here and check out her own personal gratitude journal.Be a part of Thankfulfor and start your own journal today.
Thank You
Opportunities are capricious things. You may come out of one with far more than you expected.
When I began my internship with the wonderful folks at Shiny Heart (those responsible for Thankfulfor.com), I was eager to utilize my design skills outside of a classroom and learn about what goes into creating and promoting a website like this one. These goals were more than met, but my internship also had an unanticipated secondary benefit. I learned about practicing gratitude.
I’ve always been something of a hopeful pessimist: I expected the worst in the hopes that I would be pleasantly surprised. You can imagine that this strategy, besides being oxymoronic, is not the most conducive to finding the good in things. Working here, I learned about gratitude journals and the ways in which they can help you shape a happier, healthier mental outlook. Finding something to be grateful for every day is a challenge (one that I still struggle to meet), but well worth the work. You begin to look beyond what you expect to disappoint you and see instead the good in what you already have. I’ve found that for such a simple exercise, saying “thank you” can be a powerful tool for improving your state of mind.
As I finish my internship here, there are a lot of things for which I’m grateful. I’m thankful for Jen and Frank, who have been wonderful to work for. I’m thankful for the opportunity to participate with this website, and for being able to share my thoughts on this blog. And, of course, I’m thankful for you, who make this website possible (and therefore gave me a job). Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
Image by Philippa Willitts
Tori is a student intern who will be working with the Thankfulfor team over the summer. She is a senior at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she is studying graphic design.
Why Write a Thank You?
Guest post by Art Decker
Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? As the saying goes, a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world could cause a tsunami an ocean away. The idea is that tiny events can trigger something much larger — tiny events have a ripple effect. It’s like a pebble dropping into a pond. The pebble will produce a tiny ripple, but the ripple expands in a series of concentric circles growing ever larger as they move further from their origin.
Gratitude is like that — potentially world-changing.
Gratitude is so important that Tibetan Buddhists have a slogan: “Be grateful to everyone.” By that they mean to be grateful to even (or maybe especially) those people who have brought you strife, because by doing so, those people gave you an opportunity to practice patience. Moreover, a moment of gratitude expressed to such a person can be extremely powerful — because a person who has caused you some problem is the last person who would expect you to say “thank you.” The ripple effect from such a “thank you” is even greater than usual, IF the thank you comes across as truly sincere and not sarcastic.
There are other ways to amplify the ripple effect of a thank you. One way is to put it in writing — handwriting.
As email becomes more common, receiving a handwritten note via snail mail has become an unusual experience. Most of us rarely receive handwritten letters. As a result, a thank you note in the mail, handwritten in ink on a beautiful card, can really touch the person who receives it. It is unexpected, maybe even unnecessary. Because it is so unexpected and unnecessary, and because it involves the extra exertion of obtaining a card and stamps, writing the note, walking it to a mailbox, such a thank you touches the heart of the recipient.
A thank you touches the heart so much that researchers have begun to study the effects of gratitude in the business world. A 2009 study of the hotel industry found that hotel guests are more likely to return to the same hotel if they are thanked for their stay. This year, a Wharton School of Business study noted that when people who help someone are thanked in writing, they feel a sense of self-efficacy and social worth. In other words, they feel that their actions have meaning and were valued by the people around them. A written thank you feels so good that people who receive one are more likely to repeat the action for which they were thanked, not just for the person who thanked them, but also for others.
In addition to touching the heart of the person who receives it, a written thank you says something about the person who sends it. It creates the impression that not only are you a thoughtful person who is capable of a graceful gesture, but also that you are an organized, self-disciplined person. The more uncommon a written thank you note becomes, the stronger the good impression becomes that is made by the person who writes and mails such notes.
How can we incorporate written expressions of gratitude — and the ripple effects that they engender — into our lives? It isn’t hard. Here are a few tips:
- Keep a supply of beautiful notecards, pens, and stamps at your desk or in your briefcase or purse. (I prefer a fountain pen, but any pen that is a pleasure to write with will do.)
- Make a habit of collecting business cards — not only will you build your network of contacts, but you will have an address handy to which to send your thank you note.
- Write a thank you note quite soon after the act for which you are thanking a person — within 24 hours, while the event is still fresh in both your minds.
- Keep your note short and to the point.
- Don’t thank a person to make a good impression, even though you will. Make your thanks utterly sincere.
Remember, small actions such as mailing thank you notes may not feel like a big deal. But like so many small actions that we rarely think about, like any action that touches people’s hearts, this one can change the world.
Image courtesy of flickr member wot nxt / Marcel van Schooten
Art Decker is a division manager with Self Storage Company, which operates a group of websites, including a California self-storage locator. Art leads a busy life, but enjoys meeting new people and interacting with customers as he travels between sites, like from San Francisco to the Los Angeles self-storage.
Happiness is…?
How-to guides to finding happiness seem to be the current trend in popular psychology. Look almost anywhere on the Internet and you will find a dozen experts willing to provide lists, formulae, even flowcharts that illuminate the route to happiness. But for anyone (read: “everyone”) struggling to find it, happiness is an often-elusive concept, not an algebra problem with a step-by-step logical process that yields a quick solution.
I believe we each have our own unique path to happiness, and it’s a path that may change directions a few times as we move through life. But I think a few things are true for everyone.
To be happy we should not only be grateful for the big things—our minds, our lives and the people we choose to share them with—but the little ones as well. The people I’ve known who seem to have the most inner peace are able to find great contentment in the simple and the ordinary, things like a blue sky, a good cup of coffee and a silly conversation with a friend. These little pleasures, and the moments we take to enjoy them, don’t last, but our ability to find joy in life does.
The way to happiness doesn’t come with a map, so we must bumble along as best we can. But if we can enjoy the journey, then we’re already halfway there.
Image by Peter Hartl
Tori is a student intern who will be working with the Thankfulfor team over the summer. She is a senior at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she is studying graphic design.
