This too shall pass is the kind of sentence people say to you when they don't know what else to say. It is, on a long enough timeline, true. It's also not particularly useful in the moment, because in the moment what you actually want is not a slogan. You want evidence. You want to hear from someone who has been in a comparable spot and made it out the other side.
The most useful version of that someone is you.
You have already survived things. Plural. You have lived through stretches of your life that, while you were inside them, felt like they were never going to end. Then they ended. You probably don't remember the specifics of how. You remember the fact of them — yeah, I got through that bad year — but the texture is gone. The day-to-day of how exactly you survived has been quietly archived somewhere your brain can't readily reach.
That's a problem, because the next time something comparable happens — and it will, that's how being a person works — you'll be in the same boat you were in last time. Looking for evidence that you can do this. Reaching for proof. And the proof is sitting in your own past, locked behind the fact that you never wrote it down.
This is the letter that fixes that.
What this letter actually is
It's a letter from the version of you who survived something, to the version of you who's going to need to know that surviving is possible, written while it's still close enough to be honest.
The “still close enough” part matters. Letters written years after the fact tend to be sanitized — you've already turned the experience into a story, with a moral, that you tell at parties when it comes up. The grit is gone. What you need is the version written before you had time to make sense of it. The version where you still remember what the actual middle of it felt like.
Most people only write this letter retrospectively, decades later, when the original texture is unrecoverable. That version is fine but it's a different letter — it's reflection, not testimony.
The testimony version, written within a few months or a year of getting through the thing, is the one that does the work. That's the one you'll want when the next thing happens.
What “survived” means here
It doesn't have to be a capital-S Survival story. We're not in trauma-narrative territory. Survived in this sense just means: lived through something you weren't sure you'd live through, in whatever sense of “live through” applies.
That includes:
- A job you didn't think you could keep that you somehow kept
- A breakup that felt like the end of the world that turned out not to be the end of the world
- A diagnosis that scared you, that you've now been managing for years
- A move that should have broken you that didn't
- A year you'd describe as the year everything was hard
- A friendship ending that you didn't think you'd recover from
- A financial situation that made you question your competence as an adult
- A stretch of mental health weather you weren't sure you'd come back from
- A loss that you genuinely could not see how you'd live around, until you did
You'll notice all of these are unglamorous, and none of them sound like the kind of thing a brand asks you to write about. That's the point. The mundane survivals are the ones most worth documenting, because the next ones are going to be similarly unglamorous, and you'll want to hear from a version of yourself who knew that.
How to write it
There's no formula. The honest shape that tends to work:
Date it from the inside. Write the letter as someone still close enough to remember. Not “a few years ago I went through this.” More like “I'm writing this six months after the worst of it, which means I still remember things you've probably forgotten.”
Describe what it actually felt like. Specific. Sensory if you can. Not “it was hard.” More like “I couldn't sleep through the night for about four months. I kept setting alarms I didn't need to set. I lost my appetite in a specific way that wasn't about food.” Concrete beats poetic. Always.
Say what you thought it meant. While you were in it. The catastrophizing. The fear about what this said about you. The certainty that you'd be marked by this forever. Write it in the actual voice you had at the time, not the voice you have now. “I thought I was the kind of person who couldn't recover from this. I thought everyone could see it. I was sure I'd be doing this for years.”
Say what it actually was. The retrospective view. The thing you can see now that you couldn't see then. “Turns out it was about four months of acute and then a year of less acute. Turns out I was a more functional person during it than I felt. Turns out the people I thought were going to leave didn't.”
Say how it ended. Not the moral. The mechanics. “It got better in small increments and I missed most of them. There wasn't a single moment where it lifted. I just noticed one Tuesday that I'd had a normal week.”
Tell future you what to remember. Not advice. Just data. “Whatever you're going through now: it ended, last time. Probably more boringly than you're afraid it will. Probably without a single moment of catharsis. Just gradual, until it was over.”
Don't make it inspirational. This is the most important note. The temptation is to wrap the letter up in a hopeful bow because that's the genre. Resist it. The most useful version of this letter is the one that sounds like a friend who's been there, not a TED talk. Future you will not need to be inspired. Future you will need to be believed.
A few prompts if you don't know where to start
Pick the year you'd least like to live again. Write the letter to future you about that year — without making it a horror story. Just: what was actually true. What you actually did. How it actually ended.
Pick the moment you were sure something was unrecoverable. Describe it. Then describe how recovery looked, which was probably nothing like you imagined.
