The Complete Guide to Writing Thank-You Notes
Nancy Huggett
Word Count 2444
If you’re thinking about whether you should write a thank-you note, you probably should. It is never wrong to send a thank-you note. Sometimes, it’s easy. Other times, it’s hard to know where to start. But don’t put it off. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes, and the less appreciative it will appear. Start with something simple. Here are 12 tips that will help you.
1. Start the note with a greeting such as Dear Aunt Mabel or Hola Miguel. Using a greeting is more personal than just starting right into the body of the note.
Dear Cathy. Hello Cathy! Cathy. Cathy my friend. Cathy my dear friend. Oh, Cathy. Hey Cathy. Dearest Cathy. Cathy. Cath. Dear C.
2. Next, state why you are writing the note. It might be obvious, but it is a good way to begin. Here are a few phrases that will help you get your thank-you card message underway:
Thank you so much. I am writing this note to say thank you. Thanks for helping. How can I ever thank you? I’ve been meaning to thank you. I just don’t know how to thank you. I can’t figure out how to thank you. A thousand and one thanks seems paltry. I hope you know how much we appreciate. How much we are grateful for. How much we value. How much. How much. How much…
3. After the salutation, your first sentence should thank them explicitly for the specific gift or act for which you are writing the letter.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for answering your phone when I called unexpectedly, a mess of fear, frustration, and panic, spewing words like stroke and daughter and rare disease and brain surgery. Thank you for abandoning everything, including your anniversary dinner, to drive 1,022.1 kilometers through the night and across a border to the small little hospital perched on the coast of Maine with your own two daughters, your medical knowledge, and a scarf. A blue, silk, Indigenous scarf with my good-luck hummingbirds woven right through.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for being a neurology nurse in a former life. For understanding brains and blocked inner carotid arteries and risks and rare degenerative neurological diseases and MRIs and CT scans and swallow tests and neurologists’ reports.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for being a mother, for knowing that even when they are grown and almost twenty-five, mothering never ends. Thank you for bringing your daughters to lighten the room for my daughter. Best friends creating a cocoon of a party in a little hospital room, looking out over the highway, making laughter bounce off the walls, composing a soundscape to drown out the fear.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for thinking of all the things I couldn’t think of. Thank you for knowing how to modify drinks for a dysphagic diet, for hotwiring a laptop to send medical imaging from the hallway of a small regional hospital in Maine to the inbox of the top neurosurgeon in Boston as we discussed surgery. Thank you for finding a notebook and taking notes, always taking notes, when my fingers and mind were unable to move.
4. Include personal details that will make it meaningful to the recipient.
Dear Cathy, We were invincible in that little hospital! They had never seen anything like us before—my love and advocacy, your knowledge and stamina. Stand back, medical system! My daughter will not die today! My daughter will get the best care for the rarest disease, and you will all make that happen. We were a cyclone, and we kept her alive.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for walking in the fog with your distraught daughters, for feeding me hard-boiled eggs, for consoling my own mother, my husband Dan. For being the calm in the storm.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for translating all the neurosurgical assessments and recommendations from across the continent as Dan and I searched for the best place for surgery and the best outcome. For finalizing a set of questions so that answers could be compared. Thank you for making Dan and me believe we could do this. Thank you for the confidence you lent us until we could find our own.
5. It’s also nice to send a thank-you note to someone who goes beyond the call of duty. These people are often unrecognized, and they’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that someone noticed.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for offering to accompany us, as if travelling to Boston Children’s Hospital for Jessie’s brain surgery were just another backwoods canoe adventure, and of course we would do it together.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for staying in the hospital in Boston with us, for explaining, for keeping watch, for noticing. For noticing. For noticing. I forgot that you were the one who noticed when her language disappeared in the middle of the night after surgery. Lost in the dim light of the recovery room, her eyes frozen in fear, and you the only one aware of the absence. For a split moment, the only one with the devastating knowledge of what had just gone wrong.
6. A thank-you note should be written when specific services or acts of kindness have been performed.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for writing down the details so I didn’t have to. Thank you for sharing them with the world in an updated email. Thank you for saying the unimaginable to everyone waiting for news that I could not bear to speak or write or utter into the world because the truth of it was so devastating. “The surgery went well, but Jessie has had a major stroke. It’s touch and go.” Thank you for putting your own worry aside and making the words work. Every day, a missive translating our anguish and fear into a string of sentences that kept people connected to us.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for letting us be a mess and making sure we ate. Thank you for holding Dan and me and Jessie and the whole world together in that little disaster snow globe that was Boston Children’s Hospital.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for being there so I could sleep, sort of sleep. I am sure 1. Jessie is alive because of you. 2. I am alive because of you. 3. Dan is alive because of you.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for driving home from Boston in a snowstorm. Your cargo two exhausted and broken parents and an incontinent adult child with little movement, less language, and an unknown future. So much driving. You did so much driving.
7. Mention a particular event or item and how you use it.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for your food processor, your kitchen, your quick and creative mind. For all the favorite meals you re-invented for a girl only able to eat soft foods and drink thickened liquids. You invented pizza she could eat. That was amazing. You should go down in top inventions. Inventions that matter. Nobel-prize-worthy inventions. And all the ways we tried to slow the eating down, to promote chewchewchew, chin tuck, swallow. Next little bite. Somehow, she never totally aspirated, didn’t drown, didn’t get an infection. We bought tiny China condiment plates, invented a game with markers, had a song. We tried so many ways to make eating small bites, eating slowly, fun. They never really worked, but we never gave up. And I never had to do it alone. Thank you. For not leaving us alone.
