Hello
I am planning to write a letter to a young woman who is currently incarcerated and awaiting trial. We have never met, but when I read about her case, I felt so bad for her that I wanted to send her something. I have never written to an inmate before, and I am not very good at putting my thoughts into words (as you can probably tell from this poorly-written post.).
Anyway, this letter will first and foremost be a letter of support. I don't know what I will put exactly, but I will say that I support her and that I hope her trial doesn't turn out too badly (though I am pretty sure it will turn out very badly for her.)
I would really like to be able to start a pen-pal relationship with her, but I can understand if she doesn't or can't.
So, does anybody have any suggestions for what to write? I want to show her she has some support, but I don't want to give her false hope or sound condensending. I also want to tell her I'd like to start a pen-pal relatioship with her, but I don't want to sound too pushy. Should I tell her a little about myself (I can relate to her in many ways) and ask her about how she is doing, or should I leave those types of things for possible future letters? Thanks in advance for any help!
Last post
just tell her a bit about yourself, you know.. introduce yourself, tht's what I did...
the way I saw it.. I'm not gonna pour my entire heart out the first letter, what if he didn't write back? (good thing he did though :P), so just... introduce yourself and mention that you want to offer her your support. should work out,
good luck ;)
One thing that you really want to avoid is having the letter sound like it's charity. QueenBella offers some very good advice. Just write to her and tell her you would like to be PP. I would avoid talking about her case right away. Chances are that she already talks to a lot of people about it and hearing one more opinion might not be what she wants to hear right now, espeecially if it does not look good for her.
Hi blpsycat and welcome to WAP.
I think that you are being too hard on yourself. You just wrote a great first post. Maybe all you need is a little more confidence. And, once you start writing, that will come. Plus, that first letter is always the hardest one to write.
But, you got good advice from queenbella and pirish. Just be yourself. Keep it short and to the point. Tell her what you have told us. This is only an introduction and not a marriage proposal.
The only other thing is to not be disappointed if she doesn't respond. Your post didn't say anything about an ad. So, if she didn't solicit your letter, she may not be interested. If she is awaiting trial, she may have her mind too full of other things to take on a PP, at this point in time. But, if you are still interested, and she does get convicted (innocent until proven guilty, you know, and it isn't over til it's over) then she might be more interested, herself. Just keep track of what's going on and play it by ear. Good luck with everything.
Actually, I was very insecure when I first started writing. I didn't know what to put. My first letter ever which he quoted later was "this is my first time ever doing something like this, so sorry if I'm awkward" but I told him a bit about myself, you know the usual like my school, job, interests, hobbies, a few favorites. You can ask a few get to know you questions about them and maybe a little bit of light stuff about prison life. Some are more open than others. Also, referring to something in their ad can be really great. You can make it as long or as short as you're comfortable with. I've had some that I wrote really, really short first letters to and one that I wrote a really long letter to just because his ad was just so cool. Sometimes, for whatever reason, they don't reply, but I wouldn't let that get you down. Although, it did take me over 2 months to get my first reply from my fave pen pal. Some take longer than others for their first reply, so that's something to look out for too.