Now Is the Write Time: Lasting Letters with Frish Brandt at Tumbleweed Found

Frish Brandt—Letter Midwife and founder of Lasting Letters—leads "I Miss You," a guided letter-writing workshop at Tumbleweed Found on July 11th, 10 to noon. Slow down, reflect, and write the words you've been needing to say. Registration is limited.

I've come to believe that the technologies we adopt most eagerly are the ones that promise to save us time, and that the things we lose in the bargain are almost always the things that needed time to begin with. Letter writing is the clearest example I can think of. It is slow, effortful, and gloriously inefficient. You cannot skim a letter while writing it. You cannot half-write it the way you half-listen to a podcast on 1.5x speed. It demands the one resource our entire information economy is engineered to extract from us: undivided attention.

Frish Brandt calls letter writing "what slow cooking is to fast food," and I think that comparison is more precise than it first appears. Fast food isn't bad because it's quick. It's bad because the speed is the point, and everything else—nourishment, gathering, ritual—gets optimized away. We've done something similar to communication. We've made it instant, frictionless, and constant, and in the process we've nearly eliminated the kind of message you sit with for an hour because you're trying to find the exact right words for something that actually matters.

On Saturday, July 11th, from 10 to noon, Brandt is leading a workshop at Tumbleweed Found built entirely around that kind of message. The theme is one of the most universal in human experience: I Miss You. Not the casual version we text a friend, but the real one—the words we never found the right moment to say, the letter to a parent or a child or a former partner, to a mentor, an ancestor, or a version of ourselves we left behind somewhere along the way. Through reflection, conversation, and gentle prompts, she guides participants toward a letter they've been wanting, or needing, to write.

What strikes me about Brandt's path to this work is that it didn't begin in a writing studio. It began in hospice and palliative care. She spent forty-five years in the arts, including directing San Francisco's Fraenkel Gallery, and then turned toward helping people say the things that are hardest to leave unsaid. She calls herself a "Letter Midwife," and she's helped deliver more than 700 letters. She teaches the art of deep listening at Stanford Medical School and has led workshops everywhere from the de Young Museum to Harvard Divinity School. Her book, Unfinished Business: Writing the 5 Essential Letters of Your Life, arrives October 27th and will be available at Tumbleweed Found.

There's research suggesting that gratitude letters, even ones never sent, measurably improve well-being. But I'd resist reducing this to a wellness intervention. Some things are worth doing because they're true, not because they're optimal. Writing in the company of others, Brandt notes, can surface insights you didn't know you were carrying. Sharing is welcome but never required.

Space is limited; registration is $65 per person, non-refundable. To reserve a spot, contact Dana at Tumbleweed Found at (831) 419-3130. More about Frish at Lasting Letters.

Now is the right time to write.