In 1985 I took a job working as a clinician in the streets of Boston. I was working with people who are often described as homeless. My role was to develop connections with the people I met. Working in the street necessitated a change in my approach to working with the people I had come to think of as clients.

One change was that I could no longer expect people to come to me. Not only did I have to go to them, I also had to find out where they were. I looked in abandoned buildings, vacant lots, abandoned cars, shelters, detoxs, bars, alleyways; anywhere I thought I might find someone looking for help.

Along with having to search for clients, I also had to change the way I thought about our interactions. I could no longer count on seeing people more than once. These folks weren’t calling up and making appointments. I might meet someone one week and not see them again for months, or ever. I no longer had the luxury of thinking a conversation could happen once a week for several months. Consequently, I began looking for ways to extend conversations beyond the limits of my physical presence.

Letter writing was a tradition I had been exposed to through my interest in narrative ways of working (White & Epston 1990; Freedman & Combs 1996; Zimmerman & Dickerson 1996) .

As a narrative therapist working in an office, I had been using letter writing as a way to extend conversations with people beyond our fifty-minute sessions. The letters I wrote in more ‘traditional’ contexts became topics for ongoing sessions. These letters conveyed questions I had that I had not been able to ask in the session, or thoughts that had arisen after the client left my office. In most instances they were a part of an ongoing process.

The relationships I developed with people who lived in the street were different from the ones I’d had with people in offices. We didn’t meet regularly. They didn’t have addresses. I would find someone and share some of their life with them, then they would be gone.

It occurred to me that letter writing might be a way to continue these conversations as well, even if they couldn’t continue in person. It occurred to me that I could use letters to share with the recipient some of my ongoing questions. I also thought I might use the letters to document aspects of people’s lives that stood outside of the despair and hopelessness they might be experiencing.

What follows are examples of the sort of letters I wrote. Out of respect, I have changed some of the details to mask the identities of the recipients. There was one ground rule that I followed in the writing of these letters. The rule was that I would always ask the person if it would be okay for me to write to them about conversations we had had. I was concerned presenting people with letters without asking for permission to write down their words might seem intrusive. As it turned out, no-one ever refused, and my suggestions and letters were consistently met with much excitement and enthusiasm.

You will also notice that each of the letters is written in a narrative style. For me, the narrative style of letter writing includes externalising problems, tracing the history of the problem, bringing back to people ways in which talking to them has affected my life, and attending to exceptions to the problem-saturated narrative. Connected to this last idea is the idea of documenting those parts of people’s lives that are consistent with their preferred ways of being. These are aspects of their lives that they have been able to stay connected to in spite of the influence of problems.

I used quotation marks to indicate words and phrases that came from other people or the person to whom the letter is addressed. Quoting what people told me was an attempt to stay connected to their expertise about an issue, and not take over by rephrasing things as I would have written them. I included quotations from other people in an attempt to share the expertise of others and remove myself from the position of the one with the knowledge. It was my intention to share the experience and knowledge of others, thereby supporting the development of letter-based communities of concern. I hoped that these people who are so often without anything to hold would have, at the very least, a letter.

The first street letter I wrote was to a man named David. The conversation I refer to in the letter happened behind a hedge in the midst of a busy city intersection one hot day in early summer. It was a spot people used as a refuge for drinking and sleeping. David had been there the previous night, and when I caught up with him he was already intoxicated from a morning of drinking.

We talked for about an hour. During our conversation I mentioned the possibility of a letter. He was interested. I wrote the letter later that day when I got home. I delivered the letter the next time I saw him. It was about one week later. I found him in the middle of an abandoned lot. He was with a group of people. He was quite surprised to see that I had actually written the letter. Not wanting to embarrass him in front of his friends, I gave him the letter and left.

This is what I wrote:

I used to think it was part of what alcohol did to keep you from thinking about your own situation. To ‘take the focus off yourself’. Now, thanks to you, I think of helping each other out as a caring part of who you are. It also seems like a part of you that alcohol ‘hasn’t been able to touch’. It was also really helpful for me to realise that you guys helping each other out is one of the things that keeps me aware of the part of you that is fighting against alcohol. As I said on Tuesday, I want to support these parts of who you are.

Seeing David some weeks later he thanked me profusely for the letter. He told me he kept it with him, and often re-read it as it had become a source of support for him during his days in the street. I was happy to hear that the letter was of value to him. It was heartening for me to know that even in my absence I might be one of his allies supporting his knowledge that he was ‘better than this’.

I saw him only once more. At the time he had just left the program and was looking for housing. He thanked me again for the letter and said he would love to sit down and talk about ‘helping each other out’, and the other questions I had asked him. Sadly, we never had the chance to have that conversation.

I wrote this final letter to a woman I had talked to many times. I have included it because it is an example of how I closed some of the letter-based conversations I started in the street. It also represents a narrative style of closing as it is filled with ongoing questions and the possibility of continued connection.

After working in the street for a while I began to notice that there were certain items, like a leather jacket or a specific hat, that became valued commodities. These items would be taken from one person and appear on another, only to be stolen again and transferred to still another person. The hat or jacket would thus circulate throughout the community.

I was shocked to learn that the letter I wrote to Andrea had become such an article. It had been stolen from Andrea by another woman, and eventually someone had taken it from her. It was circulating and being read by many people. (Hearing this I provided Andrea with another copy.) Though I was saddened to hear about the theft, I was struck by the value that could be placed on something as simple as a letter. It was in fact the theft of Andrea’s letter that prompted me to write this paper.

Hearing of the theft it occurred to me that letter writing was not only a useful tool applicable in a variety of different contexts, but it was also highly valuable to the letter recipients. I hope others will be encouraged by the response of the people I wrote to, and consider using letter writing in contexts that exist outside more traditional clinical environments. It is clear from my experience that this practice can have powerful effects on people’s lives.

Note

1. Joel can be contacted c/o Lesley University, 7 Mellen street Cambridge, MA 02139. Email: JGWixson@aol.com

References

Freedman, J. & Combs, G. 1996: Narrative Therapy: The social construction of preferred realities. New York: Norton.

White, M., Epston, D. 1990: Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. New York: Norton.

White, M. 1997: Narratives of Therapists’ Lives. Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.

White, M. 1996: Re-authoring Lives: Interviews and essays. Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.

Zimmerman, J.L. & Dickerson, V.C. 1996: If Problems Talked. New York: Guilford.

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