I have a box on my bookshelf. It’s wooden, nothing special, the kind you might find at a flea market for €5. Inside are maybe forty letters from the past three years.

Every single one feels like treasure.

How it started

My grandmother passed away in 2021, and while sorting through her things, I found a bundle of letters she’d kept since the 1960s. Letters from my grandfather before they married. Letters from her sister. Letters from friends who’d moved away.

They were extraordinary. Not because the writing was beautiful (it wasn’t—my grandfather’s handwriting was atrocious), but because they were so present. You could see the person in every page. The coffee stain. The crossed-out word. The “I’m rambling, aren’t I?” in the margin.

I realized that nobody would ever find that from me. Everything I’d written lived in email servers and text threads. Nothing had weight.

So I bought some stationery and tried writing by hand.

The first letter

It was terrible.

My handwriting had atrophied to near-illegibility after twenty years of typing. I misspelled things I couldn’t autocorrect. The letter took forty minutes and filled one page.

I sent it anyway. To my oldest friend, someone I texted regularly but hadn’t called in months.

She called me three days later. “I cried,” she said. “I don’t know why. It just made me cry.”

That’s when I knew this was different.

What a letter does that messages can’t

There’s something about the investment of a letter. Ten minutes to write. A stamp to buy. A walk to the postbox. Waiting. A real commitment of time and effort.

That investment is part of the message. It says: you’re worth this. Not just a quick tap, not a forwarded meme, but actual minutes of my life dedicated to reaching you specifically.

When you receive a letter, you understand this immediately. Someone sat down, thought about you, and wrote words they couldn’t delete. It arrives as a physical object you can hold, keep, reread.

Texts disappear into the scroll. Letters survive.

The practical stuff

If you’re curious about starting, here’s what I’ve learned:

Stationery matters (a little). Nice paper makes writing feel like an event, not a chore. But don’t overthink it—a €3 notecard set works fine.

Write to specific people. Think of someone before you start, not a generic “friend.” Address them directly. Tell them things you’d tell them if you were sitting together.

Don’t try to be clever. Nobody wants witty aphorisms in a letter. They want you. How you’re doing. What you’re thinking about. The small stuff.

Embrace imperfection. The crossed-out word stays. The messy handwriting stays. That’s the point—it’s human.

Keep a list of addresses. This sounds logistically annoying, and it is, slightly. But worth it.

The unexpected effects

Here’s what I didn’t anticipate:

People write back. Not everyone, but many. And when you get a handwritten letter in return, it’s unreasonably exciting.

It slows you down. You can’t write while multitasking. You can’t write while watching TV. It demands your attention completely.

It changes how you think about people. Writing to someone makes you think about them differently—more carefully, more warmly.

It creates a record. I know what was happening in my friends’ lives three years ago because I have their letters. That’s rare now.

Who to write to

If you don’t know where to start:

  • The friend you text constantly but never really talk to
  • A family member you see at holidays and otherwise don’t connect with
  • Someone going through something hard who might need to feel remembered
  • Your future self (seriously—open in five years)

The box

That box on my shelf keeps growing.

Some letters are long, pages of news and thoughts. Some are postcards with just a sentence or two. Some are from people I see regularly; some are from people I’ve met once.

They’re all proof of something: that someone thought of me. That connections can happen outside the digital stream. That slowness creates depth.

We’ve lost something by making communication instant and effortless. I’m not anti-technology—I love my phone, I text constantly. But there’s a place for this too. For the letter that takes three days to arrive and seventy years to throw away.

If you want to try this, don’t overthink it. Buy some cards. Pick someone you’ve been meaning to connect with. Write three paragraphs about nothing important. Mail it. See what happens.