Pick the hardest thing you've forgotten about. This is interesting. There's almost certainly something you've already moved past so completely that you've stopped giving yourself credit for surviving it. Write that letter. Future you will be very glad to hear about a survival they don't even remember happening.
Pick the thing you thought would break you that didn't. And honestly tell future you what the actual experience was. Not the highlight reel. The middle.
Pick the time you needed evidence that something was possible. And couldn't find it. Be the evidence now. For yourself.
When this letter is most useful to send forward
Most of the letters on this site are about milestones — birthdays, weddings, the day something hard arrives. This one is different. The recipient isn't necessarily future you on a specific date. The recipient is future you whenever the next comparable thing happens.
That's harder to date in advance. A few options:
- Send it to yourself for an arbitrary date a year or two out. It'll arrive when you're not expecting it, and it'll probably arrive at a useful time even if it doesn't perfectly coincide with a hard stretch. The letter has long shelf life. It's not time-sensitive in the way a wedding letter is.
- Send it to yourself for the anniversary of the thing you're writing about. Year one of after-it-ended is a particularly useful time to receive testimony from the version of you who was inside it.
- Send it forward for a date you suspect might be hard. If you know something difficult is on the horizon — a transition, a likely loss, a stretch you can see coming — schedule the survival letter to arrive in the rough window when you might need it.
You can't always predict when you'll need this letter. But sending it forward to yourself, even somewhat arbitrarily, gives the letter a chance to land at the right time. And if it arrives during a good stretch, all the better — reading evidence of your own past survival when you don't currently need it is its own quiet thing.
The mechanics, briefly
You write a letter — typed or handwritten — and we mail it back to you, sealed, on the date you choose.
- $9 — write digitally, we print, seal, and mail it to you on your date
- $19 — write it by hand, mail it to us, we hold it safely, and mail it back when you scheduled it
One letter per purchase. Any custom date from one month to two years out. No subscription. No notification. Just a sealed envelope in your mailbox on a day you scheduled, when you might or might not be ready to hear from your past self about something hard you got through.
The actual reason to write this letter
There's a sentence buried in the brief for this kind of letter that's worth pulling out and looking at honestly.
This too shall pass is abstract. A letter from past you who actually passed through something is concrete.
That's the whole pitch. Slogans don't help when you're inside a hard thing. Affirmations don't help. Other people's advice — even good advice from people you love — doesn't quite reach the part of you that needs convincing.
The thing that reaches that part of you is evidence. Specifically, evidence from someone who has already done the impossible thing you're currently being asked to do, which is: get through this.
The most credible witness to your past survival is you.
You just have to write it down before you forget what it actually was.
A few questions people ask
What if I'm currently in the middle of the thing I'd write about?
You can still write it. In fact, the letter written from inside the thing — addressed to future you who's already on the other side of it — is one of the rawest, most useful versions. You don't have to be done with something to write the survival letter about it. You just have to be willing to be honest about where you are right now, on the assumption that future you will be glad to read it.
What if I'm not sure I've survived anything dramatic enough?
You have. Survival doesn't have to be dramatic. “Got through the year I was lonely in a new city” counts. “Got through the breakup that I thought defined me” counts. “Got through the job that quietly almost broke me” counts. The mundane survivals are actually the most useful ones to document, because the next thing you face is probably going to be similarly undramatic.
Should I share this letter with anyone else?
Probably not. This is one of the most personal kinds of letter — most of it won't make sense to anyone who wasn't living inside your head at the time. Keep it for yourself. If it eventually becomes part of a longer story you want to tell publicly, that's a future decision. For now, write it for the audience of one who'll need it.
Is this trauma writing? Should I be careful?
It can be, depending on what you're writing about. If sitting down to write the letter starts to feel like more than you want to be doing alone, that's a real signal — stop, save it for another day, or write a smaller, lighter version instead (the time you got through a hard week is a totally legitimate subject; you don't have to write about the worst thing). Writing is a wonderful private practice but it isn't a replacement for talking to someone when you need to. Honor that.
Why date it for an arbitrary future point?
Because you can't reliably predict when you'll need the letter. Future hard times don't get scheduled in advance. By sending the letter forward to yourself for some random Tuesday a year from now, you give it a chance to arrive in the right neighborhood of a moment when it might be useful — and if it arrives during a fine week, you get the bonus experience of reading your own testimony about a past hard thing while currently fine. That's its own pleasure.
Hold My Letter holds letters for you and mails them back as sealed envelopes on the date you choose. One-time purchase, single letter. No subscription. Just real mail, on a day you scheduled.