In her personal story for RealSimple.com, “I Wrote a Stranger’s Love Letter,” Julianna Baggott shares how she keeps the love alive with her husband: by being open to others and learning their life stories to share with her husband.  She discovers herself connecting on a deeper emotional and social level with different people she meets while traveling.  These are strangers she can offer a shoulder to cry on, like the WWII veteran, or be inspired by, like the woman whose father received a letter from Martin Luther King, Jr.

While on a plane, she began talking to the passenger next to her.  At 20-years-old, Brian was flying from Seattle back to his hometown in Massachusetts with one mission: to tell the girl he grew up with, Amy, that he loved her.  The one setback: Amy was engaged.

The entire plane ride became an exchange of stories and advice, what Brian should or shouldn’t do to win Amy back.  Julianna was so inspired by Brian’s love for Amy that she penned a love letter to Amy using Brian’s thoughts/feelings while adding her own personal thoughts/experience on love.  In a way, she rediscovered and reaffirmed her own love for her husband.

When Julianna and Brian parted ways, she returned home to tell her husband about all the adventures she’d had and all the stories she’d heard, so their own love and marriage would be strengthened and enriched by the experiences.   

Julianna’s story encourages all of us to reach out to strangers every once in a while, to find the thread that connects us as humans and weave a narrative of our own.  While she never heard from Brian again, she still has hope that love always prevails in some way and that courage and risk is what we need sometimes to secure love.   

If you were Julianna, would you be inspired by Brian’s story to write a love letter?  Have you ever written a love letter or received one of your own?

<< Click here to read Julianna Baggot’s complete story on CNN.com >>