The one letter that will change your life (it’s from you!)
It’s a popular therapy: writing a note to yourself you won’t read for a year. So does it really work?
WHAT would you write to your future self? What advice would you give to the ‘you’ that opens a self-addressed letter a year from now?
It sounds strange. But as a form of therapy, writing a letter to yourself can force you to look at the bigger picture. How do you feel now, and hope to feel then?
A letter written and sealed today is a gift from our present to our future self, a way to gain perspective on day-to- day problems we’re facing now.
Last may, we asked three writers, all having a tumultuous year, to try it. A year on, they tell us how they feel about receiving it and where they are in life now . . .
RELISH THE FREEDOM OF AN EMPTY NEST by Amanda Craig Dear Amanda,
AT ALL costs, do not go into your children’s empty rooms. even if the horrible lurching feeling, so similar to sea-sickness or homesickness, keeps persuading you that seeing their long-abandoned children’s books and toys might make it stop: stay away! All it will do is make you cry.
You’ve done your best as a mother and they’ve flown the nest — one is on the other side of the world and the other is at university. Despite issues that seemed enormous at the time, they have been piloted through to adulthood without major injury, nervous breakdown, drugaddiction and exam meltdowns.
Remember when they told you that you were a terrible mother and they hated you? Well, this is the reward.
You weren’t there to be their friend. You were there to be their parent — tough, fearless, rock-like, and underneath it all prepared to die for them.
You were not there to tell them that you don’t care what they do as long as they’re happy, but that if they kept on keeping on, they might find happiness and love. Not your love, which they take for granted, but that of others still unknown. You are there to prepare them for life without you, and to want freedom.
enjoy being able to write all day again, instead of being torn between children and creativity. For the first time in 20 years, you can be as selfish as a man. enjoy being alone again with your husband, who has waited patiently to get you back.
Being spontaneous is fantastic: and you’ll love having your home back or being able to go for weekends away. The constant anxiety will be a thing of the past. A year from now you’ll feel decades younger. You may even find your favourite clothes in your own cupboard. Remember how lucky you are. They’ll miss you, but not as desperately as you miss them. You’ve spent 20- odd years nurturing them. The reward is they are strong enough to walk away. Oh, and you can now get a puppy . . .
Love, Amanda One year later...
emPTY rooms! Not for long. Like homing swallows, or should it be hornets, the children are back. Just like all their friends, they are living at home for the indefinite future.
every parent you know is going through this, and it’s not what we expected.
Getting any job, even waitressing or tutoring, is tough. Being able to afford a room to rent is even worse. You have this intelligent, frustrated pair, who, despite having managed their own shopping, cooking, laundry and bills while away, are suddenly dependent again.
Why were you so sad and nostalgic? Why didn’t you luxuriate in the extra time and space? After all, it enabled you to finish a new novel. Will it take another seven years for the next one?
Once again, you have angry shouts demanding whether their favourite T- shirt has gone, or why you need to know whether they’ll be home for supper.
The fridge is continually raided, the lights left on and the recycling bins are in chaos. They don’t sleep in the same cycles as you, and have forgotten that laughing at 2am is wildly aggravating to parents who rise for work just five hours later.
At the same time, they keep reminding you that they aren’t children any more, and need to be treated as adults.
It’s fine, because this, too, will pass. The elder one is in fact completely brilliant — so organised that she buys groceries without prompting, is a real help with your writing, and great company.
The younger one is recovering from Finals, for which he has been working without a break for nine months.
Far from being ‘generation snowflake’, they are brave, bright, hard- working young people and if the strain of keeping their spirits up is draining for you, it won’t be for ever. Will it?
As for those dim and distant days when we felt like newlyweds, and could go off for romantic weekends again, well, the children are only too keen for us to leave them in full control of the house. Unfortunately, you are too exhausted from trying to keep their morale up in the throes of exams and jobseeking to have much interest in mini-breaks.
Besides, it’s fun to go out again as a family to the pub or cinema. It’s good to discuss politics and have your ideas shaken up. They are wonderful people, and your greatest achievement, and what’s more they still love you — though they love the puppy even more.
AmAndA CrAig’s The Lie Of The Land (Little, Brown) is out on June 15.
EMBRACE FEAR OF REDUNDANCY by Lisa markwell Dear Lisa,
HAve you unpacked those boxes yet? I write this more in hope than expectation, because I’ve known you for a long time, and prevarication is one of your trademarks.
Those boxes, stuffed with old newspapers, notebooks, letters of praise — and complaint — and business cards, are attached to what you did, not who you are. So if you haven’t been through them and tossed out 90 per cent, do me a favour, pour yourself a glass of wine and do it tonight. Remember when someone asked you, just after you lost your job as a newspaper editor and were pondering the future, ‘What’s your dream job?’ You replied you’d already had your dream job, so whatever you did next would be a new adventure.
Whatever you’re doing professionally, I hope you’ll look back on the past 12 months as just that: a new adventure in your personal life. That is, getting back to being you.
It seemed easy to rationalise working every weekend, going out five nights a week because of a job, but how much more fun has it been to make your husband breakfast, join a book club, help your daughter with homework and hang out with friends? A lot more fun. Please tell me you’re still doing that? When you were forced to s-l-o-w-d-o-w-n, you started spending more time with your parents. They never cared for status, more impressed with whether you can outdo them on the daily crossword. Don’t forget to keep doing that, because you won’t always be able to, and the stories that parents tell their children are like money in the bank, becoming more valuable as time passes. (I
hope you’re passing that down to the kids, Peter and Terri, too.)
