Welcome to Dear Prudence, I'm your Prudence,

Jene 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 being eldest percent 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 sub-stack newsletter.

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

Cheryl, thank you so so much for being here.

Oh, I'm so 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 tell people unsolicited.

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 it's about listening to yourself it's about

...