Dear Sugar is supported by...

The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart sick.

Sugar is here, the both of us, speaking straight into your ears.

I'm Cheryl Strait.

I'm Steve Almond. This is Dear Sugar Radio.

Oh dear, don't you please...

Yeah, some little sweet days would be.

I check my bell vibes every day.

Oh, and this sugar, you see in my way.

A few years ago I started writing an advice column for a relatively obscure website called The Rumpus.

And basically assign myself the job of being an advice columnist, which is on one hand kind of you're a giver of advice,

you're empathic, you're doing the world a favor, but in a much more fundamental level it's incredibly narcissistic.

And you're essentially saying, I have all the answers.

And so the way I solved that dilemma was I created this persona.

I wasn't writing the advice columnist, Steve Almond. I was writing as somebody named Sugar.

And Sugar in my mind, in my imagination, was a woman of a certain age, probably in her late 30s or 40s,

who'd had a very eventful life and was wise and irreverent and no bull.

And that worked kind of badly because it was fake.

And then something very curious happened. I received a fan letter.

In fact, I think it was the only fan letter that I received.

And this was toward the end of my run as sugar.

And I was looking for somebody to replace me.

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