Once every two weeks I can be found walking into the local post office.
I grin and push my envelopes I have been carrying through the mail slot, silently wishing that they reach the intended recipient. I cradle the rest of the envelopes and approach the counter, where I receive a familiar greeting from the mail carrier. “Where to this week?” he remarks as I hand over the mail that will be traveling farther than the others.
“Oh, you know The UK, Germany, and Australia, the usual” I simply reply as he adds up the total of the stamps to be purchased. He never questions the art that is prominently displayed on the envelope or the fact that the words ‘sent with love’ are written where I licked it shut.
“They will be out in the mail shortly” he remarks as I turn to leave. I hold the door for a mother struggling under the load of the diaper bag slung over her shoulder and the baby in her arms. She thanks me with a smile, probably the first time her mouth lifted upward that day. I walk to my car with the knowledge that my hands no matter how tiny had made a difference in the world.
More Love Letters is an organization at the heart of how I started to live my life, by writing letters to strangers who are struggling, I was able to overcome my own struggles.
Before last year you couldn’t have paid me to go to the post office. “The practice of mailing letters is dying out” I would have remarked as I changed the conversation to what show I had watched the night before. But in the back of my mind I wasn’t able to shake the memory of the little girl in ruby red slippers skipping excitedly to the mail box to gather what treasures had appeared there almost overnight.
Memories, let me put in perspective how precious those fragments in time have become to me. When I first started on this journey of writing letters to strangers I was just starting to overcome the effects of the catalyst that split my life in two. In August of that year I sustained a concussion, a concussion that wiped many of my memories and preexisting sense of identity clear out the window.
I was struggling to remember what to order at a restaurant, what my favorite movie was, and how words on a page that had previously taken me a matter of minutes to read was now taking me an hour. I was slowly but surely regaining my memories and at this point had begun to discover what my favorite things were again. But I had not regained my love of reading or of life for that matter.
I was left with this bitterness and hatred in my heart for everyone and everything. No matter how hard I tried the words on the page their meanings continued to frustrate me. I would go out and spend my time and money just buying books I had plans to read in the future when the words could make more sense again. On one of these outings to the local Ollies is where I started to regain my life back.
It all started with a book. If you don’t believe that a book can spark a change in the world you haven’t been reading the right ones. The book was titled If you find this letter: a memoir by Hannah Brencher. In summary it details the journey of a girl who longed to make a difference in the world, to be someone to everyone around her. One day this girl sends out into the internet a promise.
If you need a letter, I will write you one no questions asked.
The requests came pouring in from all over the world, from people who needed to remember what it was like to know that someone was thinking about them. From this project sparked the non-profit More Love Letters. I devoured this book was a hunger I no longer thought I had. Within moments of finishing the book I was typing those words into google. Little did I know that the first result on the list would be the place on the internet I would soon call home.
I clicked on the button letter requests and I don’t think my heart or my browser for that matter has left that page since. There were names, people living in other countries believing that they were worthless, that this life held nothing for them and never would. Each name had a different story, a different reason why someone in their life felt they need a letter. A letter of hope, and love that reminded the person there was someone out there thinking of them. That their hands though tiny could change the world and that this world had more to offer them than the empty side of the bed where their loved one used to lay.
These people they had lost more than I ever had.
Karen had just lost the love of her life to cancer and didn’t think she could go on living in a love where he wasn’t there.
Leslie was a victim of sex trafficking and trying to gain a life outside of her past.
Jacob was living on the streets and addicted to drugs when his old high school teacher took him in. He had just got out of rehab and was scared he was going to go down that path of destruction again.
Lillian was and still is struggling with Bulimia and hates what she sees when she looks in the mirror.
Kinsley was being bullied incessantly by her peers and started to believe their lies.
These people needed someone, and I decided I would be one of those people who reminded them they weren’t alone. I picked out a card, specifically for each of these people and wrote, the gritty stuff the stuff everybody is scared to say but needs to be said.
From that moment on I started to grow, I found myself pouring my heart out on the page for people I didn’t know. And that reflected into my life as well as I initiated conversations with strangers walking down the street, people with a story of loss and heartbreak that needed to be told it was going to be okay.
I felt the bitterness that had grown in my heart fade away and my laugh gracing my lips once again. I was no longer the girl whose number of memories locked away could be counted on her hand, nor was I was the girl who could always be found with a book attached to her hand. I was someone else entirely. Are those girls still within me? No doubt, but this girl who she has become, we will just have to wait and see who she is. I don’t think she even knows yet.
But More Love Letters helped me find my way back to who I am. By writing letters to strangers a part of me found what I had lost. I still write to strangers because everyone needs a reminder that someone else is thinking about them. That they are worthy of love and all this life has to offer.
