OPENING LETTER FROM VAL

The Art of Thanking the World

by VAL WHITE

November has always felt like a deep breath between chapters — that pause when the world goes quiet just long enough for us to notice how golden the light has become. The pace slows, but the heart softens. It’s as if the year is whispering, “Look around… you’ve made it this far.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude — not the kind that lives on a list, but the kind that lingers. The kind you can feel in your chest when the kettle sings, or when someone says “I love you” without needing to. The kind that hums beneath the noise of the day, reminding you that beauty still exists, even when life feels messy or uncertain.

For years, I tried to define gratitude as something to achieve — a virtue, a discipline, a thing I had to earn. But lately, I’ve come to see it differently. Gratitude isn’t about striving; it’s about allowing. Allowing the small things to move you. Allowing imperfection to coexist with joy. Allowing yourself to be fully in the moment, even when it’s not the one you planned.

Maybe gratitude is less a practice, and more an art form — one we shape each day with our attention. It lives in the details: the way you set a table, listen to your favourite songs, prepare your grandmother’s thanksgiving dressing, or light a candle for no reason at all. Gratitude is presence turned tangible — beauty offered back to the world in return for all it’s given you.

This month, I want to invite you to create your own rituals of thanks. Reimagine what tradition means in your life. Let gratitude be something you design — through food, through story, through the way you move through your home.

And as we move toward the holidays, may you not rush to the celebration. Stay here, for a moment, in the pause before it all begins — in the hush between the harvest and the glitter. It’s here that gratitude blooms most quietly, and most true.

With warmth and wonder,


Val