“The world doesn’t need another website. It doesn’t need another app or a network. What it needs is really basic. Simple. Bare-boned and often forgotten in the race to get followers, likes and status. LOVE. Pure, old-fashioned, never-goes-out-of-style love. Ridiculous, oozing, cannot pack this thang into 140 characters kind of love. Fearless, bold, unstoppable love. And that’s where we come in, Sugar.”

These aren’t our words, more’s the pity, although we share the sentiment. The author is a certain Hannah Brencher, who has been writing a great deal in recent times. We’d like to use this blog post to share her story. If you have time to watch this short film clip, we’d like to get Hannah to tell it herself . . .

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6VgNzJ04z8&w=560&h=315]

Inspirational stuff, you’ll be sure to agree. That it’s all so simple makes us wonder why things have been allowed to slip so, and why we haven’t been doing this all along.

One comment about Hannah’s amazing efforts – from Theresa Murphy, in Louisiana – sums it up for us. ‘People have become really disconnected from one another,’ she writes. ‘It’s no wonder they feel alone and forgotten. Unlike a text or a posting on a social media network, a letter is something tangible, that a person can hold in their hand and it connects them to the person (a human connection) who wrote the letter. They can pull the letter out and read it as often as they need to, when they need to be reassured that they’re not alone’.

Here at OM®, we couldn’t agree more. True connection needs to have that human touch at its core. Hannah and her team at More Love Letters understand this better than anyone. It is what makes their work so precious and so unique.

‘We’re only interested in you,’ Hannah writes. ‘The cracked parts of your own story, and how you can use them to lift someone else. It’s about how each of us can morph our lives into love letters . . . lamps . . . lanterns . . . to light the paths of others who need kindness and love today.’

It’s about people like Ray, suffering from colon cancer, who has just received a beautiful bundle of letters. Lily, his daughter, wrote, ‘My father was filled with so much energy after reading those letters. He’d been having a rough morning and it was just what he needed. We laughed, we cried, we reminisced [and] we cherished the moment. It was a beautiful experience to be surrounded by so many well-wishes and kind words’.

It’s about people like Ariel, who has just found a letter at the Mall of Georgia. The message inside read, ‘We don’t meet people by accident. They’re meant to cross our path for a reason’.

This is something that we believe here at OM®, where we couldn’t be more thrilled that Hannah has crossed our path. The reason, we think, is to prove that love and kindness are all around us, to demonstrate that we are all connected and to inspire us to continue in our own efforts to touch people’s lives and make the world a better place for everyone.

Our methods might differ a little, but our goal is shared. Hannah uses her letters, we use our OMs and together, connected, we will make a difference.

We are all connected.