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Marriage & Love7/12#07 / 57

The letters she never sent saved her marriage

Connection Regret·All ages

Antoinette is eighty-one. When anger at her husband boiled over, she sat down and wrote long letters — every complaint, every insult. Then she put them in a drawer. The next morning she read them again and, almost every time, threw them away. "Half of it was my exhaustion," she said. "The other half was a story I had written by myself." A letter becomes an invoice when sent, and medicine when burned.

When I became terribly upset, I would sit down and write long letters to my husband, put them aside, read them the next day — and then throw them away.

— Antoinette, 81

TODAY’S PRACTICE

Write the letter tonight, read it tomorrow morning, then throw it away.

#WriteItDown#SleepOnIt#Anger

SOURCE

Cornell Legacy Project interview

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