I used to think love letters only belonged to someone else. They were supposed to be folded carefully, sealed with longing, maybe even hidden away in a box where only the bravest hearts dared to read them again. For years, I believed love was only real when it traveled outward, when it was offered to someone I didn’t want to lose. It never occurred to me that I could write one for myself, that I could sign the words “with love, always” and mean them inward.
The first time I tried, I felt ridiculous. My hand hovered over the page because I didn’t know how to say tender things to myself without the words catching in my throat. But eventually, I began writing, and something softened. The act itself became a mirror—one I could finally bear to look into. It wasn’t the mirror that punished me on bad days or reminded me of the ways I’d failed. It was a mirror that remembered the girl I had been and the woman I was still becoming.
At first, the wounds came out awkward and halting, as if I didn’t fully believe them. Yet the more I kept writing, the more the sentences began to land. I realized I could be honest in a way I couldn’t always be loud. I could admit that I was tired, that I sometimes felt invisible, that I craved gentleness. I could still follow those confessions with words like, I love you anyway. You’re not forgotten. I see you. And with each line, I noticed something shifting inside me.
For so long, I had carried the critic in my head as thought she were the only voice that mattered. She was sharp and merciless, always reminding me I wasn’t enough, that I was behind, that others lived better than I ever would. But the moment I began answering her with ink on paper, something changed. I found a way to speak back. I could write, I know you doubt me, but I have come too far to believe you anymore. Seeing that in my own handwriting made it real. It was proof that I could choose compassion over cruelty, even when it was aimed at myself.
Eventually, those letters turned into a ritual. Sometimes I would light a candle and let the room fall quiet. Sometimes I wrote in the middle of the night when the world finally loosened its grip and I could hear myself again. The words didn’t need to be polished. They didn’t need to sound poetic. They just needed to be true. I began slipping the letters into books, tucking them into journals, leaving them in places I might rediscover on accident. Finding them again months later felt like stumbling across a secret message from a past version of me who had cared enough to leave behind love for the woman I’d become. It was a reminder that I hadn’t abandoned myself, no matter how much time had passed.
The most surprising part of this practice has been learning to speak to the versions of myself I once tried to ignore. The younger girl who shrank when she wanted to shine. The woman who gave her heart to people who didn’t deserve it. The part of me that believed I had to be smaller to be loved at all. When I write, I address the them directly, not as strangers but as pieces of me still waiting to be heard. It feels like repair work, like stitching together something I thought had been permanently torn.
Writing those letters has also taught me that love doesn’t always need a recipient outside myself to matter. The world tells us we’re supposed to measure our worth by how others see us—how desired we are, how admired, how chosen. But letters written inward stay. They aren’t lost in someone else’s drawer or deleted from an inbox. They belong wholly to me. And in that ownership, I have learned a kind of steadiness, a reminder that love is not something I always have to chase.
Of course, I don’t wake up everyday filled with confidence. I still have mornings when the critic is louder than the girl with the pen. But even then, I know where to turn. I can open a drawer, unfold an old page, and be reminded by my own words that I am worthy of care. I don’t have to wait for someone else to say it. I’ve already said it.
If I’m honest, I think this is why I keep coming back to the practice. It has shown me that the love I give to myself is not a replacement for love from others, but it is the foundation I stand on. When I write, I don’t have to beg for affection, prove myself worthy of it, or fear that it will vanish. It is mine to create and mine to keep.
Writing love letters to myself has become a love story I never expected to live. It has shown me that I can be my own witness, my own comfort, my own source of tenderness. And maybe that’s the quiet revolution of it all—that in a world constantly tugging me away from myself, I’ve chosen to write the words that call me back home.
Lanalefay 