Letters for Lent: What I learned writing and mailing 40 notes

Valerie SchultzApril 03, 202

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

My friend’s church has initiated a novel Lenten practice, which is to write a letter every day in Lent and mail it: 40 letters in 40 days. The idea is to write something positive to someone important to you—friend or family, mentor or co-worker, or even someone you admire but have never met. Halfway through Lent, I have written to my children, my siblings, old friends, relatives and some folks I admire. I had to buy more stamps.

Old-school letter-writing is up my alley. Like many O.G. writers, I am obsessed with the mail. As the kids say: If you know, you know. In the olden days of freelance writing—the late 1900s as one young person recently said, speaking gingerly as though not to disturb the dust—all of my writing business with magazines and newspapers was conducted through the U.S. mail. I sent a self-addressed, stamped envelope (we insiders called it a SASE) with every submission, which was the acknowledged way to facilitate a reply. Answers from editors could take weeks or months, and they didn’t always come. I used to check the mail daily, stalked the mailman really, ready to pounce on anything that appeared in my own handwriting. It might, although not often, be good news! For the price of two stamps on the SASE, you could ask for your original (rejected) manuscript back. Then you could send it out again. My mail carrier once asked me what my deal was, why I mailed so many things to myself. Maybe all my work made his mailbag heavier.

My mail fixation goes back even further, to my childhood. I was a quiet, nerdy kid who liked corresponding with pen pals. I should have known then that I would be a writer. In high school and college, I had several long-distance romances that depended on the exchange of passionate letters. (Here’s where I get to say: Reader, I married the last one.)

Now my adult kids hardly eve