Talking of status, you always had a reasonably healthy attitude to it — compare down, not up, you were fond of saying. I hope you still are. Even if you are ricocheting between ‘earning, learning and laughing’.
Stepping off the merry-go-round means you could get on the bumper cars. Enjoy it; I bet the occasional knock-back hurts, but you’ve been propelled in a new direction. Oh, and you’d better be doing something creative with your obsession with food, or I’ll reach through this year-long gap and slap you with a spatula. With love, Lisa
One year later...
ThaT was a surprise. I’d forgotten all about writing a letter to my future self, when I was freshly out- of-work and contemplating my next move.
Reading it now, I’m struck by how much I needed the career break, no matter how unwelcome it was at the time. But, and it’s a big but, I find myself 12 months on in another all-consuming role. I’ve attended the grand total of one book-club meeting and my (only) sister wrote to me the other day to let me know — not unreasonably — that I’ve become a bit rubbish at staying in touch.
Those boxes of newspapers are now in the attic, having been shifted three times in the past year by my long-suffering husband.
So what happened? The clue is in the last sentence of my letter to myself and I can’t believe how prescient it was. Faced with a ‘portfolio’ of ways to make money — writing, consulting, lecturing — I thought I’d buy myself time to decide while noodling around with my favourite hobby, cooking.
I signed up to Leiths School of Food and Wine, but something extraordinary happened. halfway through the course, I realised that not only was I ‘learning and laughing’, two of my three new life rules, but that I could be ‘earning’ too.
I’d been talking to a literary agent about book ideas when something came to me (ironically on the M4, on my way to visit my parents). The title, holds Knife Like Pen, a play on grammatical snobbery, which applied nicely to an editor learning to be a chef.
There’s a book in that, I thought. The agent agreed. So now I’m most of the way through a year- long professional chef ’ s diploma at Leiths and documenting what I learn for my book, a memoir of how a home cook can think, plan and cook like a pro.
So far, I’ve nearly severed my thumb twice, cried over a flat Swiss roll and had sleepless nights worrying about how to make liver look stylish. It’s taken over my life just like editing a newspaper did — I guess I’m just an obsessive — but at least when I do see my family, everyone gets delicious food as part of my ‘homework’.
Where will I be in another year’s time, at a stove or a laptop? Wherever I am, I’m going to keep hold of that letter from 2016 — I didn’t realise how wise I could be when I had a moment to think.
THERE’S NO QUICK FIX TO GRIEVING by Cosmo Landesman
Dear Cosmo, YOu’vE been through the worst year of your life. as I write this, I’m aware that the first anniversary of your son Jack’s death is fast approaching — and when you read this letter it will be two years since he took his own life, aged 29.
I suspect you may be feeling disappointed, maybe even angry, that not much has changed. The pain, the grief, the guilt — it’s all still there, eh? But you need to remember that when you’re grieving over a dead child, two years is really just two minutes.
We have come to expect quick solutions to our problems and our pain. But grief that comes with loss doesn’t work that way. The grief and guilt will decline, but never totally disappear. It’s the tumour that can’t be cut out. But it can be managed.
We cannot choose the terrible twists and turns life takes, but we can choose how we respond to them.
Remember how after Jack died you discovered that the only antidote to the agony of death was love? (Yes, so terribly corny, but so terribly true!)
and you promised to try to become a more loving person. (‘Does reading that now make you cringe?’) Please, please don’t give up on that promise.
Progress happens slowly. and you have made progress. You’ve probably forgotten there were days when you were so depressed you couldn’t get out of bed.
a year ago you went on medication and into therapy. (You even started jogging! how desperate was that!) Still running? I doubt it. Still feeling sorry for yourself? Probably. But that’s OK.
But I worry that maybe after two years you might relapse into depression and give in to the temptation to fall apart. Don’t listen to that inner voice: that’s the angry, guilty you talking.
You need to focus less on what you have lost, and more on what you have.
Right now, you’re 61 and having the best sex of your life! You have a lovely 12-year-old son and good friends. and next year you’ll have more of the same.
So cheer up you grumpy bastard and be thankful!
Remember: no matter how terrible the loss, the beauty of life is staring you right in the face. Just open your heart and open your eyes and you will see it. I promise. Stay strong, Cosmo
One year later...
WELL. Back then I wrote: ‘I suspect you may be feeling disappointed that not much has changed’ and I was right. I can’t say I feel any better or the pain hurts less — but as I told myself, it would take time: one year won’t be enough.
and now it’s nearly two years since that terrible day I got the news about my son’s suicide that I often feel frustrated that time is taking its bloody time!
So it’s good to be reminded that when ‘grieving over a dead child, two years is just two minutes’.
Back then, I reminded myself that when my son died ‘I promised to be a more loving person’ and asked my future self: ‘Does reading that now make you cringe?’ No, not cringe. Just sad.
‘Please don’t give up on that promise’ I wrote. But I have. I’ve not been in the mood for being all loving and life-affirming. I’m still just the same grumpy old me.
But I’m no longer on medication and I’m out of therapy. (and, yes! I still jog!)
But I was wrong about my depression. I wrote that I will have forgotten that there were days I was so depressed, ‘ you couldn’ t get out of bed’. No I haven’t forgotten, because I still have those days.
But I haven’t fallen into the temptation to give- up and ‘fall apart’.
The main value of reading this letter is that it has reconnected me with the more hopeful and optimistic me: the man who believed that despite misfortune he was fortunate.
a year ago I told myself to think about the good things in my life — my other lovely son, friends and my great relationship with a wonderful woman, whom I am still with.
I told myself then, and I tell myself now: ‘Cheer up you grumpy sod and be thankful!’