This Is the Moment

The Words we must Say

This Is the Moment

I am a deeply grateful person and openly make it my business to acknowledge and thank people at every opportunity. A core value in our family is to never miss a moment to give thanks. It comes from our tradition of hakarat hatov which literally means “acknowledging the good.”

But over the years, I’ve watched gratitude turn into a slogan. A cliché. In my field, lecturing on wellbeing for decades, there was always an expert speaker beside me on a conference stage proclaiming the ‘power of gratitude.’ Twenty years ago, while i was writing for O Magazine, gratitude practice was one of Oprah’s central themes. I diligently bought every gratitude journal and promised myself I would “do the work.”
I am embarrassed to admit the pages remain blank. I was never good at answering questions like, “What did my body allow me to do today?” or “Who made my life 1% easier?”

Gratitude became one of those words tossed around so carelessly it lost its edges. Overprescribed in the wellness world, diluted into slogans that,in my clinical view did little for mental health.

But I pivoted 180 degrees this week after listening to a remarkable podcast with author and philanthropist Walter Green. He inspired me to rethink, reshape and take a deeper, more grounded look at the practice of thankfulness and the science beneath it.

Walter Green: This Is the Moment

Walter Green is an American businessman, philanthropist, and author whose work has quietly reshaped how many of us think about gratitude. In his book This Is the Moment, he recounts the year he spent travelling around the world to thank the 44 people who had most influenced his life. It wasn’t a grand experiment or self-help project, but a deeply human pilgrimage, one conversation at a time, honouring the people who shaped him. His intention was simple: to express heartfelt, face-to-face gratitude before time, illness, or circumstance stole the opportunity.
His story is a powerful reminder that gratitude, when expressed directly and personally, becomes an act of profound connection.

Photo by Rosie Kerr on Unsplash

Loss, Privilege, and Saying It While They Are Here

Those of you who follow my weekly pieces will know that I lost my dearest friend of 45 years to MND just two months ago in South Africa. Goodbye My Beloved Friend. And I share with you now yet another immeasurable loss. Less than a month ago, just three days after dancing with her and hugging her tightly at her son’s wedding, my beloved friend died after a courageous year-long battle with pancreatic cancer.

I travelled to Melbourne every month to be with her as she continued to work as an extraordinary social worker as she kept loving, laughing and living with astonishing strength through brutal treatments and repeated hospital admissions. On one of our last days together, I sat at her bedside with my husband, who brings both deep compassion and the rare courage to speak honestly with the dying.

I had the profound privilege of saying everything, of telling her how grateful I am for our friendship, how deeply she shaped her world and touched thousands of lives, and of saying it while she was still here to hear it.

Say It Now

Walter Green’s year-long journey of gratitude inspired what he later called the “Say It Now” movement; a gentle but radical invitation to express appreciation while people are alive to receive it, rather than saving our tributes for eulogies and memorials. At its heart, Say It Now reframes gratitude as an active, relational practice: something offered in real time, with presence, specificity, and courage.

Green shared a powerful story he’d heard from a hospice nurse who spent her days at the bedsides of people in their final weeks. She told him that many dying patients confided the same quiet fear: that their lives hadn’t mattered, that they hadn’t loved enough, contributed enough, or left any real imprint. Yet at their funerals she would hear extraordinary eulogies, stories of devotion, humour, impact, courage and steadfast love. She often found herself in tears, struck by the tragic gap between what people believed about their own lives and what those who loved them actually felt.
How different it might be, she lamented, if we spoke these truths while people were still alive to hear them.

Today, the Say It Now movement reaches thousands of classrooms across multiple countries with simple structures for expressing appreciation to mentors, friends and family, a reminder that gratitude is often most powerful when spoken directly, without delay.

Photo by Josue Escoto on Unsplash

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The Science of Gratitude

Modern neuroscience shows that genuine expressions of gratitude are biologically potent. They activate brain regions linked to reward, bonding and emotional regulation including the prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum and anterior cingulate. Regular gratitude practices have been shown to lower cortisol, reduce inflammatory markers, improve sleep quality and strengthen psychological resilience.

A landmark neuroimaging study from University of California Berkeley demonstrated sustained increases in prefrontal activity weeks after participants engaged in heartfelt gratitude writing. MRI studies from UCLA’s Mindfulness Awareness Research Centre echo these findings, showing heightened activation in the same regions in people who practise gratitude consistently. Early controlled trials by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough similarly found improvements in sleep, mood and inflammatory markers among those who engaged in sincere, specific gratitude practices.

What matters most is authenticity: meaningful gratitude strengthens neural circuits of safety and connection, while forced or performative gratitude has little measurable effect.

The Quiet Power Beneath the Word

Beneath all the clichés, gratitude rests on a deeply grounded neurological truth: the practice works when it is honest and unforced. When we strip away the slogans, what remains is one of the simplest ways to anchor ourselves especially when life feels uncertain.

If this piece resonates with you, I’d love you to share it with someone you’re grateful for.

And if you’d like to continue exploring women’s health, ageing, wellbeing and the deeper meaning-making of midlife and beyond, please subscribe or forward this to a friend who might find comfort or clarity here.

In deep gratitude to you

Warmest regards, Linda