If you’ve ever wondered, “Is it too late for me to...” the answer’s NO and The Uplifters are about to show you why. This space is for purpose-driven women who want to do big, brave things in the second half of their lives. I’m your host, Aransas Savas, and I’ve spent the last 20 years at the intersection of behavior change research and coaching.
Month-at-a-Glance
Way back in episode 79, Kerry Brodie shared that when she had the wild idea to start a nonprofit that would immediately help immigrants get into the workforce, she also had a million reasons why she wasn’t the right person and this wasn’t the right time. Her husband asked, “Whose permission are you waiting for?” She realized she just needed her own, and now she and her nonprofit, Emma’s Torch, have served over 500 students and created over $21 million in increased wages for program graduates.
I’m writing about this idea for my forthcoming book, Courage Capital: It’s Not Too Late to Do Big, Brave Things, so this month on the podcast I’m sharing four stories about the permission we wait for that only we can give.
Sofia Kavlin is the visionary behind the Unsent Letter Mailbox. Her idea was big, but there’s only so far one person can carry an idea, so she gave herself permission to ASK for support. In walked her creative soulmate, Bonnie Blue Edwards.
Laura LeBleu spent 54 years telling stories for everyone else, quietly sure she wasn’t creative enough to make something of her own. In midlife, she gave herself permission to BEGIN, set her AARP card on fire, and built Geezer magazine.
Sarah Nelson of Sexual Empowerment in Midlife spent 30 years believing it was her job to keep her husband and everyone else happy. In midlife, she gave herself permission to DESIRE.
Sarah Kauss took S’well from $30k of savings to over $100 million, then sold it. In midlife,she gave herself permission to SLOW DOWN.
On Valentine’s Day 2024, Sofia Kavlin dragged a wooden mailbox into Washington Square Park and asked strangers to write down unexpressed thoughts and longings and hopes and griefs and regrets and everything in between, and drop it in. In exchange, each person got to read an anonymous letter written by someone else. Fifty letters came in that first cold day. They were not all about love. They were about everything.
More than four thousand letters later, the Unsent Letter Mailbox has traveled to Austin, Houston, and Chattanooga, and been featured by The New York Times, NBC News, and The Kelly Clarkson Show. It is, in Sofia’s words, “a radical reclaiming of intimacy, a small, analog act of trust in a world that keeps pulling us apart”.
Sofia is a visionary, and she will tell you plainly that she is brilliant at conceiving things and not great at breaking them into the bite-sized, itemized steps that actually move them forward. A big idea will only travel so far on one person’s back, so she put an unsent letter into the universe declaring her desire for a creative soulmate.
A few months after Sofia wrote that letter, a producer named Bonnie Blue Edwards sent her a one-year plan. There’s lots more magic to this story, which you’ll hear all about in the episode.
If you are a visionary who is tired of trying to do it all alone, I hope you hear in this conversation a path toward finding the support you need and deserve.
5 Ways Sofia and Bonnie Show Us How to Build Our Courage Capital:
Name what you need before you know who will answer. Get specific about the feeling, not the mechanics, and put it out loud where the right person can hear it.
Look for an amplifier, not a replacement. You don’t have to hand over the vision to get help carrying it. Name the gifts you’re missing and find the person who has them.
Make the ask scared. Bonnie pitched a one-year plan to an artist she barely knew. The worst anyone can say is no.
Hold your people with open hands. Protect the vision and stay non-possessive about the humans inside it. You can’t control whether someone stays, only whether you treated the partnership with respect.
Let your grief become a gift. Instead of waiting for the hard season to end, pour it into something other people can use.
Lift Them Up: Follow the Unsent Letter Mailbox at unsentlettermailbox.com and on Instagram at @unsentlettermailbox. Go to an event if you can, subscribe to their Substack, look out for Mailbox Society (their forthcoming IRL writing meetups in collaboration with New York Poetry Society), and if you lead a team, ask Sofia and Bonnie about Letter Labs, their workshop that helps coworkers and groups actually see each other. Find Sofia at @sofia.kavlin and Bonnie at @bonnieblue952, and pick up her book Stressed Out & Scatterbrained.
If you loved this story... This episode exists because of Lia Buffa De Feo, who nominated both Sofia and Bonnie. Thank you, Lia. Listen to her episode HERE. And get ready for the women they’re lifting up next: Kelby Clark, founder of the creative salon Opus House and a gifted poet and writer, and Catherine Burns, a brilliant creative and storyteller.
