The lost art of writing letters and how can we revive it?

After a hectic, busy week and my last yoga teacher training weekend, I found myself on  Monday morning with more chores and tasks I could do or would like to accomplish. Life goes on when you are away and things are piling up, whether it is paper loads on an office desk, to do list in your head, or laundry loads to wash, dry and fold. I had no choice than to start with the urgent, that is, in this case the things I was late to produce like this blog post, cutting flowers for my son’s classroom and writing my daughter a letter.

You may wonder: ‘’What is her urgency for writing a letter to her daughter? Well, she will leave on a two days field trip to Fort Ross this week as to revisit the past and live the experience of an important part of Northern California history.  All her classmates, the teachers, and parents involved are costuming and role playing. Parents were asked to write to their child’s character a letter for the mail call that is happening around dinner time. My husband is part of the expedition, so I made a point to be part of this adventure by writing the letter to my Miwok ''son'' (yes, she proudly decided to be a boy).

So here I was, needing badly to write a letter while putting myself in role playing mode. I do not write letters by snail mail that much anymore and at first, it was a bit disconcerting to me. And then the ink flooded on my page like our California winter pouring rainfall. What a joy! Because I value this process of experiential learning, I applied myself as much as I did when I was writing letters to my husband when we were dating, some 13 years ago (I know I should not have stop and I know there are no good excuses). So I went out and burned the edge and seal the letter with wax.  

I felt so good! Fist because I applied myself to do something good and did it well. However, there was more than that and still, I can’t find the words to describe it, yet. There is so much more love that can come out of a real letter than writing an email in front of a screen. You start by choosing the paper and the color of pen. Then you start to think. It seems like when putting words on paper, one can bring more attention to it and tends to take more time to choose the right words. When I write emails, it is more out of convenience so it’s quick, erratic sometimes, and to my own disappointment, full of typos. Rarely is this used to express emotions or reflect on my life.

Now I am all excited about my experience and wonder for how long am I going to keep my good intentions about writing more letters? I did that in the past about letters and journaling as well. Soon enough, though, the busy life is knocking at the door and the habit is thrown out the window! Today, I have no answers to provide even though I am supposed to be the one giving tips here. I need your help and comments to find ways to make this letter writing a habit I can keep, so I can write part 2 of this post. Even if you don’t write, I am sure you are good with keeping some habits. How do you do it? What is your leitmotiv? Especially if you tried many time at changing a habit and you finally had a breakthrough; what was that spark that made you a committed person?