You send messages all the time…Emails, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram DMs, comments on reels, text messages, comments on Word documents, Slack messages, Trello messages. They’re quick, and they are useful as they are hurriedly typed in between doing everything else that has become our busy lives.

You write them systematically, without any real thought and probably forget about them once you have hit send.

Most of them disappear into the abyss of the internet. Tiny but slightly meaningless communication.

Letters don’t disappear. Instead, they ask you to slow down.

They expect much more from us, as we need to pick up a pen and paper to write them. We need to think about each letter as it is written on the page. We need to concentrate on how those letters pull together into words, and sentences, and convey thoughts in a way that often gets forgotten in an age of messaging.

Writing a letter means sending something that isn’t urgent, but instead is meaningful.

That is why letters still matter.

A Letter is a Tiny Act of Caring

There’s something to wonderfully powerful about knowing the time that has been spent writing a letter. However, it’s not just about the time spent writing, but also the time spent:

• Taking the letter to a postbox
• The letter waiting to be collected
• Travelling through the postal system
• Sitting on a door mat waiting to be discovered
• Being opened with a cup of tea and a biscuit

Whilst an email or a Direct Message screams at you to be read with a sense of urgency; a letter can be absorbed slowly, because its envelope is not about to disappear like a notification. It stays with you, as a safe space for the letter.

You can keep a letter, hold onto it, re-read it whenever you want, tuck it into a drawer, find it again on days that feel difficult. But perhaps most importantly, you don’t need to reply to a letter straight away.

It’s not going to angrily wave at you for not responding straight away. It doesn’t even mind if you take a little while, because a letter understands that feelings take their time.

What We Lose When Everything is Fast

Let’s be honest; speed has become a key part of modern life because our time has become so precious. We order a takeaway because we don’t have time to cook, so we want it to arrive on our doorstep as quickly as possible. We search online shops during the daily commute, and order things to arrive when we get home tomorrow. We book tickets for attractions and events to that we can skip the queue, on the day, and enjoy more time doing something more fun.

The problem comes when we – as a society – expect everything to be instant.

But when everything needs a fast response or for us to react to something quickly, we lose the space to actually think before we do.

Instead, we have become victims to our own impulse, rather than sitting back and considering our emotions, our feelings, even our health (and yes, that includes our mental health).

Sometimes when we want to reach out to someone, we’ve forgotten how to. It’s almost like we’ve forgotten how to say exactly what we’re feeling. Or we worry about saying it wrong, because we’ve all fallen victim to the “lack-of-context” misunderstanding in a text message, at some point.

Slow Mail Isn’t About The Past

Sending letters isn’t about nostalgia or wanting to go back to the “good ol’ days”. We’re not here to pretend that the world hasn’t changed massively, because it really has and there is so much good in the modern world.

However slow mail is an opportunity to reconnect with each other in a way that many of us are missing from our lives. It’s about sending something that doesn’t demand a reply. It is something that can be opened on a difficult day, or when that doesn’t feel quite right. A letter can tell something “I thought of you” and actually mean it.

In a really loud, boisterous world, a letter brings a little sense of calm.

Where Poppy Comes In

Poppy writes letters from the moments when words feel a little bit out of reach.

These letters are for moments when you want to offer comfort, but don’t have the right words to say.

For when you want to reach someone without the noise.

For when you need someone to sit beside you and say what we wish a best friend would say to us.

Each letter is written slowly, with care, and with the understanding that life can be wobbly, tender and overwhelming, whilst still being so beautiful.

You don’t have to explain everything. The letter will do that part.