Giving Thanks
Lessons From Our Elders
A moving collection of wisdom gathered from elders across cultures, exploring what gratitude really means and how it transforms every aspect of life.
What do the oldest, wisest people in the world have in common? Gerald Shaffer spent years asking that question — in conversations with elders from Indigenous communities, from small towns and great cities, from every walk of life. The answer, again and again, was gratitude.
Not the performative gratitude of social media posts. Not the forced positivity of self-help clichés. But a deep, earned, sometimes hard-won appreciation for the gift of being alive — even when life is difficult, even when loss is real, even when the future is uncertain.
Giving Thanks gathers the lessons of those conversations into a book that is part memoir, part philosophy, part practical guide. It is a book for anyone who wants to live more fully — and who suspects that the secret to doing so might lie in the wisdom of those who have lived longest.