The love affair began when I was eight-years-old. Our third-grade class from the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania got pen pals from a third-grade class in Eagle Pass, Texas. My pen pal, Alma, was the daughter of a mail carrier, just like me.
That’s where our similarities ended, but we wrote to each other regularly up through high school graduation, sharing secrets, learning about each other’s culture and family traditions, writing about school, etc.
Besides making a friend, through that correspondence, I discovered what has become a lifelong love affair with the wonderful world of stationery, postage stamps, stickers, sealing wax, pens and anything else having to do with letter writing. I confessed to that love affair last April on this blog.
Bold letters
Now I have a new reason to share my letter writing obsession with you. Women of the ELCA is combining Bold Women’s Day and International Correspondence Writing Month to create a month of letter writing devoted to bold women. It’s a month-long effort of building authentic community using honest words.
Women of the ELCA is combining Bold Women’s Day and International Correspondence Writing Month to create a month of letter writing devoted to bold women.
Here’s how it works. It’s really quite simple.
- Following the suggestions of International Correspondence Writing Month, on each day of February 2019, write and mail (or hand-deliver) a card, letter, note or postcard to a bold woman in your life. Share bold, honest words with women who are challenged or need encouragement. Or share bold, honest words of thanksgiving for the role the women have played in your life of faith. Even a simple “thinking of you” note will do.
- Keep a running list of the bold women you’ve written to. Take that list to worship on Bold Women’s Day, February 24, 2019, and offer up the names of those bold women during the Litany of Thanksgiving that opens the Bold Women’s Day liturgy. Or use them in whatever way your unit is celebrating Bold Women’s Day.
A new reason to dip into my stationery trove? I’m all in! Won’t you join me in the Bold Women’s Day Challenge? If, by chance, you need to augment your stationery supplies for the challenge, one option is to purchase them through Amazon Smile, and then Women of the ELCA benefits from your purchase.
Who knows? Maybe one of you will receive a letter from me next month. I know a lot of bold women in this organization!
Linda Post Bushkofsky is executive director of Women of the ELCA. Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash
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