It’s been a long time since I sent a love letter to somebody I loved. Because the thing is, sending a love letter requires what seems to me to be a perfect storm of lucky circumstances. For one thing, you’ve got to have somebody you really want to send the love letter to. Sure, family and friends always enjoy receiving a kind word, and it can feel mighty good to make someone’s day like that. But what I’m talking about — a real, true-blue love letter — is where you express your feelings on paper to the person you’re absolutely crazy about, the person you hope against hope is going to return even a fraction of those feelings of love, right back at you. So that’s the first thing: just having that kind of special person in your life whose soul you long to know, just as badly as you want to bare your soul to them. But the other, equally important thing a love letter requires is courage. The courage to write it, the courage to see your feelings laid bare on the page, and, of course, the courage to risk the uncertainty of how your love letter (your soul on a silver platter, that is) will be received. Will it be sent back cold, a dish that your beloved decided wasn’t appetizing or worthy enough to eat? Or, will it be received silently and with a sphynx’s mask of total unknowability? I would imagine that another reaction is possible, if not exactly probable: the one that lets the writer of the love letter know that her words were received joyfully and appreciatively, and with the kind of loving energy that actually deepens the relationship in love. Sigh! But would you settle for the heart-boosting benefit of your love letter simply calming all the nervous energy knocking around your still-beating heart? ❤️‍🔥—Y.B.D.