I read somewhere recently that getting a piece of real mail (not a bill, not a catalogue, not a credit card offer) triggers a serotonin response. That the simple act of finding something personal in your mailbox can genuinely alter the feeling of your day.
I believe it. I think you do too.
Think about the last time it happened. You were flipping through the usual stack: electric bill, something from the insurance company, a coupon pack you'll never open. And then there it was. Something with your name on it in actual handwriting. You probably stopped right there at the mailbox. You probably read it before you even went back inside.
That pause at the mailbox. That's the whole thing. That's what we've lost and what we keep quietly missing.
I remember going to the mailbox and knowing by the handwriting on the envelope exactly who it was from. Now all we have are the letters we saved in a box and wish we had saved more.
That's why I started Letters from Laura. Every month I write a personal letter from my studio here in Connecticut. I add a recipe card, a seasonal insert, a little list of things I'm loving right now, thrift store finds. I hand-address every envelope, stamp it with a seasonal design, and mail it to subscribers who want something real arriving in their box each month.
Last week, a subscriber sent me a letter back! A real one, four pages, written by hand and mailed to my mailbox. She wrote about her mother, who had been a letter writer her whole life, and about the particular ache of losing someone whose voice you only half-saved. She wished she still had all the letters her mother had written. She said she found Letters from Laura and knew she had to be part of it.
I read her letter twice standing at my own mailbox. Then I went inside and read it again at the kitchen table.
What she described was the same thing the research describes, just without the clinical vocabulary. Mail that someone made for you changes something in the air. A card, a note, a letter with a stamped envelope and a wax seal. These things carry a weight that an email cannot. Not because email is bad, but because a letter required someone to stop, to think specifically about you, to fold a piece of paper and put a stamp on it and walk it to a mailbox. That accumulation of small acts is what you feel when you hold it.
There are more people than you think who are hungry for this. Who grew up with letters arriving and quietly miss them now. Who would stand at the mailbox a little longer if something there was worth it?
The costs $15 a month with shipping included. It will not clutter your inbox. It will not ask you to click anything. It will just show up, in your mailbox, every month, and you will probably stop to read it before you go back inside.
If you've been curious about what it actually feels like to get one of these letters in your mailbox, the best thing I can tell you is: you just have to get one, or gift one to someone who loves letters too.
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