Letter writing, and the ritual we can wrap around it, can be a powerful practice for bringing clarity, healing, and closure to the part of an unresolved relationship that dwells within us.

This healing is accessible to our part of an unresolved relationship with a being separate from us, still walking this plane of existence or passed on to another.

This healing is also accessible with an earlier version of ourselves who is ready to be collected from a painful chapter in our story or a part of us (like our inner protector) calling for our leadership.

Write a letter.

We create the space for ourselves to put words to the pain we are carrying, pulling our truth out of our bodies and etching it onto a piece of the Earth. We will not be sending this letter, so we are freed from any resistance relating to how our truth could be received. For this moment we are gifting ourselves, we are safe to claim the fullness of our experience without repercussion. We say the words that are desperate to be spoken and longing to be heard.

Call them in.

While holding the letter, we close our eyes and imagine the purest form of the others’ soul, the version of them that is free of their own pain and softened to enlightenment. Invite that unspeaking part of them, who they were meant to be and who they will one day become in their final transition, to meet us here in this intention for healing.

We can go to that earlier version of ourselves that needs our love and collect them from their time and place, showing up as the mother we always needed and freeing them from their captivity.

We can project a part of us whose well-intentioned service is working against our well-being outward for communion.

Read it aloud.

As our voice gives life to the truth of our experience and the validity of our feelings, the universe is bearing witness. We are seen, acknowledged, and received. The trees inhale our story and exhale life-giving oxygen for us to breathe. The soil is strengthened by the emotional charge of our release and increases the stability beneath our feet. The birds hear our pain as a song of mutual understanding and take flight as a show of lightness they wish to share.

Burn it.

As the paper burns, we are releasing our attachment to it and it is releasing its hold over us. It is now completed, transformed, metabolized by Mother Nature, sent off on the wind to rest as healing resolution with the soul of the other.

Write a letter from them.

The most powerful experience I encounter holding this ritual is actually in writing a letter from the other to ourselves. In their authentic voice, but from an expanded perspective and highest version of their soul, we can give ourselves everything we need to heal, integrate, and move forward.

In the grief after my mother’s death, a letter I wrote from her to me healed so much (four lines that each began with, “I’m sorry . . .”). The body, where our pain lives, believes the circle has closed when we physically and tangibly move through the ritual of healing.