LEAVING LETTERS

postcards from readers

The Leaving Season Postcard Project was born out of my love for postcards and a suspicion that we are all leaving things, all the time.

After a reading at Chicago’s incredible Bookends & Beginnings bookshop, a woman reached for my hand and looked me straight in the eye and said, “It took me 25 years.” Her silver hair was piled on her head, her mouth a soft, straight line. She was telling me a secret, a truth. I know immediately the “it” she meant was her own leaving. I felt every second of those 25 years in the strong and steady grasp of her hand. Hold her truth for a moment: 25 years. We stood that way, holding hands in the basement of a bookstore, for a few quiet moments. And then she held The Leaving Season to her chest and walked away.

At book events, anniversary parties, PTA lunches, and middle school sports games, people tell me their leaving stories in this way. I wanted a way to collect them, to share them—I also wanted people to have a way to write their own leaving story. So, I designed a postcard with a prompt: A time I left, or wanted to, knowing that leaving is a process, a verb that sometimes has no end. Then I took out a PO Box.

Amazingly, people started sending me postcards! The longing, strength, power, and mourning in these cards has been so stunning. The compact size, the option of anonymity, the intimacy of an individual’s handwriting: all work together for an intensity and beauty that shocks me every time I open box #122.

Some people use my postcard. Others send me postcards of their own. People write about leaving relationships, religion, places, beliefs. Most people write about what they’ve left, though some are still in process. Some postcards are signed, others anonymous. When I collect them from my box, I usually read them immediately, sitting in my car, taking in each person’s words and imagining them sitting next to me in my passenger seat, telling me their story. Telling you.

Every other week or so, I’ll share a postcard with readers here. If you’d like to send me one, please check out this link for instructions.

Want to be part of The Leaving Season Postcard Project? Or use the postcards in your classroom or bookclub? Send me a note!

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Buy The Leaving Season here and in paperback here, Welcome to Shirley here, Wanting: Women Writing About Desire here, and This is the Place: Women Writing About Home here.