A Love Letter May Be the Most Important Thing You Write This Year
By: Marijke Mccandless
Tags: Love Letters, Writing, Love, Relationships, Vulnerability

I’ve been purging as I get ready to move again. This has put me in touch with sentimental boxes where I have stored precious memories: my high school prom corsage, little souvenirs from different trips, honor cords from graduating from college, a teddy bear from my childhood that I forgot about. It was fun to hold these one last time, but I noticed it was not difficult to them put them into the “bury-in-the-backyard” pile. We don’t want to haul them inside a box to yet another house, but we plan to have a little ceremony honoring these items. I hoped to get down to one sentimental box.

At the end of the day what my one sentimental box was filled with was cards and letters. As I touched each one of these — letters from my grandparents who lived overseas, from my parents when I left home, from young high school sweethearts, from my husband of 36 years and from my own children — I could feel the energy still present in them. So. Much. Love.

It made me reflect on our current condition and think how important it is now — this year, especially — to continue the tradition of writing love letters. We are socially isolated connecting as best as we can via zoom calls, but perhaps better is to reach out and touch loved ones with our written words.

“To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.” — Phyllis Theroux

Imagine for a moment traveling to your mail box and finding a physical letter from someone important in your life. Imagine taking that letter into your socially isolated house, sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading the words that someone sat down to write you. Words that are not pithy responses on social media, or carefully crafted arguments, or awkward caught-on-zoom moments, but something else altogether — slowed down, tuned-in words speaking directly about what someone appreciates about you, what someone loves about you.

Now, imagine being the author of those words writing to someone else in your life. Who might need to feel the hug of your words?

Writing from a place of vulnerability and flow

This kind of writing comes from a different source. It comes from slowing down and tuning in to our still center — from feeling our emotional connection to an issue, to a person, to our own self. It comes from a place of vulnerability and flow. Love letters escape the boundaries of the thinking mind, escape the academic culture of structure and the word-limit boundaries of social media to meander through heartfelt territory fearlessly.

Writing a love letter is as much for the writer as it is for the reader. When we allow words from the heart to flow, we escape the inner critic who constantly compares and judges our writing. We let go of perfection and instead write from the heart. A love letter is more than the stream of consciousness writing in our journal, though. A love letter has an intended recipient with whom we hope to communicate and connect.

All of this became apparent to me a couple years ago and continues to move me. One day I sat down to write and realized that I didn’t need to instruct or educate. I didn’t need to quip. I didn’t need to make another list of the best things about x, y or z. I needed to tune in to a deeper place — to be awash with emotion without being swept away. I needed my handwritten words to both honor and connect and to serve as the long embrace that I could not give physically. In short, I needed to write two very different love letters: one to my mother and the other to a neighbor.

Letter to my mother

My mother lives in another state and has had an increasingly difficult couple of years taking on more and more responsibilities in caring for my mentally ailing father. (Earlier this year, she had to move my father into assisted living — with no visitation allowed. This was utter anguish for her.) At the time, though, she was still caring for him and was facing the milestone of turning 80. I wanted to show her I saw how difficult these past years had been, that I was proud of her, and that she still seemed so young and lively.

To my mother, a woman who lived in occupied Holland during World War II, who grew up to be passionate about reading survival stories, I wrote a letter that talked about her love of survival stories as a metaphor for her current difficulties. Her mainsail husband was torn and the ship of their life together was foundering. She faced an endless sea with no guarantee they would find a safe shore together. She relied on strict anti-Alzheimer’s protocols and supplements the way a lost sailor used bare hook lines-hoping for a nibble of hope. Her doldrum days were similarly marked by fatigue and despair. Like that lost sailor appreciating the company of dolphins, she too often managed to find something precious to focus on — a new recipe, a cup of tea, a simple walk.

I told her in my love letter what I saw: that the stories of survival she so loved were a pure reflection of her own heart. She harbored little self-pity instead drawing from a feisty reservoir of inner strength and a deep conviction that she could and would manage whatever was placed before her. She was not only a survivor but a lover of life and I wanted her to know that I saw that in her.

It was the most important thing I wrote that year.

Giving this letter to her that expressed my love and gratitude, while acknowledging her difficult journey, also fulfilled me. I felt like I had shown up for her birthday, notwithstanding the distance. Words bridged the gap. Later, she told me receiving the letter meant everything to her and was a turning point in being my dad’s caregiver. She relaxed. She was in the middle of a survival story and she was doing a helluva job. She kept that handwritten card on her kitchen counter and turned to it again and again for solace and comfort.

Not too long after I wrote to my mother, I discovered my neighbor was facing her own life passages. Her husband had died earlier in the year. Shortly after his death, she embarked on round-the-world travels, then arrived back home to our neighborhood feeling a little unwell to learn she had inoperable Stage IV pancreatic cancer with only months to live.

Letter to a neighbor

In the case of my neighbor, I felt helpless. Imminent death is hard — not something we, as a culture, are comfortable with. I didn’t know what to do or say — even casseroles were not an option. I ran headlong into not being able to “fix” this problem. In facing these truths, I got to see that connecting and communicating with someone during difficult times must not require me to fix the problem. Rather it invited me to radically accept what was in front of me while staying kind, curious, open and loving. It required me to do my best to connect anyway. To simply try.

To my neighbor — a woman I did not know well — I sat down one day and gave all my attention to the space she had carved in my heart. I wrote to her about meeting her at yoga and what a deep comfort it was to know that a like-minded soul lived just across the street. I wrote that I appreciated her enthusiastic and engaged approach to life and loved the connection she had with the community and her extended family. I thanked her for the time she went with our daughter to a Zen, Buddha and the Brain class, even though she was a Christian and the class was far away. I told her I saw her as someone who fit everywhere and made bridges as she went. I mailed it, even though she lived across the street, because her family had indicated she was not accepting visitors and I appreciated they needed uninterrupted time with her. I wrote it by hand and in writing it I felt intimate and connected with her.

To write these letters, I needed to draw from a different writing strength. My usual methods of communicating through structured essay or three-word lines of encouragement were inadequate. I needed to sit quietly, to let the words find me, to allow my writing to flow uninhibited and unstructured — awash in love, while mired in uncertainty. These important moments were asking me — a writer — to write not about them so much as from them — to wade deep in acceptance of the profound difficulties that life sometimes offers.

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Life is full and often sweet, but also precarious and fragile. At any given moment it might be happy or sad, messy or clean, perfect or imperfect. As writer’s we might not be sure how to capture it all — Novel? Memoir? Non-fiction?

My advice: Practice by writing a love letter and let the word tears flow.

Love letter inspiration prompts:

To write a love letter that feels like a warm embrace I’ve discovered I have to let go of the thinking mind and engage the subconscious while tickling the heart. Writing a love letter is a “free-writing” exercise for me. With one person in mind, I follow simple free-writing rules: keep the hand writing, don’t think, don’t edit, don’t filter. I let it all flow. Below are the concepts I consider when writing a love letter. I’ve included them as prompts for you to play with.

The prompts:

Dear ___, I want to write you a letter because…

I appreciate that you…

You make me feel…

I remember when we…

Thank you for…

I know how hard it has been for you…

You are courageous because…

I guarantee that this process will yield tremendous pearls of authentic love to be assembled into a love letter. Enjoy the process of putting your letter in an envelope and mailing it! It just might change their life.

In fact, I wager, it might be the most important thing you write this year.