Letters to My Life
Audiobook
This companion is an invitation. It holds photographs from the letters, words that carried me, and prompts to carry you into your own.
My antidote to writer's block is writing a letter.
Letters to My Life began as a daily practice of noticing. Noticing who I was, who I came from, what places shaped me, and what invisible forces I danced with. This companion gathers the photographs that live with those letters, the lines that shook something loose in me as I wrote, and a set of prompts to help you begin your own journey.
As you listen, I invite you to reflect on your relationships to the people, places, and things in your life that made you who you are today — and to put pen to paper. All you need is a letter and the permission to be honest. That's enough.
The people who made me.
Baby Jen in a bucket on Joslin Lake. Omi in 1950. Dziadzia and Basia falling in love. Dad at spring break in Florida. A sister, a brother, a best friend. The whole constellation.
deserves a letter?
Every place that held me became a home in my heart.
Michigan summers, Mackinac Island, a swim in the Amstel Canal, sea kayaking in Fiji, the last night in Chicago, the magic of Hawai'i. Each place left its shape on me.
Lines from the letters worth returning to.
These are the moments where the pen caught something true. They're yours to sit with, share, or write your own response to.
Life's so much grander than that of the brown bucket you float in. The saying goes, "Sink or swim" — but what about floating along and following the fun?
We'd smirk and turn into giggle pots — and I'd be grateful you were in the right lane, driving 25 in the 35. You taught me mindfulness, appreciation, the importance of saying "thank you," and the grace of a sweet treat of ice cream on a hard day.
Grit is still part of my journey on my nonlinear less conventional path — but it brings me happiness. I trust that would make you proud, too.
I want to feel more connected and closer to you. I don't want us to feel like mere "spectators" in each other's lives.
Around you, judgment fades away, unveiling a season of surrender to the essence of who we are. Thank you, sister, for loving me as I am.
Even in the uncertainty of the future, I am certain of your capability to handle whatever comes your way.
It's simply not time for us to thrive together, but we'll tango from time to time. Our fuller dance might come later. It brings me peace, knowing that we're not done with each other and that there's more to our story waiting to be written.
The world works in wild, magical ways where fired neurons in my noggin turn into ideas transcribed into letters in blue ink of words on pages of paper bound up as your container. The process feels sacred and mystical, like a chrysalis between a caterpillar transforming into a beautiful butterfly.
Joy, you are both the warmth of a cherished memory and the excitement of untapped possibility. You bridge the past and the future, creating a continuum of joy that flows through my life.
Nostalgia, you acknowledge my past experience with peace and permission to transform on the road ahead.
You dress me in a cloak of bravery that dives into the unknown daily. Similar to when I have butterflies in my stomach before every single swim meet I race in, they ease up and fly away after I take the cold plunge and dive in.
My creations are not striving to be perfect. They are created by me, Jennifer Lee Vermet. I am human. And humans are flawed and fallible.
I'd rather face the moments, minutes, months of sadness you bring than live with the regret of never trying at all. At least I had the courage to show up, and I will never regret that.
Nobody wants to live by compulsion. I want to live with intention. In the pursuit of intentional living, attention is devotion.
A map of the collection.
Where will you begin?
These prompts are drawn from the themes across all 28 letters. You don't need to write them in order, or all at once. Write the one that tugs at you first.
- Write to a younger version of yourself. What do you want them to know? What are you proud of? What would you do differently?
- Write to someone you've lost — to death, distance, or the passage of time. What didn't you get to say?
- Write to a parent, sibling, or friend and name the specific things — the small, daily things — that you're grateful for.
- Write to a future version of yourself. What advice does your 80-year-old self have? What would she want you to stop worrying about?
- Write to someone who showed you what a meaningful life looks like, even if they never meant to.
- Write to a place you're from — not the whole place, but a specific corner of it. What did it give you that you carry still?
- Write to a place you left before you were ready. What remains unfinished between you?
- Write to a place that changed you. When did you arrive? Who were you when you left?
- Write to a place you've never been but have imagined. What do you hope it will give you?
- Write to the home you're building right now — wherever that is.
- Write to an emotion you're currently living with. Anxiety, longing, hope, grief, restlessness — address it directly. What does it want? What do you want to say back?
- Write to a habit or practice that has shaped you. What has it given you? What has it asked of you?
- Write to something you've stopped doing that mattered. Why did you stop? Do you want to return?
- Write to Joy. When did you first meet? When do you find each other most easily?
- Write to Resistance. Acknowledge it. What is it pointing toward?
- Write to an object — a journal, a piece of clothing, a photograph, a gift — that carries memory.
- Write to a version of yourself you've outgrown. Thank her. Release her.
- Write to something you've been avoiding. What are you afraid it will say back?
- Write to your ambition — and separately, to your expectations. Are they the same? Where do they diverge?
- Write to the life you almost lived. No regrets — just curiosity. What did it look like?
Open your letter template
A Google Doc opens instantly with your metadata filled in — Date, Place, Time, Feeling — so all you have to do is show up and write.
✍️ Start writing my letterOpens directly in Google Docs — free to use
"Thank you for reading these words while swimming in the sea of the world's surplus. I hope they make you smile as they do for me."
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