Write a creative nonfiction piece about something you're grateful for.

Posted in Nonfiction on Jul 26, 2024

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✍️ 69 stories

“The Air in My Lungs” by Bri Crosson

Submitted to Contest #261

Being loved unconditionally is an incredibly marvelous experience. It’s, in fact, quite petrifying. Witnessing the raw vulnerability of another, of yourself…It’s horrifying and challenging. It’s solace. It’s a reminder that you feel safe with this living being, and they feel safe with you. In a world where judgment feels like a detrimental essential event in one’s life, being loved unconditionally is an escape—to flee the world's terrors with the one being who sees you for your unique individuality. Every day, I think of the one who’s made m...

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“Many Challenges, Countless Gratitude” by Marion Cohen

Submitted to Contest #261

Many Challenges, Countless Gratitude It was ten years ago, March 2014, that I happened to feel a small bump on my right breast. At first, I thought it was just a muscle, or a vein, or something else insignificant. Every few hours I checked, and as my fingers stroked that spot, I began to feel a bit more troubled. The next day, a Monday morning, I contacted my gynecologist’s office just to allay my fears, and have it checked out. Upon my docto...

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“Look Who's Here (nonfiction memoir)” by Mr. Vescovi

Submitted to Contest #261

Look Who’s Here Five years ago, I moved to San Francisco to help my sister care for our aging parents, specifically my father, who was suffering from dementia. After he passed, it was time to focus on our eighty-seven-year-old mother. His five-year battle with the debilitating disease had left the three of us feeling defeated and depleted. Helping my mother regain her mental and physical health loomed like hike up a Himalayan peak. And then something magical happened—the first of many mysterious gifts. Ironically, it was spurred by the COVID...

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“Staring Right at Me! ” by María Barbieri

Submitted to Contest #261

We sometimes fail to understand the importance and value of being mentored by respected sources, whether a specific person or more than one. Those very leaders are often right in front of us and play a vital role in our lives yet we fail to notice. Youth is wonderful but the wisdom developed through the ageing process holds greater meaning. I had and have so much to be grateful for but sincerely failed to see the light until I reached my early fifties. I should conduct a survey on this topic in order to know the length of time it takes for t...

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“I am Grateful that I am a Failure” by Tanner Powell

Submitted to Contest #261

I Am Grateful That I Am a Failure I am grateful that I am a failure. I’m writing this from my two-person kitchen table in a flat across the world from my family, jobless and without prospects. I failed out of a school programme that I dragged my wife and dog out here to pursue, where I need to retake a whole course before I can even receive the degree. Money is getting tight to the point that I wonder whether I should even pay the $5 to submit this. Yet, I am grateful that I am a failure. I always admired people who talked about their s...

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“Playing Catch” by Rob Bergman

Submitted to Contest #261

Playing CatchAs American as the Fourth of July and mom’s apple pie is the action of playing catch.I recently bought a new glove. My old mitt is 35 years old at least, and when I took my son to purchase baseball pants for the upcoming season, for the first time ever, I stopped and tried on new gloves. I never felt the need before. My old trusty Rawlings Dale Murphy model fit my hand like a second skin. Every worn spot from the finger hole to the pocket, felt and smelt like home. The padding had worn out long ago, but my heat pen-branded initi...

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“Artistry in Rhythm.” by WM .

Submitted to Contest #261

There’s a bush. It holds my attention every time I open my blinds, always swaying in the direction of the wind. At dawn, when the Sun beams just right, you can see the little ecosystem that calls it home. The birds greet each other with elder songs, butterflies catch wind of their tune, and my four-footed friends find their tempo. Music to my ears and I have a front-row seat. Today was different, I woke up to silence. “That’s weird,” I say, checking my alarm. Maybe I’m up earlier than I thought, I look out the window and can see the reflecti...

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“THE PICKPOCKET AND THE GIGOLO” by Antoine Polgar

Submitted to Contest #261

THE PICKPOCKET AND THE GIGOLOON GRATITUDEAntoine J. PolgarGratitude is a virtue and ingratitude is a vice. The failure to accept misfortune out of gratitude for one’s good fortune is a kind of thievery. Gratitude is illustrated in parallel consolation scenes of the Robert Bresson film The Pickpocket and Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo. Even a loser like Michel, the pickpocket behind bars in Robert Bresson’s film The Pickpocket (1959) had the presence of mind to recognize his good fortune when Jeanne visits him in jail and he says “Oh, Jeanne...

