Written by J.J.

When did you last exchange letters with a friend? If it has been more than a year you may agree with columnists who say letter writing is dead. You may find further evidence for that theory in your mailbox. Today we receive just one personal letter every two months. But aren't letters are more than a personal good? Don't they stand for a culture that exercises handwritten language and pauses to express complex and intimate thoughts? Haven't they represented a history of love, scholarly discovery, and written memoirs? Emails and texts may be the fastest most convenient mode of exchange but I believe handwritten letters have special value and endurance.

There's always a faster way to reach someone else. Stagecoach and mailboat delivery was bound to give way to airmail and first class post which, today, yields to email and texts. But reaching someone is not communicating with them. Note the differences. Letters are unique. Texts and emails all look the same. Letters are personal carrying the scents, stamp, paper, envelope choices and script of the sender.   Emails and texts can be addressed to you alone or ten thousand other people. They are factual, instant, brief. Don't get me wrong. I love email and I'm warming to texts but letters show a special investment and exercise our minds in ways that digital communication neglects.

Digital communication has important implications for cognitive retention and development. A study in 2011 at the University of Washington determined that writing by hand stimulates large areas of the brain that are utilized for thinking, conveying language, and making memory. Hand writing also exercises fine motor skills and teaches the ability to recognize the wide variety of lettering representations found in personal penmanship. Typing messages and thoughts instead of forming the words by hand is a special concern for children or adults facing memory loss. The National Institute on Aging found that letter writing plays a role in aiding overall memory retention for adults. It may also motivate our grandchildren to continue using cursive. Many schools are dropping cursive education because it is no longer a requirement of core curriculum. That may have powerful consequences to a generation. Our hand/brain connection aids learning acquisition and memory.

Letters are important in emotional healing, as an expression of special thank you's, and in alleviating loneliness. They're used to promote cancer recovery and as a healing exercise in therapy.  People felt less depressed and had more positive effects after incorporating letter writing into their weekly routine the Mayo Clinic reported. Counselor Lillian Davis observes, "When someone has taken the time to actually write your name and address on an envelope it seems to reaffirm that you matter." Clinician and health coach John F Evans adds, "Letter writing can be therapeutic for the writer as well as the receiver, and it may be just the thing to help you change perspective." In letter writing, he explains, we "intentionally become conscious of another person and this awareness...influences word choice, word order, even the punctuation and sentence structure." For that reason Harvard Business School recently announced that handwritten letters are more important than ever! They convey permanence in a world of impermanence and express gratitude, appreciation, investment and remembrance "in a world where so much communication is merely utilitarian...  [handwritten letters] can show the people who matter to your life and business that they are important to you," they write.

San Francisco's snail mail social originator explains what motivates her to write letters.

It's hard to imagine what our world would be without handwritten letters. Gerald R Ford shared that thought in a handwritten letter from the late 1970's. "Letters have been important documents of history which are invaluable in reconstructing events or understanding people," he states. Can you imagine biography without the recovery and interpretation of personal letters? Would you be as interested to read lost emails or texts? Would those instant messages even be recoverable? Digital communication enables us to reach people so far away and so fast but what are we really communicating and would we want to read it more than once? It comes and, by simply deleting, it goes just as quickly. It takes with it our record of correspondence, and, eventually, our self reflective time, the ambition for the bigger concepts we once developed in letters, the deeper sharing we once mailed to friends and family, the romance we enjoyed in our meditation with a letter, and the scent or personal script of a lover or good friend that we enjoyed--letter in hand. Can we recover this lost art? I hope so.

If you'd like to re-energize your letter writing consider joining a pen pal group or checking out some of the many sites that promote the art. The Letter Writer's Alliance discusses all things hand written or, if you'd like to know what it's like to be in a pen pal exchange, explore profiles of modern pen pal relationships or experiences and delights found through those connections. Letter writing can effect social good through cause related campaigns or, as the video explains, when used as a springboard to inter-generational understanding.

Letters serve many important roles in our society and our lives. They're not just a "lost art" they're a foundation for well being, an important cognitive support, a tool for learning, and a bridge to the past and present. Consider starting a letter writing club of your own or send a letter to family and friends. Enjoy a simple reflective moment with pen and paper and reconnect with letter writing's satisfying benefits.

Update January 2016: This article in the LA Times discusses the healing benefits of writing that have been known since ancient times. Isn't it time to pick up that pen and send a friend a letter?

Update April 2016 GQ of Australia tells readers: "Even beyond the impact a handwritten letter can have, it also sends a powerful memo, whether the news is good or bad. “It immediately expresses your esteem for whoever you’re addressing it to, be it personal or work-related.”

Written by J.J.

Did you notice an increase in the number of greeting cards saying "Happy Grandparent's Day?" Grandparent's day, Sunday, September 7th, signifies the appreciation owed to grandparents for their role in stabilizing our families and communities. For many of America's children the day is as important as Mother's Day or Father's Day because grandparents are raising nearly 7% of America's kids. Do you have responsibility for a grandchild or do you know someone who does?

Grandparents have been raising their children's children throughout America's history. The practice is rooted in the country's historical experience with multi-generational family. Up until the early 20th century the idea was common. During the period just after World War 2, for instance, I know at least two people who were raised by grandparents and chances are that you do too. With the development of daycare and shifts in economic and social programs incidences dropped throughout the sixties to a low of 2% of America's children living in a household without either parent. As rising poverty, crime, divorce, out of marriage births, cuts to social programs, and longer, healthier lifespans surged in the mid eighties so did grandfamilies. Justice systems and child welfare programs began knocking on grandparents' doors when parents were absent or unfit and grown children left their kids with mom and dad when circumstances overwhelmed them. Grandparenting continued to rise in the 21st century with the highest annual spike occurring during the Recession between 2007 and 2008 according to Pew Research Trust.

