November 1, 2022

On this day seven years ago, I started a hashtag on Instagram. I posted about it every day for the entire month of November. I asked everyone I knew to talk about it, too. It felt silly but necessary, to explore the who and what and how and what if behind all of those thankful lists I often read and scrolled through and even wrote myself this time of year. Seven years later, #getaftergrateful has over 90,000 posts on Instagram. I’m no longer in the mix, tagging and talking about tenacity and thankfulness. I’m so far removed from that world, in fact, that I forgot about it until an old friend texted me today. Looks like the pebble that fell from my heart and into the internet all of those years ago caused a ripple that met me all over again. I needed that.