Why I Started Mailing Letters to Strangers Every Month

People ask me all the time how The Sunday Letters started. The honest answer is that it started the same way most things in my life start — with a feeling I couldn't shake and a question I kept asking myself.

The question was: when was the last time something arrived in your mailbox that wasn't a bill or a package from Amazon? Something that was just... for you. Written by a person, addressed to you specifically, sealed up and sent because someone thought you were worth the effort.

For most of us, the answer is: a long time ago. Maybe a birthday card from a relative. Maybe a postcard from a friend on vacation. But real correspondence — the kind that takes up space on your counter and stays there because you can't quite bring yourself to throw it away — that's basically gone.

I wanted to bring that back. Not in a nostalgic, pretending-it's-1950 kind of way. Just the feeling of opening the mailbox and finding something that made your day slightly better than it was before. Something warm. Something human. Something that reminded you that you are not invisible and somebody, somewhere, sat down and thought about you.

So I started The Sunday Letters. Every month I write a personal letter — real stories, real feelings, the kind of thing I'd want to read on a hard Tuesday. I tuck it in a kraft envelope with a postcard and a sticker and sometimes something small and unexpected. And I send it to people who decided, at some point, that real mail was worth something to them.

What surprised me most was how many people felt the same way. The snail mail subscription world is growing because I don't think we actually wanted to give up real letters — I think we just ran out of people sending them. Joining a monthly letter subscription isn't nostalgic. It's a choice to have something real in your life on a regular basis. Something you hold. Something you keep.

That's what I'm trying to give people. One letter a month. One moment of being seen. One envelope that makes the walk to the mailbox worth it.

I'm really glad you found this place.

— Kristin