I’m just about done Eat, Pray, Love. I feel like the last person on earth to read it, but that’s the beauty of a book. It’s always there to be experienced. You don’t have to do it when the crowd does it, you can do it on your own time. Last night I was looking back on some of the pages I dog-eared—reminding myself that those pages in particular stood out to me for one reason or another—and I found this gem. Elizabeth’s journey to wholeness began with a journal entry. Actually it began with emotional agony and uncertainty, but she was able to sooth herself with writing. It reminded me that this is what therapy is essentially: tapping into the parts of yourself that are focused and strong and asking them to help the parts of you that are trembling and weak.

Page 54 (of the paperback)

What I write in my journal tonight is that I’m weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I’m terrified that I will never really pull my life together.
In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page:

I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

In an arguably morbid conversation, my sister and I were discussing our funerals the other day. The two of us are pretty irreverent when it comes to death—this, naturally, drives my parents mad—and we were laughing out loud over it. We’re not death-obsessed Goth queens, we just know that it’s a part of life and have decided to approach it with a sense of humor. I’m 27 and she’s 25, so this isn’t necessarily around the corner for either of us—but you never know. I asked her what type of funeral she’d like and she said, “That’s up to you. The funeral isn’t for the dead, it’s for the living.” I found that to be a keen insight on her part. The funeral is a place for the living to gather, comfort each other and gain whatever closure they can. The dead have little to nothing to do with the funeral.

In a somewhat strange tie in—if it can get stranger than my sister and I planning our funerals—I applied this same logic to the recent unveiling of Mother Teresa’s letters of doubt. This week’s Time magazine offers a comprehensive look into her secret life as one who often felt denied of the presence of God. In a September 1979 letter Teresa wrote to the Rev. Michael Van Deer Peet, “Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me—the silence and the emptiness is so great—that I look and do not see,—Listen and do not hear.”

It was Mother Teresa’s wish that these letters be destroyed. In a move that some might consider disrespectful, the church overruled that wish—the letters now appear in a book entitled Mother Teresa: Come By My Light (Doubleday). Yet in the same way that a funeral is for the living, so these letters are now for the living. When I hear of the doubts and uncertainties of a soldier and sage like Mother Teresa I don’t hold her in a lower regard, but it grants me solace to know that she, too, was human and had doubts as everyone does. The article purports that Teresa came to accept the doubt within her as part of Christ’s suffering. Meaning she shared in his desolate hour of, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” I find it beyond admirable that her work never ceased in light of her private torment. She moved forward and continued to give all of her time to those who needed it the most.

One would think Teresa’s reason for not wanting the world to read her letters is obvious—because she didn’t want to people to know she wasn’t of a faithful mindset at all times and in all places. But that is inaccurate. She explained to the Rev. Lawrence Picachy that if the letters became public, “people will think more of me—less of Jesus.” I admire that as well. She was humble until the end and wanted to protect Jesus even though she felt abandoned by him. For me, she was right about one part and not the other. There isn’t much that could make me think less of Jesus, however, I do think more of Mother Teresa.

A form of letter writing that I believe is equally if not more important then writing to others is writing to yourself. It seems silly and counterproductive to some, I know. I live with myself why would I write to myself? Because unfortunately we end up lying to ourselves a great deal about who we are and what we really seek. We talk ourselves into wanting life the way that it is instead of accepting the challenge of making it what we want it to be. Journaling is a therapeutic act that takes us on tour of the back of our brains. There may be monsters living in our mental dungeons, but there also may be unknown passions, desires, and talents. It’s better to know what’s lurking then to live in denial. Better to unleash unknown anger or frustration safely on the page that can take it rather then inadvertently on the people around us who may not be able to.

Journaling also serves a greater purpose in that it nominates you for immortality. This week The New York Times book review covers a book entitled The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman. Lerman (1914-1994) was an American writer and editor who worked for Condé Nast Publications for more than 50 years. He also wrote for the New York Herald Tribune, Harper’s Bazaar, Dance Magazine, and Playbill. His job allowed him to rub elbows with living legends such as Truman Capote, Anaïs Nin, and Marlene Dietrich. The Times notes that he very much wanted to publish a book, “. . .Lerman never published a novel, memoir or true-crime book, a failure for which he reproached himself throughout his life. ‘Almost all that I have earned is by non-writing. . .’” What he could not accomplish in life he is able to accomplish in death with a robust collection of insightful journal entries. In 1978 he comments on the experience of writing itself, “How different writing is from thinking, even from planning what one is to write.” Writing is different from thinking in that thoughts cannot live on—they die with the individual. Unless someone took the time to transcribe those thoughts, making them a tangible tribute to one’s own life. Leo Lerman did just that.

Read The Times article

Welcome to (gulp) my first blog. I’m such a joiner—I know. I do hereby solemnly swear never to blog about going to the grocery store or dying my roots (although I do have it down to 35 minutes). No, no, none of that. This blog is going to be about letters. The letters I send, receive, and write for people (only with their permission of course!). I’ll also keep you abreast of all that’s going on in the letter-writing world (it’s more than you think).

Onto the first letter: I proudly present my favorite letter of 2006. It’s from the doyenne of publishing and letter writing herself: Helen Gurley Brown. Helen is an author and was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years. Helen’s first book, Sex and the Single Girl (Bernard Geis Associates, 1962), was way ahead of its time. The age of innocence wasn’t officially over in 1962. The Beatles hadn’t even performed at Shea Stadium yet, but there was Helen writing an instruction manual for single girls to live whimsically and love freely—it was the inadvertent prerequisite to Sex and the City.

In addition to being an editor and author, Helen is also an avid letter writer. Much of her amusing correspondence has been complied in the book Dear Pussycat: Mash Notes and Missives from the Desk of Cosmopolitan’s Legendary Editor (St. Martin’s Press, 2004). I wrote Ms. Brown a letter toward the end of last year asking if she’d take an early look at my book and consider giving a quote for the back cover. A week later she replied. Sadly, she couldn’t give me a quote (with good reason), but I decided I preferred the letter to the quote anyway. I’m going to frame it. . .

Next Blog (Thursday, April 12):
Jack the Ripper: Serial Killer and Letter Writer. . .