These self-guided walks encourage reflection and gratitude. The first ‘Grace Trail’ was in Plymouth.

The year 2000 was a difficult time for Anne Jolles.

Her son was in Afghanistan, and as any parent would be, she was worried. She found herself spending time in nature and eventually asked herself five questions:

What am I grateful for?
What do I need to release?
What do I need to accept?
What is my next challenge?
What can I embrace as much as possible?

Thus began the Grace Trail in her Plymouth, Mass. — a unique blend of nature, reflection, hope and joy.

This week’s Joy Beat is celebrating Anne and the resiliency model she pioneered. She joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss how she’s helped so many difficult times and find inner peace. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath: Since I have the expert, did I get that basically right?

Anne Jolles: Actually, there’s a much longer story — and I don’t mean long in that it’ll take me 20 minutes.

Rath: Yeah, let’s start there.

Jolles: So, Grace Trail started in 2000 in my kitchen when I was having a really difficult time in life, and I sort of stumbled. I lost my breath. I lost my balance. And I found myself saying I need to step into a state of grace.

I don’t usually talk that way, but I felt like I was in the middle of a hurricane, and I couldn’t get to the eye of the storm. That’s when I saw five words in the word “grace” — gratitude, release, accept, challenge and embrace. I was like, “Wow. Those are beautiful, healing words.”

Later on that day, I started asking the questions that naturally flowed from them. Every time I asked them, I discovered I felt better. I called my husband at work, and then one night, he came home and said, “Let’s go walk around the block and do grace together.”

That’s when we started walking and talking outside, asking these questions, finding out it was the first time all day anyone had actually listened to us. And the first time all day that we really got to talk about what was most important.

And then, fast forward — my son was in Afghanistan, and he did make it home. I was reading an article about the Appalachian Mountain Trail, and in that article, there was a question that asked, “Who’s hiking the trail?” And the answer was: it’s a whole lot of veterans walking off their war.

I said, “Really? Where do I go to walk off my war?” And that was when I decided I’d make my own trail to walk. I took those five fabulous words and questions, and I went down to the beach here in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I picked up the biggest rocks I could carry, and I wrote, “Gratitude. What are you grateful for?”

I did all five words on five large beach stones, and I put them along a harborside path in Plymouth, put up a map — and fully expected a cease and desist, which never came. Plymouth has only embraced Grace since the moment that trail went in. People have found it, and people have walked it and are walking it. That’s how the Grace Trail actually began.

It’s now called the Plymouth Seaside Grace Trail, and we’ve upgraded those beach stones to 300-pound granite boulders that are engraved with the words and engraved with the questions, and they were placed last week.

This is, like, a major celebration for Grace Trail. The town of Plymouth has graciously embraced Grace since the very first rock went on the trail.

Rath: Wow. And that’s the original one — the original one, in Plymouth — but now, it’s expanded across the country.

Jolles: That’s exactly right. There are now ten licensed trails across the country. What happened was people started calling me and saying, “I want a Grace Trail. How do I get a Grace Trail?” I’ve never self-promoted and gone out to institutions or corporations or anything. They found me, and they found the Grace Trail.

We have two Grace Trails in Connecticut — one at an elementary school, which is amazing. It wraps closely around the school so the kids can access it throughout the day, and they do. There’s two in Wisconsin — one in a state forest, and there’s one in a very intimate neighborhood park, where there are actually 23 hand-forged metal forest animals hidden on this trail. I mean — it’s a great, beautiful little, little park.

There are three Grace Trails in Massachusetts. One is at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. There’s another Grace Trail at the Beth Israel Deaconess Plymouth Hospital that was put in during COVID for the hero staff to walk safely outdoors.

Rath: That was the first one I became familiar with. What’s just amazing — hearing you talk about it, though — is how each of [the trails] reflect particular aspects of their communities.

Jolles: That’s exactly right. We have honored the people who have sought out the licenses to create these Grace Trails. We’ve honored their intentions, and we’ve built them to highlight the location, so each Grace Trail is really very, very different.

Rath: Tell us about some of the people you’ve connected with in the various communities and about their journey. Is there a particular moment that stands out for you?

Jolles: Oh, there’s so many. I have been having so much fun out on the trail here with my microphone and camera saying, “Hey, I’m just wondering — what are you grateful for?” And people love to answer the questions!

I’m meeting veterans, I’m meeting young moms, I’m meeting couples, retired people, people who are grieving. People who are grieving, surprisingly, really open up. I’ve just had the most amazing connection with my community, my hometown community, right here in Plymouth.

Just this past week, it’s been quite overwhelmingly beautiful to get out there and talk with everyone. I’ve run into wedding parties who are walking before they get married — talk about joy! I’ve run into family reunions, church groups, divorce groups, so I love to say that Grace Trail is about the full spectrum of emotions.

Joy is always, I think, what we’re walking towards — hope and joy on the Grace Trail. But it can get messy in the middle, you know, with life’s challenges and twists and turns. And I think this conversation can make people feel a little vulnerable. It’s like, some of the questions can get very personal.

It’s important that people know on the Grace Trail, number one, that grace meets you wherever you are in life because you don’t really have to be on a trail. You can sit at the dinner table at Thanksgiving and talk the Grace Trail and go around and answer these questions.

We’ve had a lot of people say, “I’d love to walk the Grace Trail, but I can’t get to the 10 Grace Trails across the United States.” So we created something called a “Trail in a Box.” It’s, really, the five signs and five questions inside an envelope that we can mail out that people can then take out of the box and hang it wherever they want people to gather.

The other thing is that if people are interested in a physical trail — putting in a permanent physical trail through a license — it’s called a “Custom Trail Kit.” At www.gracetrail.com, there are pictures on the website. If people are interested in building a custom trail, they can reach out to me through the website. There’s a questionnaire.

I hope to have a Grace Trail in every state across the country. It’s a great place to process all that’s going on in life.

If you’d like to nominate someone or something for the Joy Beat, leave us a voicemail at 617-300-BEAT (2328).