I can't thank you enough for your below gift suggestion - I did this for my wife, her birthday was yesterday, there were many tears as you also said, and she said multiple times throughout the day that it was the best gift that she has ever received in her life.
I just wanted to let you know that your post had an impact, thanks for taking the time to write it - although I would expect nothing less from a fellow former denizen of Stanford Hall!
For those who are interested, below is the text of the original post, I couldn't find the link for it.
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$9.
She (like so many of us, I'd imagine) has this terrible, destructive defect where her brain continually cycles through all of the moments where she believes she's failed. Where she's not been her best, where she's not given enough, not coped, not cared, not loved. She grades herself on such an obnoxiously impossible curve and it causes such internal angst and pain. And all the while it is such a distorted picture she paints and stares at because she never gives credence to all the ways that she honors her family, her friends, her work, and most importantly, herself.
So a few years ago, on January 1st, I started jotting down just one observation each day where I felt she had succeeded in even the smallest of ways. Where she made me smile or laugh, where she kicked ass as a mom or at her job or where I simply enjoyed something she said or did or was. It could be as small as a text she sent, a meal she cooked, a song we sang together in the car, her remembering our kid's permission slip. Sometimes we just both had shitty days but being with her through it made it a little less shitty and so I told her that. Sometimes she frankly didn't do anything great and just fucking annoyed me from sun up to sun down but I still liked having her around and so I told her that too (but that was rare).
I bought a simple Annual Daily Planner book like one would use for calendars or tasks and just wrote the note on each day's page. No frills. No extras. Not every note was breathtaking or even really that great. My handwriting generally sucked.
But she ugly cried when she opened it and she read every single entry over and over. And I truly believe what hit her hardest was that she had no memory or no perception of so much of the light she had brought for 51 weeks. Being a mom, being a parent, being a partner, being a friend, being a person is tough. We can't help but be too often too hard on ourselves. Sometimes a little reminder that we're not all that bad can go a long way.
So obviously this in no way helpful for this year, but if any of you are looking for the long play for Christmas '22, all you need is nine bucks and open eyes and ears. That person you love will do all the work.