For the Love of Writing Letters
I sort of poured my heart out when writing the ‘About’ page, have you gone there to read all of that yet? Lol. I recommend you go there first before reading this very first blog post.
I would love to talk about writing letters! The first letter I’ve ever written in my life was to my dog Shadow after he had passed away. I was 8. It was my only way to cope. Fast forward to middle school, there was a penpal program that connected with a college where each kid was paired up with a college student. My penpal was a Japanese student who was 27 years old, she was my penpal for 2 years. I loved writing long letters to her, as I shared some things with her that I hadn’t with anyone else. I loved reading her letters as well that would sometimes be decorated with washi tapes and small stickers. Middle school was when I really developed a love for letter writing and small handwritten notes, and it was all thanks to having a penpal. I was very heart broken when the program came to an end. In her last letter, she had folded a paper crane for me and shared that she would be graduating soon and was going to go chasing love, following a lover who she knows isn’t good for her to San Francisco. At the time, she probably didn’t have anyone else to tell and thought I’d be the best person to share that with since I’m a kid who probably wouldn’t understand and won’t judge her. Let’s just say, throughout middle school into high school, I continued to write – mostly love letters to my first love, handwritten cards to my close friends and family, and wrote several poems that introduced me to spoken words and performing arts.
Anyway, a fool or not, I thought my Japanese penpal was brave to go chasing love in San Fran and for many years I dreamt of visiting San Fran myself. I was just a poor kid in North Mpls in a public middle school, and people that lived in Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park at the time was considered ‘rich’ to me (if you know, then you know). So visiting San Fran one day felt so far and so impossible, but the day I landed in San Fran as an adult – I thought about my penpal briefly and wished to have had her information to write a letter asking if her love turned out to be enough for the guy that she left Minnesota for. I’ll never know. If only I could hear what happened over a cup of coffee.
Fast forward to late 2023, I was cleaning out my ‘memory box’ and found the paper crane she had folded for me. I had held onto it for 20 years. It made me think of her again after such a long time. It made me think, ‘I should start writing letters again, to anyone…’ just wanting to write and improve my writing just for the heck of it. So February 2024, I found a whole penpal community on Instagram and started penpalling again. Writing letters has become more than just a hobby. It’s a creative outlet, it’s sharing and connecting, and it’s learning about different people from all over the world.