"More grandparents than ever before are willing to take their grandchildren," Mary Jane Di Paolo, assistant director of Community Child Care Solutions in New Jersey, told USA Today in a recent article about grandparenting. In one of the article's profiles a grandfather in his 70's, who agreed to co-parent three grandchildren aged 9-16, confesses, "It is not what we had planned, but we stepped in and have no regrets whatsoever. Some may be bitter in this situation, but I wouldn't change it -- not a thing. They are a joy." Three grandchildren are typical of the family size inherited by grandparents according to an e-book, Child Welfare for the Twentieth First Century: A Handbook of Practices. 

It isn't easy raising a grandchild. There are often complicating factors such as challenges to personal health, difficulties trying to act on behalf of a child as a non parent, or problems coping with events that impacted the grandchild. Blogging about that complexity at Grandparents.com, author Amanda Long writes, "Questions of custody, financial assistance, school enrollment, housing, health care, and basic mental well-being for you and your grandchild strike at lightning speed in the midst of heart-breaking circumstances (death, substance abuse, divorce). All this at a time when you may be down-shifting into an easier pace of retirement. 'You will feel completely alone and overwhelmed,' says Pat [Owens, co-founder of Grandfamilies of America], 'I can't deny that.'" 

To alleviate pressure innovative support programs are springing up throughout the country. One, such as Boston's Grandfamilies House, profiled in this ABC news story, subsidizes housing for low income grandparents with financial responsibility for their grandchildren. In Ohio, Fairhill partners, a Kinship care support organization, also operates Kinship Village, a community of several properties they rent to grandparent/grandchildren families. In Rochester New York the award winning Kinship Care Resource Center offers local support to over 800 informal Kinship care relationships that are outside of the Foster Care system. Duet, in Arizona, provides support groups and respite care programs as well as legal guidance and general resources for grandfamilies. Writing about the progress at her website, Pat Owens recalls:

When Sharon [vice president of Grandfamilies of America] and I began our journey of becoming recycled parents many years ago, there were virtually no resources for us to access. In fact the bottom line was that the limited resources that were available, were not readily made available to those seeking them. We were routinely either ignored or seen as the enemy by the child welfare establishment. We have come from being the best last kept secret in American society to becoming a permanent part of legislative agendas in every state and in our federal legislative process.

You'll find a list of laws, state to state, current to 2012, that improve access and conditions for grandfamilies at the National Conference of State Legislators. CLASP, a policy action organization for low income families of all kinds, maintains a state by state resource database on policies and research.  Laws governing grandfamilies vary considerably from state to state.

Today a broad spectrum of grandparenting resources and information are available online. AARP's 2011 support manual, the Grandfamilies Guide, offers a range of basic information from where to find childcare to advice on how to cope with family problems. In it they also explain legal issues such as the differing rights grandparents have depending on whether they've adopted grandchildren or have custody, guardianship or some form of kinship care responsibility. Determining or establishing rights is an essential first step toward accessing support resources or taking such fundamental action such as enrolling a grandchild in school or securing medical help. If no legal relationship is established, the guide notes, grandparents have no right to withhold their grandchild if the parent wants the child back. Helpguide.org has an easy to use presentation of legal rights and financial support options for raising grandchildren. The Annie E Casey Foundation offers a simple overview of basic terms and facts.

The Annie E Casey Foundation, an organization dedicated to families and children, states that fewer than 12% of kin caregivers receive TANF help, federal financial help, but nearly all are eligible. Check websites for financial support information from a discussion of financial resources for low income grandfamilies to an overview of potential grandparenting family tax credits. Former President Clinton was raised by grandparents as was President Obama so it's fitting that USA.gov offers deep grandparenting family resources that include financial support available nationally and state to state. In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Clinton touched briefly on the financial reality his grandparents faced. "I was incredibly fortunate that I was born in a little town in Arkansas and raised by my grandparents largely and my great-uncle and -aunt when my widowed mother went off to become a nurse. And my grandparents were poor white Southerners, who as a class were among the most racially prejudiced people in the South, and they weren't...So I was raised in a different way," he said. There are no measures of the love and foundation available when grandparents open their lives to grandchildren but statistics reveal that many of those families live near poverty levels where stresses about money compound their new role.

Society is increasingly aware of how grandfamilies anchor our children but there's less understanding of how grandparenting benefits community. According to a report from Canada, grandparents save the Canadian government 2.8 billion dollars annually by assuming care of their grandchildren. In America last year that annual figure spilled over $6 billion. Grandparents contribute to community by acting as a safety net between their grandchildren and the formal foster care system or as healers and guides to children whose difficult life circumstances prompt a family shift. Despite record increases in grandparents raising grandchildren and the millions of children whose lives they shape little information is available on child outcomes or community benefit.

Grandparents are making a difference in the lives of family and communities across our nation by answering the call to start again. Trends in grandfamilies continue to increase while support networks slowly grow. Society is trying to do more to value grandfamilies yet every parent knows that a child's love is the truest measure. If you're the anchor in your grandchild's life I hope you took a moment, on September 7th, to take care of yourself. I hope you spent the day knowing that all you do for your grandchild is making your family and your world a better place. If you know a grandparent raising grandchildren please take a moment to offer them your love and support.

Update Feb 25 2015: new research is out suggests that caring for grandchildren lowers the risk of Dementia.

Update 2016: A PBS Newshour focus on Grandparenting quotes Generations United as stating "there is no comprehensive framework to keep these kinship families stable."

Update 2016: The Hechinger Report focuses on how America's opiod epidemic is creating a new wave of grandparenting.