dear stranger
september 17 | weekly warm-up
“We don’t know each other, but…”
Write an letter to a stranger. That stranger could be someone, anyone, who is going through something that you have gone through. Or a stranger, maybe an author or artist, who has had an impact on your life and doesn’t know it. You could write to a stranger who represents views that you disagree with. Or a stranger that caught your attention in passing recently and peaked your curiosity in some way. Choose any stranger for any reason you like and write a letter to them. Consider starting by explaining why you have chosen to write to that particular person on that specific topic.
Have you ever written a letter to a stranger? What were the circumstances? Have you ever wanted to? What circumstances could move you to do such a thing? This week I want to highlight three projects that represent ways that writers have used the art of writing letters to strangers to make a difference in the world. Our exercise this week is to explore this form of expression for ourselves.
Letters to Strangers: How Letter Writing Became an Unexpected Mental Health Aid — “When Diana Chao was 13 she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Growing up just outside LA, as a first-generation Chinese-American, she says she encountered stigma around mental health within her community at the time. Her family's limited experience of the American healthcare system in turn made her diagnosis alienating. She didn’t want to burden anyone with her problems, and so she turned inward and began to write. “Letter writing to no one, yet therefore everyone at once, became my only way to unwind. Through writing I discovered my voice and it became my way of building strength, quietly but persistently,” the 20-year-old mental health advocate and Princeton University student tells me. Her belief in the power of letter writing grew so strong that in 2013 she started Letters To Strangers, a youth-run not for profit organisation for young people.”
Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us — “When Colleen Kinder put out a call for authors to write a letter to a stranger about an unforgettable encounter, she opened the floodgates. The responses—intimate and addictive, all written in the second person—began pouring in. These short, insightful essays by a remarkable cast of writers, including Elizabeth Kolbert, Pico Iyer, Lauren Groff, Gregory Pardlo, Faith Adiele, Maggie Shipstead, Lia Purpura, Kiki Petrosino, and Jamil Jan Kochai, are organized around such themes as Gratitude, Wonder, and Farewell and guide us both across the globe and through the mysteries of human connection. Addressed to a first responder after a storm, a gambler encountered on jury duty, a waiter in Istanbul, a taxi driver in Paris, a roomful of travelers watching reality TV in La Paz, and dozens of others, the pieces are replete with observations about how to live and what we seek, and how a stranger’s loaded glance, shared smile, or question posed can alter the course of our lives.”
The World Needs More Love Letters — “When 24-year-old Hannah Brencher moved to New York after college, she was hit by depression and overwhelming loneliness. One day she felt so alone, she wanted to reach out to someone. And so she put pen to paper and started writing letters. Letters to complete strangers. But these weren't sad letters about how she was feeling. They were happy letters, all about the other person, not her. She would write messages for people to have a "bright day" and tell strangers how brilliant they were, even if they thought no one else had noticed. Brencher began dropping the notes all over New York, in cafes, in library books, in parks and on the subway. It made her feel better, knowing that she might be making somebody's day through just a few short, sweet words. It gave her something to focus on. And so, The World Needs More Love Letters was born.”