DAY 8 | LOVE LETTERS TO END VIOLENCE | SEND YOUR THOUGHTS

Letter writing can be a powerful form of storytelling. When we sit down to write a letter, we take the time to think about our life, and how it connects with the person we are writing the letter to. We share small details, events and anecdotes about the things that have happened to us that are at the same time unimportant but deeply meaningful because it says something about a moment captured and exchanged through a story.

We think about the person we are writing to, hold them in our mind, and put into words what they mean to us. We offer our attention, presence and time. Letters can contain all of these and be read again and again. Letters can contain a moment in history. They can move us into empathy, drive us into action, or be just the thing to stop us from stumbling into despair.

For today’s action, write a love letter to someone about ending violence against women. This can be a love letter to your daughter to share what you’ve learnt about dealing with sexual discrimination, or your best friend about acceptance of our own bodies, or to someone who shared her experience through a blog post or a story from our campaign map to let her know you are really listening and that you can find courage together, or to your Prime Minister to ask her/him to care enough to make a real difference, or even to a stranger.

Write it, post it, or leave it around the places you move around in today for people to find.

Scan or copy it and share it with us here (email, upload to site).

Or if you have come across inspiring open love letters, share them here or on send us the link on Twitter (#takebackthetech #16stories).

Offer your time, love and solidarity. Take Back the Tech!

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Here are two posts we would like to share with you as our love letter to individuals and activists who are committed to creating a world free from violence against women:

“Here I sit, head bent, writing you an intimate letter. I sense your presence, even though I don’t know your name. I envision you as a young woman, possibly a young man, somewhere between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, but you may also be a decade older–or younger–than that. You may not yet be born.

Perhaps I am trying to speak to my own younger self. When I was coming of age–a process which is still far from over–no one ever spoke strong truths to me in a loving voice. When I was your age, I did not know what I needed to know in order to understand my life–anybody’s life. Perhaps, in writing to you, I wish to correct that, to make amends… “

– Continue reading “Letters to a young feminist”

“A year back, I became romantically involved with a man. It was a long distance relationship. When I met him, he seemed to be someone who was extremely liberal in his outlook even though he comes from a rather conservative background. He was everything I could ask for. Educated, established and outgoing. For me beauty is not about looks but how a person is at heart. Hence it does not make sense for me to comment on his looks here. But, physical beauty is the only thing he was looking for in me when I met him. This however, I understood much later.…”

– Continue reading “Donna’s story”, submitted to us as part of this year’s campaign, which reads as a love letter to women and girls all over the world who has ever felt loss of control over their own bodies in the name of love, and regained it.