When we first learned about More Love Letters, we were struck by its simplicity. You nominate someone who needs love to receive handwritten letters. That request goes out to a community of volunteers. The letters come back, sometimes as many as 500 of them, and you deliver them in a bundle to your unsuspecting friend. Wow. What a powerful display of the kindness of strangers!

Reading MLL participants’ testimonials, you discover just how much letters can help people facing life’s most crushing, doubt-filled moments. A single letter communicates care and comfort. En masse, they show extraordinary solidarity, and as one participant wrote, “the goodness of humanity.”

Recipient Valerie was in a wheelchair awaiting genetic test results and surgery when she received her letters. She writes,

I never really thought that I - or my story - was worth anything that wonderful. My sister proved me completely wrong this Thanksgiving when she surprised me with over 150 love letters from 5 different countries. I was completely in awe - all of these people, people who didn't even know me - cared about me enough to take the time out of their day to write me. Letters from people who shared my diagnosis, letters from those who shared my struggle with self-doubt, letters from those who just wanted to send a smile. Letter after letter I was flooded with the love, support, and strength I needed to face this newest medical challenge of mine. Even now it feels like a dream. I look over at my stack of letters each night and feel a brand new hope and happiness flood through me.

Writes Sarah, who requested letters for her friend Mia,

To all of those who wrote letters to Mia: thank you. I wish I could personally look each of you in the eyes and shake your hands or give you a hug to pass on my gratitude and share just a glimpse of the love, hope, and strength that pervaded each of the notes you wrote.

More Love Letters posts new bundle requests each month here. It’s a wonderful way to fulfill a day of the Write_On Challenge. They’ve taken their model to college campuses via 75+ Campus Cursive chapters, with whom Write_On partner, Hello!Lucky, has teamed up to supply stationery and pens to students, to fuel the movement.

We can’t wait to see love through letters continue to grow. In the words of Helen Keller,

Alone we can do so little. Together, we can do so much.