The reason the financial decline of the U.S. Postal system makes me sad is because I adore handwritten letters.

I fell in love with them accidentally.

My mother started many of the mornings of my youth with letters that are currently pressed into my journals from over the years, with a penmanship so lovely pressed into the pages. She had worked as a secretary for many years and knew shorthand…so the beautiful loops of her handwriting looked like calligraphy. Because I came of age in the 1990s, before the Internet and I went to boarding school, the best and cheapest way to communicate with my friends was through written letters.

This note, which was circulated on Facebook as one written by Phylicia Rashad, made me start thinking about the letters I wrote to myself when I was younger and some of the best letters I’ve ever received. On my writing desk, for instance, is the only letter my father ever sent me, postmarked December 27, 1995.

There is some great wisdom to draw from in these letters, particularly the ones that I wrote as letters to myself. I’ll post a few of them here eventually.

I totally posed like that in my mirror at home in my 20s.

Dear Phylicia,

Romantic involvement distracts you and can blind you to what’s really in front of you. And what really is in front of you? You are. You don’t even know yourself yet. You think you know and you want to assert that you do, now that you’re a certain age, but you don’t. What’s in front of you is a whole world of experiences beyond your imagination. Put yourself, and your growth and development, first. There are long-term repercussions to what you’re doing now. Everything you do, every thought you have, every word you say creates a memory that you will hold in your body. It’s imprinted on you and affects you in subtle ways—ways you are not always aware of. With that in mind, be very conscious and selective.

With high hopes for you,
Phylicia