July 15, 2025

An Editor’s Moment of Gratitude & Delight.

 

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I recently joined my family for a 4th of July family reunion. 

There was food (so much food), and swimming, and laughter, and too many late nights, and campfires with guitars and singing loud enough that the neighbors stopped by.

Kids were running everywhere, barefoot in the woods, and swimsuits were drying on railings and the backs of chairs everywhere you looked. There was talking—the kind of talking you do when you haven’t seen someone in a year, but it feels like no time has passed. A 12-cup coffee maker didn’t cut the mustard, and that machine was put through its paces, man.

There were people I know well, and people I’m just getting to know, and brand new faces too. It was while I was getting to know a girlfriend that a cousin brought along that I had a moment of awe. Of appreciation. Of gratitude and of delight.

As you do, she asked what I did for a living. I explained that I was an editor for Elephant Journal and shared that I edited articles, helped share them, and worked on Elephant’s podcast as well. She paused for a moment, looked right at me, and said: that’s really cool.

And in that moment, I just nodded. Because it is really cool.

I feel honored to have the job of helping people shape and share their stories for the world to see. And I wanted to share with you, our Elephant Writers, just how much we at Elephant enjoy our role and how much we revel in this community and how proud we are of the work we do, the work you do, and what we’re doing together to make this world a more mindful place. So, please keep sharing. Keep writing your stories…

As Waylon reminds us:

Writing and sharing our stories is cathartic. And when we go one step further, and make the shift from seeing how our writing can help our own life to recognizing how our stories can help others, our words alchemize your experience into the world’s most transformative emotion: empathy.

This is writing to #beofbenefit. 

Give yourself a little “boost” and download our Writer’s Guide to Maitri, free >>

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