“When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
One of my favorite books of all time is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The audiobook especially, read by the author, is a sort of balm that I go to when feeling stressed or overwhelmed. One chapter, in particular, always helps ground me.
In this chapter, “The Gift of Strawberries,” Kimmerer writes about the wild strawberries she foraged when she was a young girl. They grew all across her yard, blooming to their fullest, juiciest size in June when she would pick them to enjoy and to share with her family.
Every year, for Father's Day, Kimmerer's mother would make a strawberry shortcake for her dad using berries picked from the fields by Kimmerer and her sister. It would take a day's work to fill two jars with berries, to sort them, remove stubborn bugs and clean them even before preparing the cake.
“It's so funny how the nature of an object—let's say a strawberry or a pair of socks—is so changed by the way it has come into your hands.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
She continues, mentioning the farm down the street that sold strawberries by the quart—plumper, sweeter berries, already cleaned and ready to eat. But there was something missing from these farm-bought berries.
The difference: the foraged strawberries arrived as a gift. The farm strawberries were owned by the strict woman overseeing the children paid a summer allowance to pick them. They were acquired via transaction.
But the wild strawberries owned themselves. They grew for themselves and offered themselves to the world with no strings attached. They grew with the purpose to, eventually, be eaten. The result: joy and surprise for anyone who came across them blooming in a field. A taste that couldn't be bought.
“A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
When I interact with those have given or received Hazelmade objects as gifts, I am always struck by the stories they share. Their eyes light up when they tell me about scooping pomegranate seeds from the shell over the sink in their mother's kitchen. They smile talking about their friend who grows corn. Their hand rests on their chest, remembering the taste of their grandmother's fresh jam.
Each of these memories is a gift of its own. Time spent with a loved one, smells and tastes that could only exist from a slow, deliberate process of care and attention. The small stories we share as we begin to know someone, the little details we reveal like roots spreading deeper into the soil.
I noticed that through receiving these precious gifts of memories and experiences, the recipients wanted to offer something in return. To show their gratitude, they wanted to give a gift of equal weight, something that said, “I see you, and I see what you gave to me.”
“Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts, to receive, and to reciprocate.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
When I say “For the Story Gifters,” this is what I mean. Anyone who has received a gift that is more than an object, more than a transaction or a gesture, but something cherished, something that takes on a life of its own like a wild strawberry patch, spreading and flourishing in the brush.
Gifts like this could be handwritten cards recalling a memory. Jam made with the same family recipe used for generations. A scarf knit from gifted wool. Fresh bouquets grown from gifted seeds.
To Gift the Story is an invitation to resist the mechanical, transactional nature gifting has come to occupy. It's an invitation to view gifting as a practice of connecting with each other, of offering something without expectation.
“A great longing is upon us, to live again in a world made of gifts.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
These days, many of us are feeling increasingly isolated. It's harder to step away from screens, to escape sterile corporate messaging and flashy advertisements. It's harder to feel close to one another, to forge relationships that feel rich and lasting.
When I feel distant from the world, distracted and lost, I return to Kimmerer's strawberries and a world where gifting invites us closer to each other.
Kimmerer gifted me this perspective like a perfectly ripe strawberry, ready to pick, or share, or make into something new. Now, I offer this as a gift to you: find your own way to gift the story. To offer something freely not just in hopes that it will return to you, but because you know it will, in some form of another. And that's what it means to be in relationship with one another. To give and receive, to not take too much, to see the world as a generous exchange with everything and everyone alive to share it.
