Thankful Tree (Oversized Poster Printable)

This thankful tree poster helped me focus on the good during a difficult battle with postpartum anxiety and depression. You can find the Thankful Tree print in our shop. It is created to be 24″ x 36″.

I never imagined depression being part of my story, and never fully understood it until I experienced it myself. Even when I experienced it, I refused to recognize it for a long time because it was something I never wanted to be part of my story.

Once I got to a really low place, I realized something had to change if I was going to stay here and be my kid’s mom. I started researching everything possible. Anything that would help me to feel better.

How My Thankful Tree Poster Got Started

Everywhere I read, it seemed I came upon the same lists. Gratitude. Exercise. Healthy food. Taking charge over your thoughts.

And I specifically remember thinking, “none of this is going to help.” I wasn’t necessarily neglecting any of those things, and My postpartum had been going on for months. I began to feel like I would never feel like myself again.

But I had decided I was sticking around, so I was willing to try anything. And while I agree that simply “being grateful” doesn’t heal depression, I do believe that the full rainbow of everything that I tried, really helped a LOT.

Thankful Tree Printable

One of the things that I did, was to write on this Thankful tree every single day. On extra hard days, I would write multiple things.

Gratitude, finding the tender mercies, looking for beauty–however you want to phrase it, really does have a powerful effect on the heart and mind. I began to see little things in my day that were manifestations of God’s love for me.

I chose to frame my poster in a cheap poster frame and write my blessings using dry erase and chalk markers, but when I printed an extra poster for my kids, I just taped it to the wall in our kitchen.

(You can print as a black and white engineer print and color the leaves, or you can print in color as I did here):

I listened to a podcast on how happiness fuels our success in life, and one of the things they mentioned in the podcast was that if you go through the habit of having your children tell you things they are grateful for at the dinner table, you increase their odds by a huge amount that they will be optimists. I thought that was pretty amazing.

You can find the podcast here.

Get the Thankful tree poster here.