The Lost Art of the Letter: Why Posting a Story Could Be One of the Best Things You Do for Your Residents

There is something about a letter that nothing else quite replaces.

Not a text, not an email, not a notification on a screen. A real letter, on real paper, in an envelope that someone has sealed and sent. The weight of it in your hand. The handwriting on the front. The small ceremony of opening it. For most people living in UK care homes today, letters were once a central part of life. They wrote them, they waited for them, they kept them bundled together in shoeboxes under the bed for decades. Letters were how people stayed connected, how they fell in love, how they said goodbye.

And somewhere along the way, we stopped writing them.

This blog is about what we lose when we stop, and what we might gain by bringing the letter back into the lives of the people in our care.

A Generation Shaped by Letters

The residents currently living in UK care homes grew up in a world where letters were everything. For those who lived through the Second World War or were children during it, letters carried enormous emotional weight. Receiving letters from family and friends was vital for morale, keeping people connected to the homes they had left behind. For those born in the 1930s and 40s, letter writing was simply what you did. You wrote to your parents when you left home. You wrote to your sweetheart when they went away. You wrote to friends you had not seen in years.

Those experiences live somewhere in long-term memory. And long-term memory is often the last thing to fade in dementia.

Why the Past Is So Powerful

One of the most clinically important things we understand about dementia is that while short-term memory is often severely affected early on, long-term, autobiographical memory tends to remain more intact for longer. The person who cannot remember what they had for breakfast may be able to tell you, in vivid detail, about the dress they wore to their wedding, the smell of their grandmother's kitchen, or the sound of a V1 buzzing overhead in 1944.

This is not magic. It is neuroscience. And it is the entire basis for reminiscence therapy.

Reminiscence therapy involves the discussion of memories and past experiences with other people, usually with the aid of tangible prompts such as photographs, household and familiar items from the past, music, and archive sound recordings. It has been used in dementia care since the late 1970s and is now well established as a valuable non-pharmacological approach.

Reminiscence is recommended by the British Psychological Society, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The evidence, while still developing, points consistently in one direction. There is some evidence that reminiscence therapy can improve quality of life, cognition, communication and possibly mood in people with dementia in some circumstances. Evidence also suggests that reminiscence therapy can lead to overall improvements in depression and loneliness and promote psychological wellbeing.

Perhaps most encouragingly, there is no evidence of harmful effects of reminiscence therapy for the people with dementia themselves. In a world where every intervention carries risk of some kind, that matters.

Nostalgia Is Not Just Sentiment, It Is Therapy

We sometimes dismiss nostalgia as being a bit sentimental, a bit indulgent. But the research tells a different story.

People living with dementia experience nostalgia in similar ways to cognitively healthy adults. Nostalgic narratives contain more expressions of positive affect, self-esteem, and self-continuity, and reflect higher ratings of companionship, connectedness, and a sense that life is meaningful.

That is remarkable. Despite cognitive impairment, the act of remembering valued experiences from the past still produces something deeply human: a sense of belonging, of mattering, of continuity between who you were and who you still are.

Playing an old record or CD can bring back such strong feelings and emotions it can transport a person back to a safer, happier time. A spritz of old perfume or aftershave can take you straight back to a time when you first knew that scent. And a letter, it turns out, can do exactly the same thing.

Introducing Love Letter Tales

This is where a rather wonderful small UK company comes in.

Love Letter Tales is a subscription service that sends beautifully crafted story letters by post, twice a month. Not an email. Not a digital newsletter. An actual letter, in an envelope, through the letterbox, on real paper.

There are currently two story worlds to choose from. The first is Rose Ashworth, a Regency romance set in Bath in 1814, following a witty, penniless heroine whose story unfolds entirely through letters to and from family, friends, and a mysterious admirer. The second is Clara Wren, a deeply moving wartime story set in London and the countryside in 1940, following a woman who writes home from an England on the edge of war, her letters carrying love, courage, and secrets she can barely put into words.

Both stories are told entirely in letters. They arrive twice a month on the 1st and 15th, posted by Royal Mail. Each one is written in a handwritten style, on beautiful paper, in eco-friendly packaging. You can subscribe monthly, annually, or gift a subscription for three, six, or twelve months.

For care homes, this is not just a nice treat. It is a genuinely useful therapeutic and social tool.

How You Could Use Love Letter Tales in Your Home

As a Reminiscence Prompt

The Clara Wren story is set in 1940, right in the heart of a period that many current UK residents lived through or were shaped by. Many residents in care homes have stories about rationing, air raids, and life during wartime, and the opportunity to share those memories provides an invaluable link to their own past.

