The way I used to send letters to my birth mother felt so cold

I used to write these long typed letters that sounded like a business report, all formal and distant. Then last month I switched to handwritten notes on plain paper with little doodles in the margins, and she told me it felt like a real person wrote them. Has anyone else changed how you communicate with your birth mother and seen a difference?

2 comments

2 Comments

evah4014d agoMost Upvoted

Did you notice how much warmer her letters got after that? Oh, absolutely. I started doing the same thing about a year ago. My first letters were typed on nice resume paper, and my birth mother once joked that she kept waiting for a bill to fall out of the envelope. Now I use those cheap legal pads with the yellow paper, and I draw little stars or flowers next to things that make me smile. She actually started adding her own doodles too, little bees and birds in the corners of her stationery. It feels like we're finally having a real conversation instead of reporting quarterly earnings.

the_nancy14d ago

Did you notice her tone shift in her replies after you switched to handwritten notes?