In 2019, I quietly built an anonymous sign-up website where people could register themselves or someone they loved to receive monthly postcards from me in the mail.

Each month, I designed a new postcard with intention. I chose the colors. I drew the imagery. I paired it with pieces of writing, poems, and messages taken directly from my personal journal. They were things I was trying to remember myself.

When I started, it was simple. I just wanted to feel like I was pen pals with people in the world I might never meet. I wanted to create a way for someone to receive regular mail with no strings attached. No cost. No expectation. Just a quiet reminder that they were not alone.

The postcards were always free to sign up for and receive. The entire project was crowd funded through sponsorships, donations, and patronage.

In the beginning, I sent a few hundred postcards each month. Within a year, it grew organically to over 6,000 postcards a month. In total, I mailed well over 200,000 postcards around the world, reaching every continent except Antarctica. Ninety percent of them were addressed, stamped, and mailed by me alone at my dining room table.

They went everywhere. To prisons and hospitals, to kindergarten classrooms, to grandmas and artists, to senators and even the White House. The project began as a question in my own mind: What would happen if I sent anonymous love letters into the world for free?

It was the privilege of a lifetime to create and send art in this way. It filled me up more than I can fully explain.

In 2025, I made the difficult decision to pause the free postcard project in its original form. Rising costs made it impossible to continue funding it the way I had, and I needed time to rest, reflect, and consider how to offer care in a way that was sustainable and honest.

I hope to restart the free postcard mailing system one day. If you came here hoping to sign up, I’m so sorry I’m taking a break. I hope to return to you.

In the meantime, you can shop the full archive of postcards on nicolemarieleth.com. I’ve also created a smaller, more intimate Love Letter Club through Patreon, where members receive a handwritten and designed postcard from me each month. It is different from the large public project, but it is what works right now.

Thank you for being part of this chapter.