How the Letters
actually work.

Any woman who has lived in Finland, is living here now, or is about to arrive. You don't have to be a writer. You don't have to have a perfect story. You don't have to have figured anything out. The letters that move people most are usually the ones written from the middle of something, not the end of it.

The letter should be yours — your experience, your words. Please don't send us someone else's story, AI-generated text, or anything lifted from a book, blog, or social post. We can usually tell, and when we can't, the women who wrote the original eventually do.

It lands in a private inbox only I can see. I read every one. Within roughly a week, I'll have decided one of three things: I want to publish it as-is, I want to publish it with light edits, or it isn't the right fit for the archive.

If you ticked the box asking us to email you with edits before publishing, we will. If you didn't, I'll either publish with light edits — typos, grammar, sometimes a small cut for length — or, if a change feels meaningful, I simply won't publish. Your voice is the whole point. I'd rather leave a letter unpublished than alter it into something it isn't.

Some letters take longer to find their moment. A piece about a first winter might sit until November. A piece about moving for love might be saved for the season when more women are arriving for the same reason. Patience is part of how this works.

You do. Always. Submitting a letter doesn't transfer ownership of your words to us — it gives us a licence to publish them. That's a legal way of saying: the words are still yours, but you've given us permission to share them.

Specifically, by ticking the consent box when you submit, you're giving heyhelsinki a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free licence to publish your letter on this website and across heyhelsinki's channels — currently Instagram and our newsletter, possibly future publications. Non-exclusive means you can also publish the same letter elsewhere if you want to. Royalty-free means we're not paying you for it, which we'll come back to in a moment.

We may quote short excerpts from your letter elsewhere on the site or in marketing materials for heyhelsinki — a line on the homepage, a sentence in an Instagram post — always credited the way you signed it. We will never sell your letter to a third party or pass it to another publication without asking you first.

Not at the moment. heyhelsinki is small and the archive runs on what women are willing to give freely. Most contributors send a letter because they wish someone had written it to them, and the gift is the point.

That may change. If heyhelsinki grows into something that earns money from the letters directly — a book, a paid newsletter, a print edition — we'll set up a contributor fee and let everyone who's already published know before we use their work in that way. You'll always have the option to say no.

Your email address stays with me. It is not shown on the site, not shared with other contributors, not sold to anyone, not added to any list without your asking. The only reason I have it is so I can write back to you — to ask about an edit, to let you know your letter is live, or to reply to a request you sent in.

You sign each letter however you choose: full name, first name only, initials, a pseudonym, or nothing at all. Whatever you put in the signature field is what appears on the page. If you later want to change how you're credited — say, switch from your full name to initials — write to me and I'll change it.

If you sent in a request for a letter rather than a letter itself, the same rules apply. Your name, email, and the things you shared with us stay private. If I publish a letter inspired by your request, I'll only mention the context in the most general way — never details that would identify you — unless you've told me otherwise.

Yes, at any time, for any reason, without explaining why. Send an email and we'll remove it from the site, usually within seven days. I'll confirm when it's done.

Two small honesties: first, if your letter has been shared on Instagram or in the newsletter before you ask for removal, those copies will stay where they are (we can't reach into other people's screenshots or inboxes). Second, if you want the letter unpublished but are happy for it to stay in our private archive — say, for a future print collection — let us know that too. There's no single right answer.

Letters are personal accounts. We publish women's experiences as they remember and feel them. We don't fact-check the inside of someone's life.

That said: please don't name other people in ways that could identify them — a partner, a colleague, a friend — without their permission, especially if what you're saying isn't flattering. If a letter you've submitted does this, we'll either edit those parts out before publishing or, if the letter can't work without them, we won't publish it. This protects you as much as it protects them.

We don't publish content that promotes harm, hate, or violence toward any group of people, and we reserve the right not to publish any letter at our discretion. You'll always get a kind reply telling you the letter won't be running.

If heyhelsinki ever changes hands, your consent doesn't automatically transfer to the new owner. We'd write to every contributor, explain what's happening, and ask whether you want your letter to stay published under the new ownership. The default is no — you'd have to say yes again.

If heyhelsinki shuts down entirely, we'll take the site offline and delete the archive within a reasonable period. We'd let you know first, in case you wanted a copy of what you wrote.

If we make any meaningful change to how we handle letters — payment, ownership, how we use your work — we'll email everyone who has ever contributed and explain what's changing and why. For small things (clarifications, typos, new contact details) we'll update the date at the top of this page and carry on.

Your existing letters stay governed by the version of this policy in place when you submitted them. We won't retroactively change the rules on something you've already shared.