A Gratitude Timeline for 2020

As 2020 came to a close, we thought it would be a great exercise to look back at the entire year, specifically through the lens of building a gratitude timeline. There’s no need to go into the details of what made the past year difficult, especially for young people struggling to overcome the difficulties of homelessness. We’ve already talked enough about such things.

With a new year now on the horizon, we want to carry forward the good things – the ways our hearts were moved by the love and generosity of others. And little did we know how fruitful the exercise would be!

Even at the early stages of taking an inventory of anything “gratitude” related from our collection of blog stories this year, we were overwhelmed by seeing post after post of acts of generosity. Stories that we had forgotten once again filled our hearts with warmth. Moments that felt like ages ago were rediscovered to have been just a few months in the past. All in all, there was absolutely no shortage of things to be thankful for – from the smallest acts of kindness to huge gestures of generosity that allowed us to keep our doors open for the most vulnerable in our community.

And now, we move forward with publishing this “Gratitude Timeline” below. In order to keep the length at an appropriate size for a blog post, we’ve limited ourselves to one highlight of gratitude for each month. But as mentioned above, the resulting timeline is almost a disservice to the process behind it. Twelve stories of gratitude don’t even scratch the surface of the deep sense of love we feel in our hearts after looking back on this past year.

Yes, it was a year that was more difficult than many of us remember ever having lived through. But at the same time, we at Covenant House Vancouver can now look back at the year and really appreciate how so many people stood by us and supported us in so many different ways, both big and small.

We encourage you, after exploring the posts below, to continue looking back at our year’s worth of blog stories to see all the little moments that we’re thankful for from 2020. It’s with these moments of gratitude planted in our hearts that we look forward with hope for 2021.