52 Letters Later

Hello lovely family,

This is the 52nd letter I have written to you, which means I have reached the incredible milestone of writing every week for a whole year. Getting to this point felt impossible when I wrote my first missive about the pesky pigeons on our balcony.

You have nothing interesting to say, whispered the voice in my head. You barely remember to brush your teeth, you’ll never manage to keep this up.

Looking back on one year of letters home, I can say for certain that you are the reason I kept going. Knowing that you were reading my words, that you enjoyed the stories that I saved up each week, was the greatest motivation to sit down every Thursday and write. Thank you for reading these letters. Because of you, this little experiment has grown into something I love more than I ever could have imagined.

Becoming a human kaleidoscope at Point Leo Estate sculpture park

As I sit here, scrolling through 51 letters, I feel rich with a patchwork of memories collected over the past year. When I set out on this adventure, I had every intention of planning my letters home, of drafting and redrafting and making each one into a little piece of art. There were going to be themes and insights and it was all going to be terribly clever. Then life appeared, waving frantically, and gently told me that wasn’t how this would roll.

Instead of carefully curated essays, you’ve received the work of a frantic 45 minutes, usually written late at night, after I remembered, then forgot, then remembered I needed to write to you. I have written whichever words were at the tips of my fingers at that second, with all the emotion and angst of that singular moment. The truth of it all makes them feel even more precious as I flick back through. By Thursday, I have usually forgotten about the adventures of the weekend, and instead of writing about sensible things, I’ve written about spiders, charity shops and bin day. Somehow, in those stories of littlest things, I’ve managed to capture my whole world.

Thank you for reading!

I’m intrigued to see where my next year of writing will take me. The shift from writing in a journal to writing for an audience has allowed me to realise that I do, in fact, have something to say. Words no longer feel like a finite resource and the more I write to you, the more stories float into my mind, asking to be told. My inner writer is awake, and she’s itching for an adventure.

I’ll write again soon.

Love, Jess x