Unfinished Business: Writing the 5 Essential Letters of Your Life

An inspiring and eminently useful guide to the art of letter writing, including prompts and exercises to help deepen our most important connections and heal old wounds, by a beloved “letter midwife.”

“A pragmatic, empathetic, urgent call to stop avoiding the hardest conversations and start enjoying the world beyond hurt and regret . . . A true service to readers.”—Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author of Tell Me More and The Middle Place

We all have “unfinished business”: thank-you notes we meant to write, goodbyes we never spoke, apologies we haven’t managed to give. Here to help us put those words on paper, letter midwife Frish Brandt provides singular guidance on how to write the five fundamental missives that underscore the meaning of our lives: Thank you, I’m sorry, I miss you, I love you, and Goodbye.

With real-world examples from her experience of teaching in universities, workshops, and individual sessions around the country, Brandt weaves practical writing prompts with gentle reflections on grief, connection, forgiveness, and closure, offering the tools—and the courage—to help you write what you have long held inside. At once an invitation, a guidebook, and an ode to the power of the written word, Unfinished Business will help deepen your most important connections and heal old wounds. It is a book to read, to write alongside, and to return to again and again.

Frish Brandt teaches essential letter writing at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and to individuals and institutions around the country, including museums, universities, hospitals, and caregiving associations. She worked in the arts for more than four decades before becoming a full-time Letter Midwife. She lives and writes in San Francisco.