8. Knowing when to send a note of gratitude can be a little tricky. As a rule of thumb, feel free to send a thank-you note whenever the urge strikes you. You can even send more than one. Or if you think it’s too late, it’s never too late. Remember, a late note is better than no note at all!
Dear Cathy, Thank you for answering your phone as my last lifeline when her initiation suddenly returned and all hell broke loose as she railed and flailed and assailed everything in her path, her overloaded brain struggling to process all the sensations assaulting her. Thank you for laughing and listening when I hid the knives, when I backed myself into the cupboard, when I walked out of the house and into the garden, when I clipped my keys on my belt so I didn’t get locked out. When I tried the chaise lounge cushions as a block (didn’t work), when I tried all those things, that didn’t work.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for dropping everything when I just didn’t know. Didn’t know what to do. When the screaming and the hitting and the whirlwind cyclone of her triggered brain exploded in our little old house and you would arrive. You’d drive again, quickly over here to take her for a walk, and she would calm once out of the house, and I would sit for a moment and gather myself. The pieces that were left. How many times did I call and you came? Call and response, call and response, call and response. A dance beyond friendship.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for dancing through your house, leading a little conga line of two through the kitchen, living room, dining room, around and around to “Sheeeri, Sherri baaaby” and the rest of the Four Seasons’ repertoire. For putting those tracks on your phone as the rescue remedy when Jessie’s energy flit and hit the frenetic pace that would tip over into violence unless channeled and spent on the music that she demanded. Her brain hooked on high notes. For having her in your house when you knew the price. For letting me go out the door and wander in the silence of the city streets for an afternoon, unhooked for a moment from the care of her.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for commiserating with all the tracking I had to do. Medication, hydration, violence. Too much to tell anyone else, and no one wanted to hear it anyway. But you did. You witnessed and problem-solved and walked with us through the hurricane, helping us as we shifted, moved, and shimmied to create the eye, that place of calm, that sweet spot. While the world stood outside, watching, you walked into the middle with us and made us feel less alone.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for showing up and showing up and showing up and showing up when everyone else went away. Except my therapist. (And Dan, the only other one who could love Jessie as much, if not more, than myself.)
Dear Cathy, Thank you for coming over every day when I did not even think about that. About distance. Only need. I was so afraid. I was so determined. I was so exhausted.
9. Thank-you notes are also recommended when hospitality has been provided, or in appreciation of generosity or thoughtfulness.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for welcoming us and making us welcome as we tried our luck out in the world. This unsafe world for a body with a brain injury, for a soul with a sensitivity, for a daughter with sudden proclivities to violence. You welcomed us at your table, invited quiet friends, had an exit strategy and a quiet room, served food in small portions, soft foods, foods that would go down easily with a chin tuck and a swallow of water.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for accompanying Jessie to the art studio when she was ready to test the waters of the outside world. Thank you for pouring the paint into small containers, for gently pulling the brush out of her mouth, for shifting pots to the middle of the table before she could slowly dump them to watch the viscous form pools on the mottled table. Thank you for disappearing into the background, but always providing the scaffolding that led her back to herself and the world she wanted to inhabit again.
10. Pull the focus back and think about the future. Suggest future actions or direction.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for taking up your life once again, for putting distance between us, but still holding on. For making friendship the line but not the bind.
Dear Cathy, Thank you for having adventures and telling me about them. Thank you for sinking in quicksand, but not drowning, when hiking with your daughter. For going down the Grand Canyon with your husband and coming back up. For carting bookshelves to Toronto for a niece, for growing tomatoes, for eating out with friends. Thank you for reminding me of the whole world out there and exploring it.
Dearest Cathy, Thank you for hooking me into Wordle so we could share something simple every day. Did you know your name has five letters? Can we keep doing it?
11. Reiterate your thanks. As you begin to close your thank-you note, restate your reason for writing it. Add details to say thanks in a different way.
Dearest Cathy, Thank you for dropping everything to show up, for journeying so far to be present. I know how much you lost in your own life and relationships to companion us through this endless abyss. Thank you for all that you gave up, for the way you corralled your friends into helping us, for coordinating food to be delivered to our door, for getting neighbors and relations to walk with Jessie daily. Your creativity, practicality, persistence, medical knowledge, and willingness to walk with, beside, and sometimes for me, saved Jessie’s life, and kept pointing us toward the future without Pollyanna-ing the present. You held us and created the space for her to begin to heal. I could never quite figure out how to adequately express my gratitude for such great and deep generosity, except to continually say thank you, which I am sure I mumbled in different states of despair or exhaustion.
Dear friend, Here is my thanks, loud. Here is my thanks for saving us. My thanks for your friendship. My thanks for all the gifts of caring you offer the world that sometimes go unnoticed.
My dearest Cathy, I want to be the one, sometime, to hold you and tell you how brilliant you are, how giving, how loved. You are. Loved.
12. For the sign-off or closing, end with your regards. Use what fits your relationship with the recipient.
Yours truly, warmly, with great affection, with deepest thanks and abiding love, with so much gratitude, indebted forever. Love, your grateful friend, gratefully yours, affectionately yours, appreciatively yours, yours, yours. Yours. Nancy
Nancy is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada). Thanks to Firefly Creative, Merritt Writers, and not-the-rodeo poets, she has work in American Literary Review, Citron Review, The Forge, Gone Lawn, Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly. She’s won & been shortlisted for some awards while racking up a gazillion rejections, which hasn't stopped her from working on a collection of lyric essays about caregiving and ambiguous loss.