It’s “Notewriting Day” at Heartspoken.com.
The first Friday of each month this year will focus on reviving the art of personal notewriting. I consider notewriting to be one of the most powerful connection tools available.
Personal letters and notes usually have a simple purpose such as conveying thanks, news, sympathy, or congratulations, but not always. I recently read a moving and compelling article on the Edutopia website, a resource site for educators. Written by former teacher Elena Aguilar, it expanded my thinking about the purpose a letter can serve.
Teachable moments
Ms. Aguilar was working with a class of high-school-age emerging writers for whom English was their second language and whose writing was years below grade level. One Asian student recounted the heart-breaking story of her father’s brutal treatment years earlier in a Khmer Rouge prison camp in Cambodia. The psychological damage had turned this father into a street-wandering eccentric, yelling to invisible people and intermittently sobbing uncontrollably. The teacher felt her student’s sense of loss at not being able to talk to her father in a meaningful way. Aguilar suggested she write a letter to her father, even if he wouldn’t read it. “You can decide later whether you want to actually give it to him or not.”
Writing to her father seemed to be so therapeutic for this one student that Aguilar wondered if other students might have words and emotions pent up inside they didn’t feel comfortable expressing face-to-face. When she proposed the idea of writing letters to parents or loved ones as a class project, the response was overwhelming.
“They wrote,” Aguilar recalls. “They wrote pages and pages to fathers who had abandoned them, to parents who were in jail, to grandparents in rural villages in foreign countries, to relatives who had died, to older brothers trapped in gangs, to parents who worked long hours or drank too much or just couldn’t understand their emerging teenager.”
The exercise became a regular and popular activity in her classroom. It seemed cathartic for the students, even if they never delivered their letters to the intended recipient. When they chose to share their letters in the classroom, Aguilar reports, “they found commonalities across their languages and backgrounds they hadn’t known existed. Communities were forged through their stories.”
The connection power of a Heartspoken letter
“Communities were forged through their stories.” That sentence touched me deeply as I envisioned this healing connection.
Is there someone to whom you should write a Heartspoken letter? It may be a letter you never mail because that person has died, is absent, or in some way unavailable. Or maybe you will mail it and create a connection you thought was lost forever. Reaching out to a loved one with a handwritten letter might be the best gift you can give yourself this year, even if you never mail it.
Epilogue: Ms. Aguilar heard from her Asian student a few years later when the student was a junior in college. Since that first time in Aguilar’s class, she had written over 500 letters to her father, even though he was still hanging around on street corners, crying and yelling at ghosts of the Khmer Rouge. Inspired by the pain of her childhood and the perspective she gained from writing letters, this student decided to major in South East Asian studies and psychology. “I want to help kids, kids who are like me.”
Have you ever written a letter you never mailed? Tell us about it in the comments area below, or join the conversation on Elizabeth’s Facebook Page.
Such a compelling post … I haven’t completely lost sight of the value of writing a handwritten note. Last year a handwritten card arrived in my mailbox. A friend had sent me a “just because” card — I kept it. Still have it. The time, as much as the few words written, meant so much.
And yes, I know that doesn’t respond to the question you asked … about writing letters and not mailing them. I’ve done that too. I even wrote one note about forgiving someone, wrapped it in a box with pretty paper and a bow, and “gave” it to them as a present one Christmas. The box sits on my bedside table as a reminder that I decided to forgive someone who hurt me … but they never received the note.
Beth, I love both of your comments! Thank you.
I keep many handwritten notes too, and they can bring such joy upon re-reading. I have also started making copies of notes and letters I send. If someone has a strong reaction (good or bad) to something I’ve written, I’ve found it’s good to remind myself what I actually said.
I’ve written loads of letters…the angry ones, I usually don’t mail. Unless they are to my congressman or senator! I have also written many, “I’m proud of you” to my son and daughter-in-law. They get mailed, or hand-delivered. I think the act of writing out feelings can be good therapy. As a writer, I sometimes use my happy and angry feelings in my stories.
Karen, the idea of using your strong feelings in your story-writing is important to remember. Even those who don’t think of themselves as writers might find this extremely worthwhile. Perhaps it can lead to the discovery of a hidden talent!
I totally agree that the “I’m proud of you” letters are so important and so often forgotten. There’s something about seeing that praise in writing and being able to read and re-read it. It makes the message even more powerful
Thanks so much for visiting and commenting.