"It started young for me. I didn't really have anyone to talk with. My father was a sulky, silent brute and I couldn't risk getting yelled at or hit by speaking up. My mother preferred not to hear about turmoil and always told me to think happy thoughts, even as my older sister urged me to image the worst so that whatever did happen to me wouldn't be as bad as I imagined."
"As an adult, I didn't write to angels. I wrote to my across-the-country best friend Jo, because although we had not really known each other while at Brandeis together, she had impulsively written me a letter during a dark time because she was certain I somehow would understand. And I did. those letters created a friendship so intimate and close, we might have lived next door to each other."
Letters began as a private refuge during childhood amid a silent, intimidating father and a mother who dismissed turmoil. Imagined pleas to a guardian angel expressed desires for attention, safety, and acceptance and provided a sense of being heard. Letter-writing continued into adulthood as direct correspondence with a distant friend, Jo, whose impulsive, uncensored responses created an intimate, sustaining friendship. Jo's refusal to censor her pages empowered a decisive exit from a controlling, food-monitoring partner. Across life’s challenges, unsent and personal letters functioned as tools for emotional clarity, validation, and self-understanding in loneliness, toxic relationships, and bereavement.
Read at Psychology Today
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