Not many books stand out for showing how therapeutic letter-writing can be. The three below are therefore notable.
As with therapy, each letter you write has at least one targeted audience that you hope or believe will hear your concerns or thoughts. Different from therapy, words are likely more carefully constructed, involving considerable internal processing before they even reach the listener.
I. The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans (2025)
This bestselling epistolary novel features lifelong letter-writing Sybil, in her 70’s. Publishers Weekly: “The charming debut from Evans takes the form of letters and emails exchanged by a divorced and retired woman with her friends, family, foes, and literary idols…As the years go on, Sybil’s relationships brim with tension waiting to be released, and the detailed connections between each character are brilliantly mapped through the correspondence. It adds up to an appealing family drama.”
II. Letters to a Young Therapist by Mary Pipher (revised in 2016)
First published in the early 2000’s, clinician Pipher directed her letters to a fictional psychology grad student. Of course, the effect was that a much wider audience was reached, one that wasn’t just therapists. Author Carol Bly (1930-2007): “Mary Pipher’s tidy, cordial book is so crammed with spunk and wide-ranging wisdom. I wish it were required reading for all three branches of government. Pipher has done what we want therapists to do—she’s shared with us her love of life and hatred of cruelty and her hope for all of us.”
Selected quotes from Letters to a Young Therapist:
If the secret of successful real estate is location, location, location, the secret of our work is connection, connection, connection.
Good therapists have a tolerance for ambiguity. The human condition is variegated, multifaceted, and particular. There is no one-size-fits-all way to proceed. In the end, the answer to most questions is, “It depends.”
Most of the craziness in the world—violence, addictions, and frenetic activity—comes from running from pain.
Unlike cops, landlords, or bar owners, therapists tend to grow fonder of humans the longer they are in our field. That’s because we come to understand the world from the point of view of others. We see that most people want to be good.
In all of us, the potential to be good is there, if only someone will take the time to help us discover it and make it bloom.
III. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed (first published 2012, reissued 2022)
Strayed, a former advice columnist, now writes a popular Substack newsletter. Both the TV series adaptation of Tiny Beautiful Things and the movie Wild, based on another of her books, have been covered here previously (click the respective links).
Viv Groskop, The Guardian, describes how “Dear Sugar” evolved back in the day: “Her (now discontinued) column went viral after a reader asked a simple question: ‘Dear Sugar, WTF? WTF? WTF? I’m asking this question as it applies to everything every day.’ Sugar’s reply was extraordinary. Breezily, matter of factly, and without a trace of self-pity, she wrote back referencing the fact that she was sexually abused by her grandfather as a child. Her message? Get over yourself. ‘Ask better questions. The fuck is your life. Answer it’.”
Down to earth, caring, compassionate, wise, and funny, the letter-writing from Strayed, her responses to readers’ questions, was therapeutic not only for them but for her.
