Hi You,

It’s a weird thing, being offered a love letter from a stranger and told to receive it as though you had written it. But that’s what’s happening, and while it might not make much sense, I’ve seen it work like magic.

Before offering these letters here, I’d only ever read them directly to someone, witnessing the moment something cracked open or softened, and the person receiving it cried. I’ve been told many times how the words they heard were the ones they most needed.

These letters are an invitation and a balm. I don’t know exactly how it works—maybe it’s simply the magic of love.

These letters were forged in my own healing. The unconditional love you’ll find in them grew out of my pain of being unloved. I learned to stay in the places that hurt the most, without fixing or mending. Again and again, I showed up to the youngest, most vulnerable parts of me who never received what they needed.

In tending to our shared heartbreak and grief, I became the source of a love I’d never been given. This returned me to wholeness—gave me back to myself unbroken.

And now, I offer this love to you.

Those of us who grow unconditional love from the desolation left by its absence do much of that work alone.

I was profoundly alone as I alchemized pain into love; if I hadn’t been, I don’t think I’d have been forced into doing it. But I was never entirely alone. I found comfort, respite, companionship and guidance through the work of artists, musicians, writers, healers, and teachers. Their words, stories, and offerings wove me into a web of being and reflected what I was discovering back to me. It felt like echoes across a vast expanse.

My hope is my letters might be something similar for you. Maybe that’s all they will be: a light over there in the dark, flickering to let you know others have walked this way too. Or maybe, these letters can be more.

Maybe it doesn’t have to hurt as much for you as it did for me.

You can borrow my love, use it to hold you in the places that hurt acutely, and also let it be a map for creating your own.

Maybe I wouldn’t have been so profoundly alone if I’d had these letters available for me. More than a hope, this is my dream: that these love letters are the bridge from the love you needed from outside to the love you are growing inside.

That their very existence eases some of your suffering. 

All of my love,

Stacey