Do you have any handwritten letters saved?

I have a special letter saved that I read once in awhile :)

I have a saved handwritten letter that my mom wrote to me.
I cry every time I read it because it talks about me being her daughter and how proud she is and that everything is going to be okay and it expresses an abundance of encouragement, love and support. It was very sweet and very genuine and I love her for it.

A dear friend of mine from high school put a letter inside the card she gave me at my wedding. It was to my husband, and said basically “I’ve never met you, but you need to know who you’re marrying the way I know her”, then outlined little things that we did together, that meant a lot to her – like having a tea party with homemade Lorien Leaf-shaped-cookies, and handwriting letters (with calligraphy pens and aged paper) back and forth all Senior year instead of talking on the phone (because who doesn’t like to get mail?), and trading handmade gifts. She talked about how she thinks I have an old soul that is both “blessed and burdened with the wisdom of the ages of the world”

The whole thing had me in tears, and will still choke me up when I read it. It is, hands down, the nicest bunch of things anyone has ever said about me.

I have a whole box of letters – my best friend and I wrote to each other during the summer before high school started. I was a major pothead and they are hilarious to read these days. In those letters, you can see me beginning to identify as bisexual, my first venture into sexuality identities. I also have some letters written by my grandmother to my aunt when my grandmother was alive and my aunt was still living in Russia. I loved how detailed my grandmother was in conveying our life to people on the other side of the world.

Yes, lots and lots of letters, old love letters, camp letters, family letters and cards too. Yes I’m somewhat of a hoarder. Tehehe They go wayyyy back. What a great way to remember the past. Phooey on e-mails.

I have a large collection of letters—some from old boyfriends. many from women friends. Some from my grandmother. Some from my mom and dad. Some from my sister (who has since passed away), especially precious.

I have a few handwritten letters and poems from my first boyfriend and letters from the best friend I had in high school. I read them every few years.

Yes, I have several, some for the good memories, and others to remind me of things I would otherwise forget.

I have a stack of love letters from my first and current boyfriend tied up with a blue ribbon. Mostly they’re from the second year of our relationship, during the summer when college was out and we were in our respective states. There are others from my boyfriend that I’ve added since from anniversaries and the like too.

I have every letter I’ve ever received since I went off on my own at 18.

I have tried to save all handwritten letters, cards, postcards over the years.

I even have letters written by me to my parents from camp as well as the letters my mom wrote to me.

I have handwritten letters teachers wrote to me at the end of some school years.

yes

I have an entire drawer full of old handwritten letters and cards. I have kept every letter or card my children ever sent me. : )

I have a tons of them. I never throw out cards and letters.

I’m a letter saver as well. Old letters have a way of transporting you back to that time. In a moment, you are feeling old feelings…sometimes all of your senses seem to be sparked by the memories. I love email…but, it’s just not the same. I’m a hopeless romantic.

Yes, @Miss, it’s a way of tracking your past, like the journal you meant to but never got around to keeping. It’s wonderful to read over the letters I have received from people over the years, and there’s always something in them that I’ve forgotten about, or something that I have moved through or past. Also, my parents saved the letters I wrote home to them while I was in college and later in my adult life. It’s fascinating though a little weird and a little, I don’t know what, to read the letters I wrote home when I was in my twenties. There is something sacred in my world about a letter. It’s like a photograph, it captures a moment in time. It’s kind of a shame that people really don’t write letters anymore. Just easy to delete emails. Something’s been lost there.

Haha sometimes I do. It’s good to keep ones that give you important info or ones that you like and want a memory of. I don’t really keep them that much sadly.

@lillycoyote Yes…and then you ask yourself, “Was the person who wrote those letters REALly me?” You’re very fortunate to have those letters from yourself. They provide you with a different perspective of your growth.

I have one from my ex boyfriend, who wrote in it how he liked my hair because it looked like noodles and how he gets turned on so much when I speak English. 2008 about. It’s pretty much the only hand writ letter Ive got, but that’s because I moved around a lot and lost most of my shit a few years back. Still, it’s worth keeping, for whatever reasons I have to do so.
(It’s written on a Hillbroy page, so I guess it seems pretty cheap and cheesy, but to me it’s different.)

I have the letters my family and friends sent me while I was in basic training still. I haven’t read them in a while though. They are put up in a box right now.

