I would like to acknowledge the irony of clattering keys beneath my fingertips as I write these words. Pardon it for the time being, if you will.
Writing letters is a sacred practice in my life. My desk becomes a tabernacle, my ink communion wine. All I ask is that today, tonight—wherever time holds you just now—I ask that you humor me, and drink.
Nothing is more terrible than the realization that we endow only a balmily blasé effort on the ones we love. I’ve lost myself in the disaster of knowing precisely where my girlhood best friend summered while having forgotten altogether where the freckles in her eyes catch the light when she’s scheming our next rousing adventure.
Apart from touching palms across cappuccinos, I’ve never felt nearer to another than I do when I’m holding their words in my hands.
And so, I write.
I have a collection of letters littering my life on everything from coffee-ringed napkins to letterpress stationery. I’ve written to everyone from my notional children to my equally theoretical husband to my infinitely more palpable family to my sixth-grade camp counselors. I pour all of my love into letters—to lifelong friends and complete strangers—to those who have shaped my worldview and my love of lemon squares. I have realized that love isn’t so much a matter of quantity—but quality.
I have let myself loose in a simple idea: If you love someone, let them know.
Five or so years ago, I began terming my collection of cursive, “The Letter Project.”
I continued to write, but with far less fervor as time passed on. That decline continued until just this year.
A dear friend of mine passed away. After the smoke faded, as I sat in dumb stillness, I began furiously searching for a scrap of paper with which to write a letter—the only thing I knew to do. I reached for a tired copy of Pride and Prejudice and yanked the folded piece of paper bookmarking where I’d most recently fallen asleep. I began writing her a letter. I told her how much she meant to me. I told her how much I already missed her. I told her how I had always meant to write her while she shared this world. I told her everything I wished I could say—not sprawled on the floor of my bedroom alone, but while sharing in just one more evanescent twilight on the backpacking trip that first brought us together; letting the stars rather than spent tissues litter the space around me.
I began to share my project with friends and family. The process was simple:
1. Reflect
What would you want to say and who would you say it to?
2. Write five letters
Write them by hand!
3. Encourage your recipients to do the same
Five times five times five times five...
Handwritten letters are braille maps of our souls. You can run your fingertips over scrawled indentations and quite literally feel the words, “All my love.”
I wish that I could hand each and every one of you a letter, this very night—but since I can’t, know that you have “All my love” always, and tonight—send yours to someone you love, too.