Wanderlee is a weekly email from Akina Marie about finding the magic in the little things. Feel free to share excerpts from this newsletter with someone you think might enjoy it. Thank you for being here!
Hey Everyone,
With February being the month of love and all, I found some solace and magic reading various love letters by famous authors, anonymous lovers, and even by my late father. I’ve always found letters to be a cathartic release, and like a photograph, captures that single moment in time.
I remember getting that warm fuzzy feeling when I would get a stack of love notes from my then-long distance boyfriend. Navigating an LDR from Germany and San Francisco was not easy, but we continued to learn about one another through our letters. Some written on brown paper bags, postcards, napkins, and torn-out pages from composition notebooks. We both had a penchant for the letter-writing tradition (thanks to being born in the MSN era), so I guess you could say it was kind of romantic.
My best friend also helped me curb the feelings of homesickness with handwritten notes and cartoon doodles. I would read through them when I would start missing home and pin them on my corkboard to help me get through the hard days.
Living in the age of modern technology, I think it’s time to bring it back. Not to get a little scientific here, but studies show that letter writing increases happiness both for the writer and receiver. I’ve compiled a list of love notes that hopefully get you in the mood to send a sweet note today.
Xx,
Akina
Johnny Cash in a letter to June Carter in 1994
‘Happy Birthday Princess, we get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each other’s minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted. But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realise how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for me existence. I love you very much.’
From a father to a daughter
Will Traynor to Louisa Clark, from Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
"So this is it. You are scored on my heart, Clark. You were from the first day you walked in, with your ridiculous clothes and your bad jokes and your complete inability to ever hide a single thing you felt…You changed my life so much more than this money will ever change yours."
Zelda Fitzgerald to F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Darling– I love these velvet nights. I’ve never been able to decide whether the night was a bitter enemie or a “grand patron” –or whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon. Anyway, I love you most and you ‘phoned me just because you phoned me tonight– I walked on those telephone wires for two hours after holding your love like a parasol to balance me. My dear–”
Alex to Katie, from Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks
“To the woman my husband loves…
If you’re reading this then it must be true. He loves you. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, or else he wouldn’t have given this to you. I can only hope that you feel the same way about him as he does about you. But I wanted to write you a letter because I wanted you to know one very, very important thing. I’m so glad he’s found you. I only wish I could be there…somehow…to meet you. Maybe in some ways, I am. Outside of my husband and my two beautiful children, you are the most important person in the world to me because I’m gone and they’re yours now. You need to take care of them. Make them laugh. Hold them when they cry. Stand up for them and teach them wrong from right. The thought of you…it gives me hope. Hope that Alex remembers what it feels like to be young and in love. Hope that Josh finds somebody to go fish with again. Hope that Lexie has somebody there to help her on her wedding day. I hope that one day my family is whole again. But most of all, hope that somehow, I’m there with all of you watching over all of you.”
From a brother to his brother
This is a love letter, a love letter to my brother.
I don’t know of many love letters written to brothers, so let this one be a true expression of brotherly love.
One to make the City of Philadelphia proud.
One that is the purest expression of a love that can exist between two men, two brothers.
A love of mutual respect and admiration.
A love of air-tight confidence where anything can be said,
Anything at all can be heard,
And anything can be absorbed with the knowledge that no matter how painful, it is for our own growth, for the pursuit of truth and a path of evolution.
This is a love that’s been forged by the hands of time, the sweat of hard work, the investment of money, mind power and experiential turmoil.
A love fortified by beer, sports, golf, whiskey and old-fashioneds, and really solid pinot noir.
A love made rich by poetry, meditation, study and innumerable deepening conversations concerning women, men, friendship, fatherhood and the pain of an abandoned childhood.
In this right, there is no “younger” or “older” brother, there is only man to man, soul to soul and spirit to spirit.