A LIFE IN LETTERS

Beaman, an executive coach, speaker, educator, and author, offers an examination of the lost (and found) art of letter-writing with a personal twist.

As the author encourages composing missives to others, she presents a collection of her own letters, written and not sent, which have had many different purposes. The messages are addressed to a variety of recipients—including Beaman’s future self, her parents, her brother, her son, her grandchildren, and even an elephant she remembers from a childhood zoo visit. She also writes to celebrities who were influential in her life, including Jane Fonda, whose inspirational exercise class she attended. As one might expect, the letters also feature Beaman’s plentiful reflections on her own life, and her many accomplishments after a hardscrabble beginning as the daughter of teenage parents. Her epistolary reflections also address pain—particularly in messages addressed to her father, in which she calls him to account for “the barbs, the insults, and the jabs that you masqueraded as jokes,” and her troubled brother (“For all of our lives together, I believed I had a brother who was mean, twisted, and evil”). Yet each entry is followed by lined spaces for readers to compose their own communications, making clear that her messages are intended to enlighten others. The book ends with a guide to letter-writing, and a link to the author’s work as a “letter doula.” Overall, this guide will appeal to many, although for some, the appeal will lie in the anecdotes themselves, rather than the author’s broader reflections on the roles that letters play in people’s lives. The book has a few flaws, as well; the intended recipient of each letter is not always immediately clear, for example, and including a handwritten letter or two might have been helpful to give readers a sense of the joy and significance of a handwritten message.

A highly readable collection that may inspire similar work by others.