Welcome to Dear Prudence. I'm your Prudence, Jeney Desmond Harris. Today we'll be discussing whether it's a good idea to offer to be your Platonic best friend's housewife, how to handle a husband who stinks, and what an overachieving eldest millennial daughter can do to find happiness.

Joining me today is Cheryl Strait.

She has been called The Queen of Advice, so I'm 99% sure if you listen to this podcast,

you already know exactly who she is.

But just in case, she is the author of Tiny Beautiful Things, Wild, Brave Enough, and Torch, also two women walk into a bar.

She originally wrote her Dear Sugar Advice column anonymously for The Rumpus until she revealed her identity on Valentine's Day, 2012.

Tiny Beautiful Things is a collection of her advice from that column, which she now writes in her

substack newsletter. And the book was recently adapted for a series on Hulu starring Catherine

Han. Cheryl, thank you so, so much for being here. Oh, I'm so thrilled to be here. I'm such a

fan, of course, of yours. And I just, you know, I usually do advice alone. So I'm so excited to do it

with you. Well, I can't wait to hear what you have to say about some of these. And before we get

started, I want to ask you for one piece of unsolicited advice. Okay. One piece of unsolicited.

You know, this is a hard one because there are so many. I have like 10 things that I would like to piece of unsolicited. You know, this is a hard one because there are so

I have like 10 things that I would like to tell people un solicited. But the biggest one,

you know, what first came to mind is to really err on the side of kindness and generosity

as often as possible. And I think the thing that people forget about that, when they hear

that, they think,

like, be nice to other people, which is certainly true. But I think the most powerful thing we can do

is be kind to ourselves. And that is, of course, so much deeper that it might sound at first glance.

It's about listening to yourself. It's about trusting yourself. It's about believing in

yourself. And it's about believing that you deserve love and you deserve that, you know,

ability to take the chance to find happiness in your life. So that's my unsolicited advice tonight.

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