Love Your Letters!

I saw a kind and gentle young lady on The Jeff Probst Show the other day, and she impressed me.  So much so I decided to check out her website and maybe join her cause.  Then I went to her blog site to find out more about this amazing person and read this:

"Hi.  My name is Hannah Brencher. I am 24 years old but I harbor a soul that is old & thick like the hands of Navajo grandmothers that swoop upward by the fire at night." She's in the business of broken hearts - her words.

Wow.

Hannah's cause is love letters.  That's right.  She likes writing love letters.  To strangers.  

She began writing them in 2010, when she moved to New York.  Feeling lonely and depressed, Hannah decided to pour out her feelings in letters and left them all over the city.  Addressed to no one in particular, she believed that every letter was meant for someone, and it was up to them to pick it up and read it.  It didn't take long for Hannah to realize what valuable gifts she was giving to these people, people she never met, and New York paid her generosity back by asking for more.  

So she started The World Needs More Love Letters and recruited her friends to help her write more love letters.  Soon she was getting requests from all over the world for her letters.  People everywhere need love, and love reading about how much they are loved, even when total strangers tell them they are loved.

Love is love.  And it makes the world go round.

I've always enjoyed giving people things.  Giving on the sly is especially invigorating; I'll leave a coin on the sidewalk where I know children like to play.  I'll smile at passersby when walking around town.  I'll crack open walnuts and leave them out for squirrels, or hang grapes out in the bushes for the birds.  I love to buy things for the neighbors and leave them on their porches.  Just to confuse them. 

The best gift I've found is greeting people when they walk in the door as if they were cute little puppies.  "Richard!" I squeal with a smile on my face. "Diana!" People love it because it makes them feel welcome and appreciated.  No matter how bad they feel before you greet them like that, they always walk away with a smile on their own face.  You should try it, it's great!

When Hannah told Jeff Probst that she started a web site because of the rising popularity of love-letter writing, my inner giver became intrigued and I decided to try this letter writing gig, so I looked into her site, www.moreloveletters.com to learn more. Then I signed up to receive love letter alerts, and checked out her starter kit to find out what I needed to do.  

It seems I'm better at giving things than writing love prose.  Practice makes perfect, though, so I'm going to gather my stationery and write.  This is fantastic - I get to use my pretty stationery - another good reason to write love letters!  

Hannah Brencher is changing the world one letter at a time, and I want to be a part of that.  Who knows, this might be my next favorite hobby!