Every Sunday, my grandmother would sit down with a pen and a notebook and write out prayer requests for our family.
Not a list. Not a quick scribble. She'd write out who needed prayer, and next to each name, she'd write why. What we were happy about. What we were struggling with. What season of life we were walking through. She kept a record of us — not just the big things, but the quiet things. The things you forget you were feeling until someone reads them back to you.
And that was the part I loved most.
The following year, if something was significant, she'd read it back to us. Out loud. Where we were then. Where we were now. The distance between those two versions of ourselves — that was always the part that made someone cry. Not because the prayer was answered the way we expected. Sometimes it wasn't. But because she had kept it. She had written it down when we were too close to see clearly, and she held it for us until we were ready to look back.
She was the record keeper of our family's heart. And she did it with a pen and a notebook every single week.
I didn't understand the power of that until I was older. Until I started wishing I had more of her handwriting. More of her words. More proof of the ordinary Sundays that turned out to be the ones that mattered most.
That's the thing about handwriting — it disappears. Not all at once. But slowly, as the people who wrote it leave us, we realize that their words on paper are some of the most irreplaceable things they left behind. You can't screenshot your grandmother's penmanship. You can't recreate the way she crossed her t's or the way her lines tilted slightly uphill, like even her handwriting was optimistic.
Once it's gone, it's gone.
Why I Believe in Letters
I think about this a lot — especially now, running a brand built entirely around the idea that some things should be kept.
We live in a world that communicates in texts and DMs and voice memos that auto-delete. We send "I love you" in a blue bubble and move on. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it means that the record of how we felt — really felt — during the most important seasons of our lives often doesn't exist in any permanent form.
Engagement season is one of those seasons.
It's a strange, beautiful, overwhelming time. You're planning the biggest event you've ever hosted. You're fielding opinions from everyone you've ever met. You're toggling between dress appointments and seating charts and "are we really doing this?" moments at 11pm on a Tuesday. And underneath all of it, you're in love with someone in a way that's still shaping itself — still becoming the thing it will be for the rest of your life.
That version of you deserves to be recorded. Not in a highlight reel. Not in a caption. In your own words, in your own handwriting, on a piece of paper that will still exist in fifty years.
The Ritual
Here's what I'd love for you to try.
Once a year — starting now, during your engagement season — sit down separately and write each other a letter.
Not together. Not at the same time. Just whenever the moment feels right. Maybe on a Sunday morning before the week takes over. Maybe late at night when the house is quiet and you're thinking about everything that's ahead.
Write what you're feeling. What you're happy about. What scares you a little. What you hope your life together looks like in five years, ten years, thirty years. Write what you already know about this person — the thing that made you say yes. Write the small stuff too. What you had for dinner last night. What song has been stuck in your head. What you argued about this week and how you came back to each other.
Don't edit it. Don't rewrite it. Don't worry about whether it sounds good. That's not the point. The point is honesty — a snapshot of exactly who you are in this moment, preserved in ink.
Seal it. Put it somewhere safe. And don't open it until your next anniversary.
Then do it again.
The Long Game
Year one, you'll have one letter each. Two sealed envelopes and a promise to wait.
Year five, you'll have five. A small stack that's starting to feel like something.
Year ten, the paper will be yellowing slightly. Your handwriting might be different. The things you worried about in year two will seem so small from where you're standing now.
Year twenty, you'll have a collection. Twenty letters from twenty versions of the person you married — and twenty letters from twenty versions of yourself. Some will make you laugh. Some will make you cry. Some will remind you of seasons you forgot you survived.
And one day — maybe when you're cleaning out a closet or moving to a smaller house or sitting with your kids at the kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon — someone will find them. A box of letters in your handwriting, spanning decades. They'll read your words and know exactly who you were when you were just getting started. They'll see the way your love grew, changed, deepened, and held. Not because you told them about it. Because you wrote it down.
That's not stationery. That's a legacy.
Starting Yours
My grandmother didn't know she was creating heirlooms every Sunday. She was just doing what felt right — keeping a record of the people she loved in the only permanent way she knew how.
You can do the same thing. One letter. Once a year. Sealed and kept somewhere beautiful — somewhere it won't get lost in a junk drawer or buried under takeout menus.
Start this Sunday. It takes ten minutes. And I promise you — the version of you who opens that letter a year from now will be so grateful that the version of you who wrote it took the time to be honest on paper.
Some things are meant to be kept.
Your words to each other are one of them.
— Holly
