The World Needs More Love Letters

I have just discovered moreloveletters.com, thanks to Arielle Lee Bair. It is such a fantastic idea!

When I was growing up, I remember my mam would write letters to me on important days, like leaving primary school, or just if she had something she wanted to say. She would leave them under my duvet for me to find when I went to bed. They talked about how proud she was of me, how much she loved me. It would always give me such an intense feeling of joy and being loved and belonging. Because nothing pierces your heart quite like the written word does it? Writing captures feelings like nothing else can - and by writing I don't mean 140 character posts of condensed information, but long-winded, descriptive accounts of the soul.

I have always been a lover of the written word; fiction books have given me other worlds to escape into and dream, when things are difficult in my own world...or even when they're not. They have taught me about the workings of the emotional world, given me passion, hope and ambition. Their accounts of fear and hardship and pain have helped me to trust that darkness passes, we can get through it and although we may change, we can become a better person because of those experiences.

To find one of these love letters that someone had written for me, would be the most incredible feeling of love, strength, being a part of something. Therefore, I have decided to start writing them myself. To some people it may seem soppy, cliche, cheap, but to a reader it is simply an extension into the real world of the intensity of emotion we can experience when reading.

For a sufferer of mental illness, it is an acknowledgement that it is normal and okay to feel emotions strongly. In depression, I always felt that my emotions didn't belong in the real world; either when in deep pain or even the intensity joy of finally feeling "okay". They were too much, too intense, "abnormal". People don't talk about them, they are hidden away, even though everyone feels them. People would never have seen me as an emotional person, as I never showed it - the irony is that I am highly emotional, but only my journal is witness! To release feelings into the open is to weaken oneself, according to culture, but in reality I believe that making oneself vulnerable is courage and therefore strength. It is taking back control over them, rather than allowing them to control you.

My point is that I would feel so loved and such a sense of belonging to find one of these letters that it would give me hope. How then, can I not try and give that to someone else? Of course I don't know who will find these letters and I can't know if it helped them or they were indifferent. But the likelihood is, that if I keep on doing them, one will mean something to someone. And that is so fulfilling to think that you can so touch the life of someone you don't know and who doesn't know you.