Garden Bay resident Krystin Clark didn’t set out to write a book; she simply set out on a curious experiment dubbed The Grateful Jar Project. The premise was simple. Would life be any different if she committed to focusing on gratitude every day, for a year, no matter what?
Having participated in various means of gratitude practices over the years, she knew the benefits but recognized that “a daily gratitude practice was like a student driver learning to drive a standard transmission. It starts out with great hope and gusto, followed by many awkward, seizing lunges and the inevitable embarrassing stall.”
On Winter Solstice, Dec. 21, 2015, Clark committed to a year of finding three things from each day she was grateful for. Every day for one whole year, she would write down three things she was grateful for, and place the paper in her Grateful Jar. Why Winter Solstice? She saw her commitment to The Grateful Jar Project as her own personal investment in the return of the light amid the annual descent into darkness.
Clark hadn’t set out to write a book; she was simply a woman on a soulful journey with a jar. But having shared her experiment among her peers on social media, and repeatedly receiving enthusiastic feedback about her writing, she started to realize, “This is a book!”
The Grateful Jar Project doesn’t philosophize an attitude of gratitude. Moving beyond theory, it vulnerably demonstrates the navigation of a painful year, a year that included the author’s long-term employment abruptly coming to an end, the fallout from some questionable personal choices, and being caught in the Sunshine Coast rental housing crisis for six months. The reader joins Clark and her Little Roommates (affectionately dubbed the Ocean of Estrogen) in a turbulent (and sometimes hilarious) year of dramatic change and profound redirection.
The Grateful Jar Project is available on Amazon and locally at Talewind Books in Sechelt, and EarthFair Store in Madeira Park.
There will be a celebratory book launch at the Sechelt Arts Centre on Thursday, Oct. 4, at 6:30 p.m. for an evening of readings, appetizers and mingling. Admission is free.