I also have all of the letters my husband has sent to me on my nightstand so I can reread them whenever I miss him.

I have several from my friend and grandmother, Marion, now deceased.

@Seaofclouds

Bless you for being devoted to him. That seems to be a very rare commodity these days.

@CaptainHarley Thank you.

Oh, yes, many. I have a whole thick binder full of the letters my sweetheart wrote me during our transcontinental romance. He saved mine, too.

I also saved letters from my grandmother, in her beautiful, ornate liquid old-school script, and many from my mother. I was told that my mother saved all of mine, to be returned to me later in life, but I haven’t seen them. And I have several written to me by my children when they were young, away at camp or visiting. Precious relics all.

Yes. I have postcards from my sister when we were young and living apart. She would take regular old index card and make them postcards. And, I have hand written letters and cards from my husband. I have a copy of a letter my great uncle wrote while in Europe during the war addressed to his sister, my grandmother, and my grandfather and mom (who was a baby at the time). It was not handwritten, he typed it, but it was in his words, and I would consider it handwritten. It is interesting to read his view of the war and I love how he constructed his sentences, the language he used.

Here it is below if you are interested:

Dear names withheld

I know that I could have written to you sooner, but I assure you that any letter that I did write would have been far from satisfactory inasmuch as we were moving so fast towards the close of this thing that we were lucky to get a rest and it is still a wonder to me that I managed to get off a letter to my wife nearly every day of this trip. Anyway, all the traveling did not go for naught for the war has been brought to a close, although I can’t say that I had too rough a time or that our unit was as prominent in the fighting as some of the others, it still is not a bad feeling to know that I did something in order to bring about the downfall of this cruel machine that has operated here for the past twelve years.

I know that all of you people are apt to minimize the cruelties that have been going on here for so long because of the propaganda that is put out by the newspapers and I know that when I was in the states I did have a tendency to think that a lot of the things that were printed were exaggerated to a great extent by the correspondents. However, since I have been here and especially in the last week or two, I have seen things which make me realize that everything that was ever written about the atrocities of the Germans can well be believed because they have been capable of anything. I have seen thousands of people who have been inmates of the concentration camps walking or dragging themselves along the roads only in the hope that they get as far away from this place as possible. The majority of them are skeletons of human beings, and I have spoken to several of these refugees who have told me that in the camp that they were at, the average death rate was 200 per day from malnutrition. I know that about a week before the Americans came thru this particular area, more than one thousand Jewish prisoners were led out to the fields and were slaughtered. And now that the war has come to a close I have heard that one of the Generals has asked for mercy from the allies in the terms that are imposed upon the German people. That one really hands me a laugh but it is also true that whatever terms are imposed upon the Germans they will be merciful in comparison to the crimes that they have committed upon the peoples of the world because the people of any civilized nation could not possibly equal the acts of barbarism which have been committed here. I am almost positive that the German race will end up in this war stronger than any of the nations that fought against her.

Be that as it may, I am glad that I am not the one to decide what shall be done with them and my one thought now is to get home as soon as possible to rejoin my family and have some happiness in this world. The only disconcerting thing about all this is that the army is apt to have different ideas about where I will be sent and I must admit that I am under quite a strain until I find out what is to become of us. There is still the war against Japan to be fought and I am not too optimistic about the unit that I am with coming home very soon. My only hope seems to lie in some act of Congressional action which might concern married men with children or an age limit of some sort. What do you think of the possibilities in this direction?

That’s all for now so take care of yourselves.

Love,
name withheld

Five postcards sent to my grandmother in 1908 from various boys when she was 15–16 years old. Three of them have a picture of couples cuddling/smooching. Racy!

I save cards and letters all the time, but my biggest collection is a set of over thirty cards and letters written by one of my best friends. She graduated from college at the end of my freshman year, and we became pen pals quite by happenstance. She sent me a birthday card, I sent a thank you, and we never stopped. It has been more than four years since the first card and I treasure them. If you read them in order, you can watch our friendship grow stronger; it’s really quite lovely.

I do now.

My father often sent cards and letters, and I never kept any of them. He passed away at age 61, and I really regret that I can’t go back and re-read his words. So many of his messages were very loving and supportive.

After my father’s death, I started keeping everything from my aunts and uncles. Most of them have since passed, and I’m really, really happy that I can “bring them back” by reading what they sent to me.