A Mother & Her Soldier Letter Request
This past April, More Love Letters bundled up over 100 love letters to send to the women of the Anchal Project. Check out the progress here on our blog. Thank you times ONE MILLION for all who supported us in donations & letters. We will continue to update on the shipping of the letters through our Facebook and Twitter pages so be sure to follow along…
May has certainly proved to us just how capable she is at playing Tug O’ War with our postage stamps… We adore the mamas we honor on Mother’s Day but we salute and respect the soldiers, past & present, who serve around the world. AND SO… this month we’re taking on both.
We hope you’ll pull out the stationery this May and help us out in bundling up love letters to send overseas to Brandon and to fill the arms of his mother, Sharon.
Brandon’s Story:
Brandon is currently in Basic Training for the Army at a very demanding base and company. It is very hard to keep faith and stay motivated and any mail and words of encouragement mean the world to him and the the rest of the soldiers there. These soldiers go through things that are very physically and emotionally hard so any words of encouragement that he can share with his fellow soldiers would mean the world to them!
Sharon’s Story:
Sharon’s only child Brandon left for the Army recently. it has been very difficult for her to have an empty house. she knows the army will make him a better person but it is hard to have almost no communication besides a letter once a week if she is lucky! it has been very hard to have her only child so far away. she could really used some words of encouragement and support from anyone!
We had originally planned to send a massive amount of love, strength and support to Sharon’s mailbox. Her only child, Brandon, was just sent off to serve and we figured she could use a day brightener during this month devoted to the Mamas.
And then we realized it… Why write love letters to JUST Sharon when we could shower Brandon with support too! For his bravery. For his courage. For his will to make this world a better & safer place. Yes… we agree… we are SO capable of both.
So double up your stationery and Let’s. Get. Going. Troops!
Planning to take on this mission?
Let us know on Twitter & Facebook
FYI: We ALWAYS appreciate blog posts to raise awareness for these letter requests! Get creative. Pull out your glitter, write down your favorite quotes and REMEMBER: We all write love letters differently, own your love letter writing style…we don’t need someone else’s love letter, we need yours.
We also ask that you stay POSITIVE. UPBEAT. & SUPPORTIVE in your letters. Storytelling is A-OK but let’s not dwell on the negative, folks.
Please mail all love letters to any of the following:
Sharon’s Bundle
PO Box 2061,
North Haven, CT 06473
or
Brandon’s Bundle
PO Box 2061,
North Haven, CT 06473
&… if you package them together…
Brandon & Sharon’s Bundle
PO Box 2061,
North Haven, CT 06473
Please postmark your letter(s) by May 24, 2012 to be included in the May Bundles.
(Pst…. we HIGHLY encourage tweet pics & instagrams to @moreloveletters of you with your love letters!)
More Love Letters One-Liners for the Month
- Want to write even more love letters with your campus group or closest friends? Consider adopting a Love Letter Bundle today! More details here.
- Think you + More Love Letters are a Cinderella shoe fit? More Love Letters has just opened up the doors to partnering with other blogs, organizations and stationery crews. If you think your company or blog might be a fit for our site, check out our partnership page today.
- Think you’ve got what it takes to steer your county or your campus in Love Letter Writing? Respond to this email and tell us a bit about yourself…We are on the brink of charging up the More Love Letters Campus & County Chapters and we’d love to keep you in mind!
- Looking for some letter writing in June? More Love Letters will be hosting its VERY FIRST Love Letter Pinning Party in NYC on the night of June 11th, 2012. Mark your calendars and keep your eyes peeled for the invite (coming later this month!)
Happy Love Letter Writing!
Do Not Read Until Graduation Day 2012
This love letter is for the After.
After the last final. After that final slam of the book on the coffee table. After the cashier at the college book store hands you a pathetic pile of pocket change for that very same book you paid triple the price for just a semester ago.
After the indebted thank-you notes to professors who have strung you to a syllabus while steering you towards unexplored potential for the last four years. After the clearing out: the apartment, the cabinets under the sink, the crooks of the office desk, the 6×6 space of a PO Box that sometimes held the rejection letters like a pro. Sometimes carried the best of news to you. The momentous occasions that made you pop, lock and drop it in the mail room. Over a piece of paper. Over your future.
This love letter is for the After.
After the fittings for a gown that has been a symbol for some kind of century that “You’ve made it” and “Congratulations”. After you’ve laughed with friends, wine glasses in your hands and those same graduation gowns on the hangers in the living room, asking out loud, “Who invented this horrible attire? Can we punch that man in the face?”
After you’ve walked the campus close to midnight, biting back tears as you pass through the trees & buildings, pathways & chapels that grew you up. You never skinned your knees in these places but you’ve let your heart in doorways. You’ve found pieces of yourself broken off in the dorms of freshman year. Scattered in the courtyards. Hung high on the scoreboards and draped in the offices of Student Government and Campus Activities.
