MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Candice Davenport recalled that many business owners were hesitant when she and friend Lucila McElroy first approached them with their idea for the Gratitude Graffiti Project in 2012. After all, they were asked to allow passersby to write all over their windows using dry-erase markers. But businesses were eventually won over by the initiative’s premise — that patrons would publicly display what they are thankful for in words and images. And soon their storefronts were covered in handwriting and drawings.
Since then, the Gratitude Graffiti Project has become a veritable institution in Maplewood during the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. It has been adopted in multiple states and in locations as far away as Hong Kong and New Zealand. It even received its own chapter in a book about gratitude, in addition to being featured in numerous news publications.
Now it is celebrating its fifth anniversary, and this year Davenport is grateful for the support that has made the project such a success.
“I’m humbled by it,” Davenport, a public health nurse and educator who works for the Maplewood Health Department, told the News-Record in a Nov. 3 phone interview. “I always have doubt throughout the year, like ‘Oh, should we do this again? I don’t know. Do people want it?’ Then I’ll get that email or I’ll run into someone in town and they’ll say, ‘It was great. You have to do it again.’ This is the reason why I love this town. It’s not anything I did. I’m the tool for making this happen, but I couldn’t do it without the love of this community.”
Maplewood’s well-being was precisely why Davenport and McElroy, a life coach who now lives in France, started the Gratitude Graffiti Project five years ago. Davenport said that the two friends were looking for a way to make their fellow residents happier and healthier through art, though it was not until the public health nurse noticed some window markings that they formulated the idea for the initiative. They thought it was a great concept, she said, because it was simple yet highly therapeutic to write one’s feelings to share with the world.
Making gratitude the centerpiece of the program was an easy choice because being thankful results in better physical and emotional health, Davenport said. And that is not just her opinion; many studies have linked gratitude with wellness. A 2015 study published in the journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice that found that those who reported being grateful on a questionnaire had better moods, better sleep, less fatigue and less heart inflammation than those who did not. A 2014 study in the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology also showed that athletes who expressed thankfulness had high self-esteem, while a 2006 study published in Psychological Science demonstrated that grateful people were more likely to help others.
Davenport certainly hopes people will be inspired to “pay it forward” after writing what they are grateful for, pointing out that people’s thankfulness usually results from others helping them. For instance, she said, someone who wrote something outside a store window could then go inside and start a friendly conversation with a fellow patron. That is the type of behavior that fosters community building, she said.
In general though, Davenport said the Gratitude Graffiti Project is an opportunity for residents to appreciate aspects of their lives that they might take for granted. Even if it is something as simple as getting a good night’s sleep, she said everyone has something to cherish in their lives. Yet people easily forget that, she said, which is why it is important to write it down.
“When you start to do it on a daily basis, you get to realize that life is pretty good,” Davenport said. “We all need a way to stop and reflect on the beauty that’s all around us.”
Having overseen the project for five years now, Davenport has witnessed a lot of powerful messages that still stay with her. She said the first year served as a catharsis for a community still recovering from Superstorm Sandy, with residents writing notes such as “I’m grateful for my neighbors taking me in” and “I’m grateful a tree didn’t fall on my house.” Following the legalization of same-sex marriage, she said one community member wrote, “I’m grateful for being able to marry the person I’ve loved for 20 years.” And while visiting Overlook Hospital, she saw one woman with trembling hands and tears in her eyes write she was grateful simply for her life.
Able Baker owner Julie Pauly said she has also seen many touching messages on the windows of her business since the beginning of the project, including one little girl’s note about being grateful to have spent time with her grandmother before she died. Pauly herself is grateful for the intangible benefits that the initiative offers her bakery, pointing out that it engages customers and thus makes them more likely to stay longer and eventually return.
But even if Able Baker were not positively affected, Pauly said she still would want to participate. It is the perfect antidote to all of the materialism perpetuated by the holiday shopping season, she said.
“It is so refreshing to see people of all ages go back to something that doesn’t have to do with holiday shopping and be grateful for very small or very large, profound things,” Pauly told the News-Record in a Nov. 3 phone interview. “It’s a nice contrast to the retail shopping juggernaut that America has been enmeshed in for a while.”
Simone Anthony-Brown, owner of Express Yourself Studios, agreed that she plans to continue participating in the Gratitude Graffiti Project for the good that it does. Anthony-Brown said there are people around the world who do not have things that others take as a given. Yet the project highlights this and gives people a chance to correct it, she said.
“It’s just a nice, friendly reminder to be thankful for the little things in life and to give back when you can in any way,” Anthony-Brown told the News-Record in a Nov. 3 phone interview.
Anthony-Brown added that Maplewood is an ideal community for the project since its residents are so active and willing to join in townwide initiatives like it. Davenport has certainly found that to be true, but she does not want Maplewood to be the campaign’s main focus. Though Gratitude Graffiti has already spread worldwide, she said her goal is to see it expand to even more places than it is practiced now — including the White House.
In the meantime, Davenport is content knowing she has made a difference locally.
“If we can just put the practice of gratitude into our everyday (lives) as we march into Thanksgiving,” Davenport said, “then I feel like we’ve done our jobs.”
This year, 11 Maplewood businesses are participating in the Gratitude Graffiti Project, each marked by a poster displayed for passersby to see. To write a grateful note on a shop window, just go inside and ask for a marker.