In December, we welcome the longest night and celebrate the winter solstice as a time of gratitude for darkness, rest, and the profound silence of the night. Expressing thanks is a powerful healing tool, both for ourselves and our planet – one that often gets overlooked amid the relentless tide of negative climate-related news.

So, thank you to everyone out there doing everything within their means to help our precious home. Thank you to the activists standing on the front lines demanding change, and in the same breath, thank you to those who cycle to work, mend their clothes, and diligently remember to recycle.

Thank you for bringing your bags to the supermarket and your refillable water bottles to work. Thank you to those changing laws, adding earth into the policy, and thank you to those funding health over monetary wealth.

Thank you for taking the time to notice the flowers on your doorstep and for hopping, skipping and jumping in the puddles. Thank you for borrowing items from your neighbours and remembering what’s in your fridge.

Thank you for educating yourself on what you can do

Thank you for reading the doom and gloom and still choosing to move forward, for subscribing to positive news, and for educating yourself on what you can do. Thank you to those who create products with nature in mind, thinking in circles, not lines.

Thank you to those learning to fix rather than throw, and thank you to those who take the time to grow our food to nourish ourselves and the bees. Thank you for cooking hearty, warm meals, cutting down on meat, and switching to LEDs and making the most of ChatGPT.

Thank you for reading the labels on packaging and for helping everyone get what they need. Thank you to those who paint utopian visions and those who embrace extremes. Thank you to the researchers exploring new solutions and the historians scouring the past.

Thank you to those who listen to the land, to those changing laws and policies, and to everyone planting trees, cleaning rivers, and capturing beauty through photography, film, writing, song and dance. Thank you to all the things science can’t yet name – those unseen forces that keep us alive. Thank you to all the healers, educators and care-takers of our world.

As we embrace this season of darkness, let us not forget the light that gratitude brings. Thank you.