Hannah Brencher - If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

Howard Books

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2015 by Hannah Brencher

Certain names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Howard Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Howard Books hardcover edition March 2015

HOWARD and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

Jacket Design and Lettering by Connie Gabbert

Front Jacket Background and Illustration by Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brencher, Hannah.

If you find this letter : my journey to find purpose through hundreds of letters to strangers / Hannah Brencher.

pages cm

1. Brencher, Hannah. 2. Letter writingBiography. 3. Love-letters. I. Title.

PN6140.L7B73 2015

808.86'93543dc23

[B]

2014028453

ISBN 978-1-4767-7360-5

ISBN 978-1-4767-7362-9 (ebook)

To Nate

For the stuff of angels, movements, and things bigger than this.

Interviewer: What is something you always carry with you?

Maya Angelou: Im a child of God. I carry that with me.

Note from the Author

T he names and identifying characteristics of the characters in the book have been changed, except for a few, to protect the guilty and the innocent. While all the actions within the book have happened, there are particular events that have been combined and reordered to maintain the books continuity. I tried my best to piece together events through research, conversations, digital evidence, and journals. There are undoubtedly things Ive gotten wrong but all the situations remain true, to the best of my memory.

Dear Reader

E verything about your narrator is unreliable except for her heart.

I needed to say that first and get it out in the open before we go any further. Before you bunch up your hands into fists and strap on your extra-loud clomping boots so you can clomp-clomp-clomp all the way back to the bookstore and roar into the ear of the manager, Youuuu soldddd meeee a boooookkkk with annnn unreliablleeeee narrattttorrrrr! Rarrrr! No, he didnt, I told you first that I am unreliable.

Im unpredictable. I write poems in my head as I roll through Target. I live life in the clouds. And I will let you down. Because I am human. And thats what humans do. More often than we would like.

I built stories in my brain all throughout my childhood and I think its followed me well into adulthood. My mother is probably still clutching her face, aghast over the thought of people reading this, wondering if I will think to bust out the tale of the time she sent my brother down the river in a basket when he was just a newborn. I shared that story with my second- grade class. That was actually Moses, not my brother.

But my heart is good and golden. We wont be steered wrong as long as my heart leads.

Im going to be reliable in my writing to you. Faithful, in a way I never learned how to be when I had seventeen pen pals to my name from a single subscription of Girls Life magazine yet never thought to write to a single one of them. They wrote to me for a little while. They sent me glossy photos and I took them to school to show them off as sisters but I never picked up the pen to write back. I guess I felt I only had time in my life to receive the mail and pat myself on the back for collecting pretty friends from Kansas and Kentucky like trading cards.

But this time will be different. I am going to sit down and write to you in a start-to-finish kind of way, as if this whole thing were a love letter that I am hoping you will find. And I am praying, if you find this letter, it will be words youve needed for a long while. Whether youve struggled with loneliness. Or worthlessness. Or connection in a disconnected world. This story is for you. Its written for anyone whos been afraid to turn off their phone at night or say goodbye come morning. To the winners. And the losers. And above all, the dreamers. For the ones with yellow roses on their countertops and strong caffeinated drinks in their hands. For the ones who still miss Whitney Houston or struggle at night over the reasons why theyre here. This book is for anyone who has ever believed their smallness could not serve others. For anyone who grapples to fit within a world that doesnt always hold them so dearly.

Truth be told, I never imagined you and I would meet like this. Not a fold or crook of this story was ever one I imagined others would find or retell to their friends. I only envisioned myself with swooping hands, one day telling babies with the same sunshine red ringlets as me, One day in New York City, your mama started writing love letters to strangers. She would leave them behind wherever she went. She liked it so much that she decided never to stop. Others joined her and they, too, liked it so much that they decided never to stop.

I thought this would only be a story to show those children of mine how much human hands do matter. Within a world that is always talking too loudly about what it means to matter, I wanted this entire story to tell them the truth of it: that they will matter when the sun is up and when it is down. When there is sunburn on their shoulders or when their shoes no longer fit. Or their luggage never arrives. Or they come back from Paris with a ramshackle heart and one less body beside them. I wanted this story to convince them that they matter, always, and that the point has never been to know it but just to accept it.

Yes, this was supposed to be the story they could carry with them when they could hold me no longer. But now youre here. You picked me up somewhere. Somehow, youve found me. I have to believe theres a reason for that.

Tying you closer than most,

hb

Section 1

Make Me Come Undone

Sticky Love

T he day I moved to New York City is way more poetic in my memory than it actually was. My mother would tell you the air was dry that morning and we didnt talk the whole car ride to the train station. I tend to exaggerate the whole thing and say I witnessed the birds chirping and the mailboxes waving good-bye with their little red flags as we rolled through New Haven, Connecticut, to get to the station. She would tell you I left stray bobby pins in the corners of my bedroom. I would say I packed everything I needed that daydreams tucked beside cardigans and wishes packed up against rain boots.

Thats always been my downfall, the thing my mother always calls me out on. I romanticize things. I insert heartbreak where there shouldnt be any. I feel things too deeply. I hold on much longer than I should. All of life has always been one big book of poems to me. I think every person is a living poemfrom their hopeful heart to their ugly habits. Life is just too busy to ever stop and dwell on one thing for too long.

In actuality, the back wheel to one of my suitcases broke and everything was off balance after that. The wheelless luggage taunted me from the backseat as my mother and I took exit 1 off the highway and approached the New Haven train station.