This year, Mimi challenges us to "Speak Love." To embrace and enhance and nurture love with "your families, yourselves, your communities, OUR WORLD."
So I'm taking this opportunity to give a shout out to Letters Against Isolation. This organization is all about the positive power of the handwritten word and how it can help alleviate loneliness. Every week I create little cards that will be tucked into a Meals on Wheels delivery or handed to a resident in a senior facility. I am sending a handwritten connection to a lonely person.
Loneliness is a thief. According to the Cleveland Clinic, it can rob you of your health – increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure. According to Mental Health America, it can rob you of your happiness – often sparking anxiety, depression and substance abuse.
So I'm using the written word to Speak Love. LAI is not a pen pal program. I'm corresponding with people who will never know my full name or address. It's just a simple moment we share, beginning with me at my dining room table writing and culminating with an isolated senior opening and reading my card, hopefully when they need to know they are not forgotten.
Find other peace bloggers here.
That is a great organization! I participate in Operation Christmas Child. You fill up a shoebox for a boy or girl. You pay the postage too. This could be the only gift a child gets for the whole year. My husband filled for a boy, and I filled for a girl 7-11 year old. It is nice to do something for someone else.
ReplyDeleteI am a firm believer in random acts. And peace.
ReplyDeleteThere's a similar thing over here in The Netherlands. Good causes.
ReplyDeletePeace to you ☮
So impactful! Imagine being the recipient of one of your letters on a lonely, dreary day. I can see them smiling and nodding as they read your kind words. You are a gem, my friend, and I am proud to know you. Thank you for sharing this with us on peace day. Just the thought of it certainly brought peace to me. You are a light in this world. PEACE
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of the cheer those little notes will bring to a lonely senior. Lovely. I try to thread compassion into my poems too, so the reader has something to take away with them. Words do matter.
ReplyDelete