rituals in the wild

the lost art of writing to each other

by dimple dhabalia

Something I'm always grateful for is having a friend who writes me letters.  

Not emails. Not texts. Actual letters — handwritten, sealed in an envelope, sent through the mail. Sometimes there's a card tucked inside, or a clipping from a magazine they thought I'd appreciate, or a recipe written in looping cursive on a torn piece of notebook paper.

There's a particular feeling that arises when I open the mailbox and see a handwritten envelope among the bills and catalogues. There's a warmth that starts in my belly and works its way up to my heart and out to the tips of my fingers which tingle with anticipation. As I take the envelope inside, I set down whatever I'm carrying, and tuck into the comfy blue chair in front of the window to settle in. I turn the envelope over, slide my finger beneath the seal, and ease out whatever has been sent.

The ink is sometimes smudged. The lines aren't always straight. There are cross-outs and margin notes and the occasional afterthought squeezed into the bottom of the page. It is entirely, unmistakably hers.

Reading each note takes time in a way that a text never offers. Not because the words are difficult, but because they're inviting me to slow down, to be present, to receive what she took the time to send.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped doing this. Slowing down to be present. To connect through ink and imagination.

With the arrival of email letter writing became quaint. Then texting arrived and email became formal. Then voice memos and disappearing messages and algorithmic feeds — and the idea of sitting down with pen and paper to capture a moment in time, started to feel like an act of eccentricity rather than an act of care.

What we lost in that migration was more than convenience. We lost the anticipation. The particular pleasure of finding something in the mailbox that isn't an obligation to be fulfilled.

We lost the physicality of connection — the weight of paper, the pressure of a hand, the evidence that someone sat down and thought of you long enough to fill a page.

We lost the patience that writing by hand requires, the way it slows your thoughts and asks you to choose your words carefully because you can't unsend them.

We lost the artifact — something tangible that can be held, reread, saved, returned to years later when the person who wrote it is no longer here. .

There is an alchemy that happens when we write a letter — the weight of the pen in our hand, thinking about one person, choosing what to say and how to say it. In this space there is no multitasking. No composing while doing something else. 

And in the space between the sender and receiver, a ritual begins to be woven with a thread of love that runs from the moment pen meets paper to the moment a finger slides beneath envelope flap miles away, days later, knowing that someone chose you. Not with a click, not with a forward, not with a reaction. Not with a read receipt.

It's the act of choosing — to bridge the distance between us one word, one page, one card at a time — that is itself a declaration of sustained presence and care.