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“Regina” by Cassin Villa-Lobos

Submitted to Contest #261

"It's life's illusions I recall, I really don't know life at all." -Joni Mitchell Regret is a powerful emotion. It can eat you alive, even if it is over the smallest thing. Not having a witty retort to an insult. Not asking that person out. Not saying 'I love you' to the people who matter. I think as a society we could all be saying 'I love you' a little bit more often. Not in a frivolous way, but really saying it to people. Really letting them know how much we think about them in our daily lives. I recently lost someone who was very close t...

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“Smashing Through the Roadblocks” by Bob Faszczewski

Submitted to Contest #261

By confronting a personal health challenge I have broken down roadblocks and made my life far more interesting and fulfilling than I could ever have imagined. I am a 30-year veteran of the often imploding weekly newspaper industry in New Jersey and a retiree finding new excitement along an alternate route in fiction, non-fiction and science fiction authorship. The reason for my relative success stems from something that many would consid...

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“A Life Entered Into” by Anna Killick

Submitted to Contest #261

2am is peaceful. 2am makes no demands. 2am is where if there is any energy to be had, it can be found. But 2am becomes 3am and then 4 am and soon you are looking at the sun poking it’s face through a chink in your curtains. Then you sleep. You sleep so that the day passes, and you don’t have to feel the pain of it. And when you wake, you eat three Weetbix and drink a cup of tea then try to sleep some more. Except your breakfast should be dinner and your dinner should be breakfast and you hardly see your beautiful, hard-working husband who tr...

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“The Bright Light” by Kathleen Shapona

Submitted to Contest #261

I’m grateful when I wake up without pain in the Autumn of my life. From the day we are born, we are aging, and though we never think what we see our elders go through will ever happen to us, surprise, it does. Like a brand new, perfectly running car that is fast and efficient, through time, certain parts start to break down. I am grateful that when something does break down, we live in an age of medical knowledge to cure and heal diseases that our forefathers and mothers did not have. We live longer and healthier than 100 years ago and take ...

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“Gratitude: The Key to Mastery” by Stephanie Canaway

Submitted to Contest #261

Unseen in a less forgiving world is where I sit behind the scenes. Grateful to be out of harm’s way and in a place of safety, hidden from prying eyes and aching hearts. I am a virtual recluse. Anonymous amongst the stars and night sky. Keyboard warrior when the timing is right, my spark ignited by righteousness and blame from the world around me and shamed into action of speaking my truth or in reality, a more watered-down version of it to fit the narrative so as not to stand out.I pick my moments, venturing out of my com...

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“Flunked In” by Sharon Luo

Submitted to Contest #261

The year: 1987. The setting: Chengdu, China. The event: my grandpa forces my mom to give up her dreams of being a writer to pursue math and science, which leads her to flunk her university entrance exams and flunk out of going into her dream field and school.For that, our family will always be grateful. It’s here that you’re probably like, “What the fuck?” but hear me out. Let’s start at the beginning.It’s not that my mom was stupid or dumb or did terribly in the sciences; in fact, it was the opposite. My mom is one of the sha...

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“I Blame the Squirrel” by Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #261

Before mobile phones or computers, back in the Twentieth Century which some people can still remember, a young woman boarded with her half-sister’s family.She paid a pittance to sleep in a postage stamp of a room high up in the attic of the big house but that was okay as she owned few possessions and was unlikely to gather more because she was saving up to own a house herself, though this would take many years if she remained single.The cheapness of the accommodation was not simply due to being a blood relation, but because she frequently he...

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Write a creative nonfiction piece about something you're grateful for.

Submissions are closed

✍️ 69 stories

“The Air in My Lungs” by Bri Crosson

“Many Challenges, Countless Gratitude” by Marion Cohen

“Look Who's Here (nonfiction memoir)” by Mr. Vescovi

“Staring Right at Me! ” by María Barbieri

“I am Grateful that I am a Failure” by Tanner Powell

“Playing Catch” by Rob Bergman

“Artistry in Rhythm.” by WM .

“THE PICKPOCKET AND THE GIGOLO” by Antoine Polgar

“Regina” by Cassin Villa-Lobos

“Smashing Through the Roadblocks” by Bob Faszczewski

“A Life Entered Into” by Anna Killick

“The Bright Light” by Kathleen Shapona

“Gratitude: The Key to Mastery” by Stephanie Canaway

“Flunked In” by Sharon Luo

“I Blame the Squirrel” by Tempest Phoenix Smith

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a story about a character trying to find a way to express their gratitude to someone.

Write a story about a cynic who has been told to start a "gratitude journal," and does so — begrudgingly.

Write a story about an unsung hero.

Write a story in the form of a series of thank you cards.

Contest #261

Enter our weekly contest!

$250

Prize money

303

Contest entries

97

Stories

Win $250 in our short story competition 🏆

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