Who has had the biggest impact on your life?
How would you have answered at 15? At 20? At 30?
Have you ever thought about special moments, hoping for a chance to thank someone, only to find out they’d passed away before you’d done it?
We are each a lake of ripples and swells, tides and crashing waves, formed by the collective impact of the pebbles and boulders in our lives.
Who are your pebbles? Your boulders? Can you still feel their impact?
Before my husband released his book last year and went on a three week book tour, I reached out to dozens of his family and friends, asking them to write him letters. He would go on to open those letters for weeks, getting to experience in his lifetime the impact he’d had on many people. Sometimes we don’t hear those things, and our family only does at our funeral.
Those letters would become precious moments and keepsakes to my husband.
I decided that I didn’t need a book tour to make sure that people in my life, now or in my youth, felt my thanks and understood the impact of their words and actions.
And so began the letters.
While I’m a big fan of pen to paper, stamps, envelopes, and old fashioned snail mail, I couldn’t use that here.
Some of these letters are long overdue, with no known address. They may never reach their intended recipient, but I will put them out into the universe (and social media) in hopes that they might.
Some of these letters are too late, death stealing their recipient while withheld my proper thanks in favor of living a busy life. But thanks are still due.
Some of these letters are anonymous, either to you, the reader, for the sake of privacy, or sometimes, even to me. But they are worthy of thanks, if only to acknowledge that my achievements and perspective have come from the love, grace, and sacrifice of others.
And so I will write 52 letters in the 52 weeks of 2017. Each Monday you will find a new letter here, hopefully worthy of the ultimate recipient and of your valuable time to read it.
I’d love if you’d join me in writing #52letters. Because none of us have walked alone.
Sincerely,
Melissa
Comment below if you’d like me to link up your #52letters project. Be sure to subscribe to get these letters in your e-mail.