⚠️ Note: In today’s world, sharing your address with a stranger can carry risks. While pen-palling worked out beautifully for me, always use caution when seeking a pen pal online or sharing your address. Start through trusted communities or moderated groups if you’re new. ⚠️
I’ve always been someone who connects best through words. I’m a Libra to my core—if we’re believing in astrology—and the thing about Libras is that we crave connection and balance. I’d call myself an ambivert: not fully extroverted, but not introverted either. I love people… but sometimes I love them most when I can write to them from the comfort of my own space, pen in hand, letting my thoughts flow at my own pace.
At the end of high school, around 2014, I was finally allowed on social media—Tumblr, specifically (shoutout to my dad for delaying that chaos; I hated it then, but I get it now). If you weren’t there, Tumblr was the chaotic, artsy, fandom-heavy platform that functioned like a moodboard-meets-journal-meets-forum. It’s where people shared their obsessions and aesthetics, one reblog at a time.
Around this time, I was really into doodling, stickers, and all things papercraft. I had a solid group of friends IRL, but I felt this tug to connect beyond my bubble—to share words and art with someone new, someone out there in the world who just got me.
So naturally, I searched Tumblr for pen pal communities. Yes, they existed. Yes, they were magical. People were matching others based on age, interests, gender, aesthetic… it felt like a cozy matchmaking service for letter nerds.
That’s when I met Mariah.
She was a couple years older than me and lived in Tennessee. I was still in Ohio. We started messaging and quickly agreed to take our friendship offline and into the world of snail mail. We exchanged addresses, decorated our first envelopes with washi tape and doodles, and the rest is history.
There’s something sacred about getting to know someone through handwritten letters. It slows everything down. You get to see their handwriting, their quirks, their humor, their mood—all in pen. And it wasn’t just the words. We sent stickers, playlists, poems, tiny gifts, chaotic scribbles, little zines, and pages that smelled like lavender or vanilla-scented markers. It was fandom girlhood and cozy-core creativity wrapped in a forever stamp.
For a while, we were each other’s favorite part of the week. And then came the idea that changed everything: What if we met?
Mariah made the road trip from Tennessee to Ohio, and that summer in 2014 became the start of the deepest friendship I’ve ever had. After that, we saw each other once a year—pre-COVID, anyway—and every visit was a girly pop sleepover vacation dream.
Even now, a decade later, we’re still best friends. Yes, we text (we’re not that analog), but our primary form of communication is still letters. Writing them feels like breathing. It’s therapeutic and creative. It’s a break from screen time. And it’s ours.
For those who don’t know: pen-palling is far from dead. If anything, it’s making a comeback. In a world overloaded with doomscrolling and digital noise, writing letters feels radical. Nerdy, even. There are entire subreddits, websites, and zine communities dedicated to it. It’s a tactile, low-tech, snail-paced rebellion—and a deeply creative one at that.
You can design your own stationery, draw on envelopes, swap book recs, make tiny collages, include poetry or fanfiction or even pressed flowers from your yard. You can share fandom art or playlists or mood boards and pour your soul onto paper.
Do I still send bedazzled masterpieces like I did at 17? Not every time. Life’s busier now, and sometimes it’s just a quick update scribbled between college deadlines and laundry day. But the joy hasn’t faded. Mariah and I are still trading pages, still decorating the corners of envelopes, still sending each other love with stamps and ink and tape
So if you’ve ever thought about picking up a pen and writing to someone just because—it might just change your life. It did for me.
