In our family, the presents we gave one another were almost always homemade. I thought that was the definition of a gift: something you made for someone else. A gift economy – goods and services not purchased but received as gifts from the earth. The abundance of strawberries felt like and still feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid, nor laboured for them. Well, sometimes I labour for them. They could be called natural resources or ecosystem services, but really, they are gifts.

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When we speak of berries or apples or beans as gifts and not as goods or services or commodities, the whole relationship changes. Gratitude emerges, or at least, I hope it does. Gratitude is much more than thank you. It is a thread that fosters relationships.

Gratitude creates a sense of abundance. When feeling grateful, we take only what we need out of respect for generosity of the one who is giving. Whether that is strawberries, a friend sharing their time to listen to us, or a parent driving you somewhere you want to go.

If our first responsibility for the gift is gratitude, then the second is reciprocity: to give the gift in return. What could I give in return for their generosity? This is a beautiful question to ask yourself. What if we thought that everything we consume is a gift from Mother Earth?

I think we could take better care of what we are given. Mistreating a gift has consequences. How we think influences how we act, and how we act has an impact. If we view strawberries as objects or property, they can be exploited as a commodity. There are consequences for this.

I was taught to reciprocate berries with a gift of my own. It might be that I scatter their seeds or plant the little ones back in the ground so they will flourish and provide berries next Strawberry Moon. No person taught us this, the strawberries showed us. Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy. The gifts have the unique ability to multiply with every exchange. A truly renewable resource.