September Letters & The Hunting Wives Came Together For Mental Health Day

Opening up can feel scary, but September Letters, a mental wellness platform and global letter-writing movement has set out to prove no one needs to go through life alone. Ahead of World Mental Health Day, guests gathered at Radio Park in New York City on Oct. 6 to celebrate six years of September Letters, the organization that was co-founded by Hunting Wives star and Pitch Perfect alum Brittany Snow and entrepreneur Jaspre Guest.

Cohosted by Bustle in collaboration with Bilt, the event brought together Snow, Guest, and Bustle’s Editor-in-Chief Charlotte Owen for a night of connection and reflection — which featured custom typewriter poetry and a special appearance from Snow’s Hunting Wives castmates.

Finding Community In Healing

September Letters cofounders Jaspre Guest and Brittany Snow are longtime friends who have found support in one another through life’s ups and downs. Stemming from their belief that sharing one’s story can help others through similar experiences, they created September Letters as a safe space for inspirational letters, notes, and conversations among strangers, friends, experts, and public figures. Community members can write, read, or request a letter, often anonymously, about experiences that have challenged or shaped them.

“Sometimes sending a letter is more for you than it is for the other person,” Snow told Bustle in a 2023 interview in reference to the organization’s mission. “The self-care and the act of writing it is just as important as whoever receives it.”

A selection of handwritten letters were on display at the Radio Park cocktail party on Tuesday evening, as well as outside at Rockefeller Center’s North Plaza at the September Letters activation in partnership with Bilt. Like the notes shared online, some letters detailed the writer’s own healing journey and offered a sense of hope, others shared their struggles and asked for support, and on some, a second writer responded, sharing words of encouragement.

Coming Together For World Mental Health Day

Over the course of the evening, Snow, Guest, and Owen mingled with a lineup of friends, colleagues, and mental health advocates, engaging in conversations about the power of vulnerability, the value of human connection, and the importance of prioritizing mental well-being. Among the guests were Snow’s Hunting Wives costars Malin Akerman and Katie Lowes, as well as actor Ebony Obsidian, comedian and content creator Elyse Myers, filmmaker Neema Sadeghi, influencer Eduardo Holguin, and head of Barstool’s It Girl Sahar Barzroudipour.

Bites and beverages were provided by Jupiter, an Italian restaurant located in the heart of Rockefeller Center known for its handmade pasta. Guests sipped on two custom cocktails: Everyone Has a Story, made up of Patrón, strawberry, agave, bitters, and lime, and Dear Future Me, containing Grey Goose, rosé, rose petal, and lemon.

Between chatting with friends and reading letters hung from decorative trees, the attendees participated in a letter-writing exercise, adding their own stories and kind words to the installation. They also received poems from Alexis of @appletreepoetry, a poet who writes custom, heartfelt prose for strangers on his typewriter on the streets of New York and beyond — a reminder of the power just a few words can hold.

Following the event, Guest expressed her gratitude for those who came together for the event and the Rockefeller Center activation in an Instagram Story.

“Hard explaining how reading your letters makes us feel, except that there were tears and feelings of disbelief,” she wrote. “We are IN AWE of our community.”