This love letter is for the After.
After the banquets. Rehearsals. Fiestas. Siestas. After the stage grows quiet and the valedictorian steps up to speak. After you check your phone to find texts from your family sitting proud in the crowd. Mom is hooting loud. Your sister is tearing up in the third row. Grandma has a new dress on.
After you stand up. Walk down the aisle. Up the stairs. Shake the President’s hand. Smile for the snapping of the photo. And walk across the stage into the After.
The After College Life. The After Dorm Life. The After Studying for Finals Until 4AM. The After This… This very thing you called Your World for 4 years, 1,460 days, and however many hours you never thought to count.
This love letter is for the After.
After you’ve cut some things away. After you’ve taped up some boxes you won’t soon open again. After you’ve practiced Goodbye in the mirror until the day it came. Like a tidal wave. Like a flood that left the ends of your dress sopping. Like the words the Older Ones warned us would get us one day… leave us teary-eyed and wondering why SanFrancisco couldn’t lift up her ruffled prom dress and clomp on over to sit beside New York City. Why Chicago couldn’t snap on rollerblades and go skate with Boston for a little while.
After you are here. And he is there. And they went over there. And he just stayed put.
After all of you went separate ways, walking outward with one hand holding a cellphone and the other full of promises to call all the time. After you made Other Kinds of Promises under the same blanket of stars: that you’d do good things. That you’d try for one another. That it wouldn’t be too long til you were clinking cocktail glasses and toasting to promotions. That it would be just a tomorrow away before the Save the Date came in the mail and you’d start prepping to dance at the weddings.
This love letter is for the After.
After the After shakes its hips, stirs its soul, crawls into its cocoon and emerges as Ready. Ready to face the “real world.” Ready grow wings. Ready to rock a shade of red lipstick. Ready to stand outside the boxes of resumes & cover letters to say to the world: This. Is. Me. Ready to be a world shaker & a change maker, a doer & driver. Ready to forget traces of the lines that were once made for coloring inside. Ready to forget the recipes of Normalcy. Ready to embrace the stepping the forward. The next chapters.
Ready to turn your life into a love letter After you put this one down.
Over 100 Love Letters for Anchal
To the MLL Community:
I began the Little Pencil Series off of a quote from Mother Teresa, a woman who proved that if we are going to Love Big in this world then we needed to go one by one.
One child. One meal. One dollar. One love letter.
I’ve watched the community pen thousands of letters to people across the country and the world… people battling with depression & cancer, loneliness & new starts. But I always wondered how we would handle it: the challenge of writing to women with lives so completely different than our own.
I don’t know the bones of the commercial sex worker industry. I’m not sure how fabric would feel on my fingers and freedom would sound after a long, hard life of slavery. There is much I will never be able to take in that has always surrounded the lives of the women of the Anchal Project. However, I know encouragement. I know light. I know how to say, “I am here,” and “I love you, no matter what.” We all can know how to do that and it was so clearly demonstrated with this month’s Bundle.
I am proud to be packaging up over 100 love letters to the women of the Anchal Project. I am humbled to think of the Love Letter Parties hosted for these women. The time spent penning for someone halfway around the world. These love letters will head over seas to be read and cherished by the strong women we’ve all grown closer to in our writing. I am looking forward to bringing testimonies and photos to all you once the women get their letters.
Thank you for joining More Love Letters. Thank you for scripting your heart out for this noble mission.
Best,
Hannah Katy
Woman to Woman: Letter Writing Party for Anchal Bundle
No matter where you are–college, grade school or the “real world”– you’ve got the chance to light the world on fire with your words.
A crazy thought, right? Not for our letter writer Joelle and her friends. Joelle knew her friend Shauntel has a heart for India and used to live and work with a community there. Knowing her heart for the people of India and the More Love Letters’ mission for April, Joelle asked if she would be interested in hosting a night of letter writing.
“She jumped right at the chance,” said Joelle, a letter writer for MLL since the launch in September 2011. “I brought over paper and crafting supplies, and when I arrived, Shauntel had her living room decorated with beautiful things from India. She used one of her saris as a table cloth, brought out Indian drums, a sitar, and had pictures of her time in India running on a slideshow on her laptop. It was great to see pictures of people she had met, and it made it easier to think of words to write to the women of Anchal.”
Joelle and her friends loved the chance to get together and write letters, so much that they are in the works of making this a monthly tradition in the future.
Thank you Joelle, Shauntel, and friends for such beautiful pictures and letters! We are so very blessed and thankful for your involvement!
Pressed on the Heart: Stationery Finds in the World of Letterpress
Elegant, simple and clean.
gg
Letterpress has always caught my eye wherever its used.
