Remember the last time you held a handwritten letter? What happens when many voices come together in a single letter? This month, I revisit the forgotten magic of handwritten letters and extend an invitation to a small experiment: the collective letter. We will also meet twice this month for our regular gatherings.
Mid-July, during one of the Milan’s roaring heat waves, I sat down on the floor facing our home studio bookcase and opened all its doors—a purge was overdue. A hateful task, no doubt. It took me two days to empty the space of useless items and faded documents. I threw out two boxes of paper and old receipts. Most of the time, though, I was reading scraps from half-finished notebooks, sorting business cards worth keeping (?) in 2025, and looking at decade-old printed pictures.
Then I found it. I didn’t even remember it existed.
A handwritten letter.
A Macedonian friend of mine was telling me about her little baby girl, in November 2008. Afterwards, I went hunting for more letters, but I realized hers was the last handwritten one I’d received since then. A couple of postcards from a Dutch friend turned up—but that was it.
I kept asking myself what had happened to cut off the flow of letters and postcards so suddenly. Emails? No—we’d had email since 2000, and it surely reduced the volume and frequency of handwritten mail, but it didn’t kill it overnight.
Then it dawned on me: Facebook happened.
I opened my profile in the fall of 2007, but the real surge came a couple of years later, when even the old lady next door sent me a friend request. Facebook was the final blow to everything analogical: time, process, outcome.
A couple of weeks before that studio purge, while on holiday, my son befriended another boy his age. They played together, bonded naturally. When his mom asked permission to keep them in touch via an instant messaging app, I saw instead a chance for my son to experience the magic of having a pen pal. For a moment, this woman my age looked shocked—anachronism rarely goes unnoticed—but then, after a heartfelt laugh, she agreed.
The notion of handwritten letters was knocking on my door in the summer of 2025.
It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of how amazing it was to send and receive a handwritten letter. I’ve missed the ritual dearly, but each time dismissed the idea as ridiculous, outdated.
Back in the nineties, I was a moderate sender and receiver of letters. Friends, pen pals, lovers—all found their way into my mailbox. An unknown address was nothing more than a name and a number you couldn’t look up on a screen. Every home had—usually next to the phone—a leather-bound address book, its pages neatly filled with the names and addresses of friends and relatives, near and far. It was a household necessity, a quiet proof of the richness of a family’s social life.
On a couple of occasions in the late eighties, I received books. I don’t remember exactly how it worked, but my parents also received a letter with an unknown address, instructing them to send a children’s book. It was a chain that had been going for years. You never knew when it would “hit” you again. My parents were less enthusiastic—the expense of bigger, heavier envelopes was not trivial—but for me those unexpected deliveries were a treasure. I kept the envelopes for years as relics: containers of pure, unfiltered joy.
Letter writing was, in truth, a whole choreography of presence.
It was about the body, the ritual, the longing and excitment it created between two people.
There was the physical effort of it. Back then, everything about it asked something of the body. You wrote by hand, often twice—first in a draft, then again on clean paper. Your wrist ached, your fingers smudged with ink. If you wanted to add a photo, you first had to bring the roll to a photo lab, wait days for development, and then choose which image to slip into the envelope. And at the end of it all, you carried the letter yourself to the post office, waited in line, endured the clerk's glance as the letter disappeared from your hands, and was weighed on a scale.
There was care, too—an almost ceremonial attention. Choosing the pen that felt right that day, the paper thick enough to hold your thoughts, sometimes even perfumed pages that betrayed a teenage sense of drama. You had to think not only of what to write but of how much—a letter has limits, a page has edges. The envelope had to be weighed in your palm, the address double-checked, your own return address added neatly in the corner.
And then there was the mental theater of it all—the invisible stage on which everything unfolded. The long, drawn-out waiting, the silence between sending and receiving. Days, weeks, sometimes months without knowing whether it had arrived, whether it touched the person the way you hoped. There were no instant clarifications, no quick emojis to soften a phrase.
When a reply did come, your nervous system slowed down to decipher someone else’s handwriting, letting imagination fill the gaps between the curves of their letters. As you read, you could almost hear their voice. Sometimes you would pause before opening the envelope, savoring the moment of not knowing yet. The envelope itself was part of the story: the faint creases from its journey, the impatience in your fingers palpating its thickness as you tore it open, the rush of adrenaline when an unexpected flutter of small papers or photographs, tucked inside like secret companions, fell into your lap—making the letter feel alive.
Perhaps that’s why, when I suggested to my son’s new friend’s mother that the boys try writing letters, I felt something stir in me. It was like brushing against a nearly forgotten ritual—proof that connection can still move by hand, on paper, across distance and time. Watching my son carefully shape his words, knowing they would travel folded in an envelope, I realized what I wanted for him was more than just correspondence. I wanted him to taste the slow magic of letters—their way of making you imagine, of leaving you suspended in not knowing, of teaching you the sweetness of longing until the reply finally arrives.
Maybe that’s why, years later, the idea returns to me—not as nostalgia, but as possibility and hope. If a single handwritten letter could carry such a presence, how much could we regain if we let it return—even in new, digital forms?
It can look intimidating at first.
In a way, having a pen pal is a long-term commitment. It also raises some privacy and safety concerns—the world has changed drastically in the last fifteen years. I spent some time researching what today’s technology can offer in terms of sending a handwritten letter effortlessly and safely, without losing the personal touch and the excitement. I almost got carried away with the possibilities, but then I reminded myself of the promise I made recently: start small, the smallest possible.
So maybe this can take shape in two ways.
Firstly, I’m curious to see if a simple Google sheet can do the job initially, for what I call a collective letter. The name is unambiguous: a letter written by many hands, published at the end of each month. Leave your one-sentence note, or a longer letter through the form currently serving as a letterbox (you’ll find a small prompt or question there, which you may or may not use as a starting point). Sign it—or remain anonymous if you wish—and at the end of the month, I’ll stitch them together into a discourse and send it back into the world, here at Eirene Cafe.
The second path is for those who feel ready to step further: a more courageous experience—the handwritten exchange. Nothing complicated. Through a protected database (contact me to get access), you can add your address and a short bio, and from there, choose—or be chosen—for a pen pal connection. No algorithm, no instant replies—just the slow unfolding of presence, trust, and discovery.
Both paths hold the same intention: to connect. One is light yet powerful, a shared voice sent out into the digital world. The other is slower, more personal, demanding effort and courage, but offering the unmatched intimacy of ink and paper.
If you are curious, willing, or simply longing for the slowness, the care, the embodied presence of each other through paper and ink, consider this your invitation.
A letter, after all, begins with one person deciding to sit down, pick up a pen, and write.
September’s Gatherings
If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages:
Wednesday, September 17
9.30 - 11.00 CET
Online
Saturday, September 27
10.00 - 11.30 CET
Online
How to join?
Monthly paid subscription. If you value the intention behind Eirene Cafe and find it positively impacting your well-being, consider supporting it with a paid subscription. This gives you access to the Clarity Pages, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.
Payment per gathering. If a one-time payment suits you better right now, you can choose to pay per gathering. Your subscription to Eirene Cafe will remain free, and you’ll still receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.
Note: If paying isn’t possible right now and you’d benefit from the monthly gatherings, email me at eirene.cafe@gmail.com, and I’ll send the meeting link the day before the gathering —no questions asked.