Announcing Lit Lib Pen Pal Club!
Who doesn't love having a pen pal? Sign up for a year of correspondence and help fund our various projects at the same time!
This will be a project in conjunction with A Home Within Myself and Raising Mothers. For those of you who know Mother Mail, I’m bringing my baby back with a twist. For those who don’t, Mother Mail was originally called The Great Postcard Swap, a snail-mail event I put together when I first moved to Europe a decade and a half ago. It was an effort to combat my sudden loneliness and not having my friends IRL anymore. From this activity, I made some wonderful new friends that I’m still friends with to this day.
Once I started Raising Mothers, I got the itch to do something for parents. I wanted to comfort mothers who might feel detached from the world and could look forward to a small token of acknowledgment at least once a month from someone. Enter Mother Mail—a penpal group for moms.
Now, I’m bringing it back for a limited time. And it’s rebranded. Lit Lib Pen Pal Club can be lots of fun if we all do our part.
Details
Membership:
$25 for free Substack subscribers
$20 for paid Substack subscribers
This helps to cover the labor costs and to create a fund for various things: buying stamps, offsetting the costs of mini workshops, etc.
Not a member yet? No worries! You can fix that by signing up here:
You’ll get two addresses: one for the first 6 months, and a new address for the second half of the year. Depending on how many sign up, you will likely receive both addresses at the same time. Preferably, I’d like a maximum of 50 participants for this first run.
There will be one window to join: August 1-31, 2024.
You should make sure to send some form of correspondence every month to your penpal via snail mail. Originally this was a postcard swap between mothers, and while I would like to still honor its beginnings, I am expanding its reach to anyone belonging to any of my communities. For general issues of safety, I ask that only women, femmes and nonbinary people sign up. The point of this exchange was always to encourage another parent, but this can also include encouraging other writers.
I will occasionally write posts with themed suggestions you might want to source ideas from. I will also host 4-6 penpal write-ins where we can sit and write letters or craft together. I believe very much in the power of handwritten letters and notes and I love nothing more than being able to share that with everyone.
You can DM me or ask questions in the comments and I’ll create a FAQ based on those questions.
I handpick each match so it can take some time. The goal is to email everyone their matches by mid September.
Love this! I'm in!