From its origins in Chinese woodblock printing to modern day wedding invitations, letterpress has a unique look that is classic and chic. Traditionally letterpress has been reserved for more formal and elegant occasions such as nuptials and soirees, but this textured imprint is the perfect compliment to any sweet little note.
jj
I adore this witty little comment in bold typography from Sweet Harvey. A perfect opening line for a love letter to a stranger or a friend.
A Love Letters Testimony: Akemi & Staci
No better way to round out our Friday than with a testimony from Akemi & Staci, two individuals who received a Love Letter Bundle from us last month!
Keep scripting, friends- we are making quite a mark on the world.
“My good friend Monica put my sister Staci and I on this list, and I can’t begin to express how thankful we are for the kindness of all those strangers! We just lost our last living Grandparent along with our Mother, from cancer 6 months after. It’s been more than difficult to stay positive. But.. so much color, life, and love from the cards that were written.. amazing, beautiful words from people who have never even met us. My sister and I came home to a bundle of absolute love and support and it’s wonderful to look back to all those letters and cards whenever times get rough.. a wonderful reminder of all the good hearts that are out in this big world, even when our roads get dark. This site is life changing..
Thank You All <3″
Akemi & Staci
To the Women of Anchal- Love, Sara
We’ve been buzzing around the blogosphere and finding some great posts on More Love Letters but this one really spoke to our heart. The following entry can be found on the blog of one of our most dedicated letter writers- Sara Brink.
We hope it will inspire you as you sign & seal your own love letters to Anchal in the week ahead!
For their April campaign, More Love Letters is collecting handwritten notes for the women of the Anchal Project, an initiative that provides alternative careers in the textile industry to women who make a living as a commercial sex worker in India, but would like to find a way out. Approximately 18 commercial sex workers are employed part-time as Anchal artisans, and gather on a regular basis to quilt together. The love letters sent in during the month of April will be distributed to these women as they come together to make a change in their lives.
“Life is a beautiful gift. Our most cherished and lasting memories are stitched together with the murky moments, making a quilt of our past that we must display proudly–it shows how far we’ve come and how much strength we have in us to keep going. When we look back on the collection of events that make up our timeline, we should be able to count the blessings and be grateful for the challenges, be grateful for the lessons we have received to carry with us, of the stories that we have to tell. Your story is an incredible one–it should be sewn into every square of the quilts you create so that someone will come to revel in it, so that it will spread into the world as a glorious victory. To me, your story is inspiring and I will carry it with me into the future as a beautiful sense of hope.”
With Love. XOXO
A Letter From the Founder
To the More Love Letters Community,
It was one year ago that I resolved to get up off the floor.
Resolved to bite my bottom lip. Resolved to get stronger, even if I didn’t know what “stronger” might look like at the time. It would involve less crying, certainly. Less wallowing. Less hands in the pockets. Less of a girl who let Depression drape her shoulders and clink like bronze bangles around her wrists.
I remember knowing that the day, The Very Day and All Her Little Hours, would take much courage. For it is easy to cry, to wallow, to sulk- but Lord, it takes arm loads of courage to stand.
Life… she is a pusher. A puller. A gal who brings unexpected party guests into the arena at all hours of the night. Anxiety shows up blowing a horn. Joy sets in her with megaphone. A Break Up comes bustling through the front door and knocks the whole crew of Confidence down. Anger & Jealousy get into a brawl and Happiness cries somewhere off in the corner. One can never tell who Life will show up with, what kind of Mystery will be hanging on her arm with each new day.
Last night was an example of this.
An example of Heartbreak showing up. Unscrewing the screen and slipping through the window. An example of someone who found the courage to call on More Love Letters for her own mother and say it, plain & simple: My mother is hurting. She is broken. Some of her pieces are on the ground. Some of them sit still, scattered in my lap.
She had it in her bones to help her mother, to reassemble the pieces, to be an arm that reaches out and says, “Grab me tightly. I am pulling you up off the floor now.” But some days we need more— an army of sorts to link arms with and walk beside, towards a Tomorrow that holds more promises of laughter from the belly and joy that whispers like the wind into our hair.
And that was you last night. You, with your stamps & stationery & hearts so clearly stapled to your sleeves. You, with ears to hear a cry & a will to search the grounds of your Yesterdays for lessons learned from Broken Hearts.
You scooped them up. You scripted them out. You stuffed them into envelopes and kissed them away to a mailman at the corner.
And I really just want to say this: thank you. Thank you. & thank you. & thank you.
From a girl who decided to get off the floor one year ago today. Thank you. From a girl who knows how much easier it is to slip into the skins of Stronger when you’ve got stands full of people, strangers or not, ready to cheer you on. From a girl who never thought a love letter could change the world until the very day you grabbed your pen and joined her.
Not a day goes by in this crazy mess of letters & love that I don’t tell the air how thankful I am for you. For your elbows that crook into mine. For your time. Your energy. Your passion.
After last night I know it to be true: We’ve got some kind of army and I don’t know that I’ve seen a thing more beautiful before.
Best,
Hannah Katy
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