When a Clara Wren letter arrives, full of wartime detail and the particular texture of life in 1940s Britain, it can open up a conversation in a way that a direct question never could. Rather than asking "Do you remember the war?", you are handing someone a letter and saying, "What do you think about what Clara wrote to her mother?"

The story becomes the bridge. The resident walks across it into their own memories.

As the Basis for a Book Club

A care home book club is a wonderful thing, but traditional books can be a barrier for residents with dementia. They require sustained concentration over a long period, the ability to hold a narrative thread across multiple sessions, and confidence with a lengthy text.

Letters are different. A Love Letter Tales letter is self-contained, immersive, and short enough to be read aloud in a sitting. A group of residents can listen together, react together, debate what Clara should do next, argue about whether Rose's admirer is trustworthy, share what they would have written back.

Discussion questions could include things like:

What would you have done in Clara's shoes? Did you ever have to write a letter during the war? Have you ever received a letter that changed how you felt about someone? What was it like when post arrived during the war?

None of these questions feel clinical. They feel like conversation. But they are doing important work: activating memory, encouraging communication, and affirming identity.

As a Sensory and Tactile Experience

For residents with more advanced dementia, the story itself may be less important than the physical experience of a letter arriving. The texture of the paper. The act of holding something and being told it has come in the post. The ritual of it.

Writing by hand increases brain connectivity, which facilitates learning and memory. While residents may no longer be doing the writing themselves, holding a handwritten-style letter, running their fingers over the text, brings them into contact with something their hands have always known.

For someone who spent decades writing letters, this is not a small thing.

As a One-to-One Activity

Not every resident will want to join a group. For those who prefer quieter, more individual engagement, a Love Letter Tales subscription can be a personal ritual, something they look forward to on the 1st and 15th of every month. A carer can sit with them, read the letter aloud, and simply be present for the conversation that follows.

This kind of meaningful, one-to-one time is exactly what person-centred care looks like in practice.

The Wider Picture: What Else Helps

Love Letter Tales is one tool among many, and the best care homes use a rich mix of approaches to support memory and identity.

Life story work is one of the most powerful. Life story work provides a context for the provision of person-centred care and can be especially valuable when the person with dementia is transferred from a home to an institutional setting. Encouraging families to bring in letters, cards, and written mementos as part of a memory box or life story album gives staff a window into who a person has been, and gives residents a tangible connection to their own history.

Music from the right era remains one of the most reliably effective memory prompts we have. Songs from a person's late teens and twenties, what researchers call the "reminiscence bump", tend to be particularly emotionally resonant. A 1940s music session alongside a Clara Wren letter reading session would be a powerful combination.

Familiar objects and sensory prompts, such as replica ration books, wartime correspondence, old postcards, and period photographs, can all serve the same function as the letters: they are doors back into a lived experience that the person still carries with them, even if they cannot always find the key.

Reading aloud more broadly has significant value. Multidisciplinary rehabilitation that includes reading, writing letters, memory training, speech therapy, logic games, art therapy, and physical therapy has been shown to have positive outcomes for people with dementia. The key is finding material that connects to the person's own era, interests, and identity.

A Note for Families

If you are a family member reading this, Love Letter Tales also makes a genuinely thoughtful gift for a parent or grandparent living in a care home. The gift versions (available in three, six, or twelve month packages) mean that something arrives in the post for them regularly, something that is theirs, personal and anticipated. Even if they cannot always follow the story from letter to letter, the experience of receiving a beautiful, handwritten-style letter in the post is something many older people will find deeply meaningful.

It is also a conversation starter. You can read it together on your visit. You can ask what they thought. You can follow Clara's story side by side with them.

Sometimes the best gift is not a thing, but a ritual.

The Letter Is Not Obsolete. It Is Revolutionary.

In care settings increasingly dominated by screens and digital entertainment, a letter through the post feels almost subversive. But for the generation we are caring for, it is the most natural thing in the world. It is how life worked. It is how love was declared and grief was shared and news was carried.

Bringing letters back into the lives of people living with dementia is not nostalgia for its own sake. It is person-centred care in action. It is meeting people where they are, in the world they know best.

And sometimes, when a resident holds a letter in their hands and says "Oh, I used to write letters like this," that is not a small moment. That is a person finding themselves again, just for a little while.

That is what we are here for.

Love Letter Tales subscriptions start from £12.99 per month and are available at lovelettertales.com. Gift subscriptions are available from £34.99 and make a genuinely meaningful present for a resident, relative, or anyone who loves a good story delivered the slow way.