Welcome to Dear Prudence. I'm your Prudence, Jeney Desmond Harris. Today we'll be discussing an

international sister's trip gone awry and a husband's struggle to live with his wife's mental

health issues. Helping me out today is the writer and mental health advocate, Bassie Iqbee. She's the author

of the New York Times best-selling essay collection, I'm Telling the Truth But I'm Lying,

and The Audible Original Home Rarely Feels Like This. She's also the creator of No Shame Day,

an initiative that normalizes conversations around black mental health in order to reduce stigma.

Fassie, thank you so, so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited.

I'm thrilled that you're here.

And before we dive into these letters, which I know you said in an email, a couple of them already pissed you off.

So I can't wait to hear your reactions.

I want to go ahead and ask you for one piece of unsolicited

advice that you just want to get off your chest. One of the pieces of advice that I've carried with me

forever is never apologize for how you choose to take care of yourself. But within reason,

because I think a lot of people take that and run like I'll never have to

pop. Nope, within reason. So yeah, that's something that I live by. What are the limits on within

reason? Well, the limits with everything. I think that people sort of like take advice and then

internalize it in a way that's very selfish where it it's like, if I'm doing something that harms you,

I apologize. Like, I'm not, that has nothing to do with how I'm taking care of myself. It's how I'm

attacking you in a way. And I think when it comes to advice, especially now, people get very,

they personalize everything and then they project. And so even the best advice can be, you know,

turned into something that's completely not good advice. So it's always about making sure that I believe

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