Letter Writing

Many of us, at some point in our lives, have kept a journal or used writing in some other type of therapeutic capacity. In doing so, you may have noticed how writing can be an effective tool for processing your feelings by getting them out there on the paper. One way to take this a step further is to try letter writing. When you have feelings directly associated with another person, try writing the person a letter. You can choose whether to send it to them, throw it out, file it away, burn it, tear it up, or put it in a bottle and send it off to sea. Here are three examples from my experience that are great illustrations of this process (identifying information has been modified for privacy). The first example was a young woman who had been working under a supervisor who she felt was incompetent. She wrote a letter to him, explaining how his actions affect her and the work that they do. In the letter, she “let him have it” in ways that she never felt able to do in person. Before writing this letter, she hadn’t been aware of how angry she felt towards him and towards herself as she occasionally felt pressured to follow his lead in situations that made her question her own understanding of how to properly do her job. By getting her feelings and her anger out, she was able to move past many of the situations that had caused her to feel anxious at work and uncertain about herself and her capabilities. Exploring her anger allowed her to separate herself and her work decisions from his poor supervisory abilities in subsequent work experiences. She decided to keep the letter on her computer in case she ever needed to read it again. The second example was a woman who had lost her Aunt the year before. She had been unable to release herself of guilty feelings related to the last time she spoke to her. They had spent the evening with family when she had a disagreement with a cousin. Because she was angry at the time, she said goodbye quickly to her family with a brief hug and a “see ya soon”. When she found out her Aunt had died, she was heartbroken that she hadn’t said goodbye properly, that she hadn’t hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, and said “I love you” which was the norm for their family. In her letter to her Aunt, she expressed her regret and was able to say goodbye to her Aunt in a way that she found more acceptable. She chose to attach her letter to a balloon and release it into the sky. This was a beautiful event and was the step she needed to begin her process of healing. The third example was an older man who was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Although he wanted to tell his wife and adult children so many important things, he was scared that his time to say everything he needed to say would be limited by time spent in treatment, by appropriate timing for such a conversation, and by the emotional nature that would surround these conversations. He wrote letters to them instead, describing in detail how he felt towards them, what they had brought to his life, and the future he dreamed of for each of them. He put these letters in a box and asked his wife to safeguard it until his passing. These letters were so important to his family. They provided his family with comfort, with love, and with an immeasurable amount of insight into the heart and mind of their beloved husband and father. I encourage everyone to write letters, whether they are meant to be read, or meant to be used as a vehicle of externalizing feelings. Letter writing is a powerful tool that can give the writer power to explore relationships, events, and situations in a new way. So grab those pens or laptops and get writing!