I have always been fascinated with and romanced by letter writing. The first pen-pal I remember, I met the summer that I turned 8. I met a young French girl about my age while on vacation with my family in Washington D.C. Elinore and I wrote letters a few times back and forth, I was always very enchanted by her writing, she wrote of traveling and riding horses, and of course we both wrote of seeing each other again when we were older.  When I made it to France a few years ago, I of course thought of Elinore but no longer had a way to get in touch with her, but I will always have her letters.

Over the years I spent time writing letters to friends and family that moved away, but until college nothing met the enchantment of Elinore’s. During my sophomore year in college while I was at the University of North Texas and my friend (and future husband) was at Baylor, we decided to writer letters. Even though we had e-mail and instant messenger, cell phones and frequent lunch dates, we were both quite committed to letter writing. We wrote mostly because of our love for words…at least at first. A box in our house holds over 100 letters that Brian and I have written to one another, its a really beautiful keepsake of how we have grown over the years.

This month is Letter Writing Month. So I am posting a challenge: Write a letter. Just one. And send it in the mail.

So far this month I have written 4 letters: to my grandmother, an aunt, and 2 children that I know. In each of my letters I challenged the recipient to write a letter to somebody else. So now I am challenging you, get out some notebook paper, or stationary that you never use and write a letter, I think its a 15 minutes well spent.

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