The gratitude you feel privately can still be spoken plainly.

Feeling grateful and saying so are separated by a surprisingly wide gap. People assume the other person must already know, or that putting it into words would be awkward or overdue, so years of appreciation stay entirely internal. The other person, meanwhile, has no access to any of it.

Pick one person and tell them this week, in plain sentences and without waiting for a fitting occasion. Say what they did and what it meant. Being overdue is not a reason to keep waiting.