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When was the previous time you sent a handwritten letter to a friend or beloved a single, or acquired one particular in the mail?
Right before the digital age, it was commonplace to obtain a handwritten letter from a pen pal, a postcard from abroad, or once-a-year handwritten Christmas cards.
But textual content messages, email messages, memes, social media and emojis have turn into our interaction of option these times, almost banishing the art of letter crafting to the earlier for numerous.
Melbourne-dependent management and communications guide Renne Giarrusso said receiving a handwritten notice in the mail confirmed somebody experienced taken the time to feel of us.
“When you happen to be heading through your mail and you see anything handwritten blended in with your expenditures, it’s always the initially thing that you open,” she mentioned.
“Nostalgia is coming again, vinyl documents and tapes are coming back again, I’m hoping that a little something like letter writing is also likely to come back.”
For Ms Giarusso, letters her father wrote to her as a youngster are between her most prized belongings.
“My father passed absent when I was pretty younger and I have a box of letters that he wrote,” she claimed.
“If he wrote them now in the digital age, I would have nothing from him. Instead, I now have this legacy that he has left.
“You can’t place an electronic mail on the mantelpiece.”
Gains for mental overall health
Mental well being organisation Over and above Blue teamed up with Australia Put up in September to provide 3 million absolutely free blank postcards.
The postcards ended up dispersed in the hope that Australians would use them to show spouse and children and pals they were wondering of them.
Given that 2020, 7 million postcards have been delivered by way of the initiative to households throughout Australia. They involve mental health and fitness and wellbeing guidelines, as very well as get hold of particulars for the Outside of Blue assist provider.
Beyond Blue lead medical adviser Grant Blashki reported latest functions, including drought, bushfires, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic, had led several people today to feel isolated.
He explained postcards delivered a way to connect.
“We know that connecting with loved ones and good friends can engage in an vital job in coping with life’s problems,” Dr Blashki mentioned.
“There’s a little something tangible about postcards when folks express their inner thoughts and appreciation in handwritten form, relatively than the typically fleeting digital messages that characterise these instances.”
As properly as rewards for the postcard recipient, Dr Blashki reported there have been also “plenty of benefits for the author”.
“The reflective and heartfelt approach of placing pen to paper, as people today have carried out for millennia with letter-crafting, is an historical art frequently neglected these times,” he reported.
Hope in a letter
Another initiative, Letters of Hope, was began by Abbie Williams in 2018 right after she move to Australia from the United Kingdom the previous yr.
“My grandparents applied to deliver me handwritten notes to continue to be in contact,” she mentioned.
“I’ve struggled with my psychological health and fitness and I discovered the impact that opening one particular of my handwritten letters would have and how fantastic it manufactured me come to feel.
“I have been passionate about psychological overall health and preferred to do a little something in that place to make a variation.”
Letters of Hope invites persons to register if they are having difficulties or feeling lonely, at which position volunteers will compose positive letters to them.
“It can help the writers as effectively, as it feels like you are placing some superior back again into the globe,” Ms Williams reported.
“Being ready to help anyone who is struggling and ease and comfort them with some kind words and phrases is very specific.”
She explained the act of putting pen to paper also helped with her have mental health.
“We are in this sort of a technological planet now it’s so quick and uncomplicated to sort a thing out and hit deliver,” Ms Williams mentioned.
“When you set pen to paper, you have to be current in that moment. It makes everything else in your mind fade absent for that modest amount of money of time.
She said it experienced develop into a “dying art”.
“Crafting feels like you are placing some thing tangible out there into the earth,” Ms Williams said.
Producing to ‘look back on’
Australian writer and journalist Alicia Younger launched the 12 Stamps Project in the hope of harnessing the penned word and boosting literacy in a digital age.
“We are asking men and women to get 12 stamps and to dedicate to sending 12 handwritten notes about the subsequent 12 months,” she stated.
“It can be as basic as a thank-you take note, or it can be a notice to increase and inspire an individual, or just to say that I see the change that that you happen to be building.
“When another person can take time to sit down and compose, it presents us pause that they took the time to sit down and generate and it can be one thing that we can search back again on for many years to occur.”