The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Sometimes, advice-givers run out of answers
DEAR READERS » I’m stepping away from the column this week to travel the country and meet readers. This is an edited version of an essay I wrote a year ago.
I’m about to celebrate another anniversary of writing this column, and — after almost 15 years — I will admit that I have already outlasted my original expectation for this experience. When I started the “Ask Amy” column in 2003, I think I assumed that my readership would run out of questions.
I also thought that we might simply tire of one another, in the way that happens in so many long relationships. This column runs 365 days each year, and aside from some brief breaks while I worked on other projects, I’ve consistently assumed the role of Ask Amy while this column grew into its adolescence. I’ve written while onboard planes, trains and ferryboats, sitting in the public library, and in my home office, which is located in an old red barn. I’ve opened bushels of postal mail, run through eight laptops and (by my estimation) clicked open 520,000 emails.
When I started writing this column, I was a middle-aged single mother with a teenage daughter, living in Chicago. I am now married, with four more daughters and two granddaughters. Like all of you, my own life has taken many unexpected turns.
Through it all, I have continued to do my job (as all of you do yours, during good and tough times). Although I am someone others turn to for answers, I have often been surprised by my own frailty and failings. My search for ways to live my own best life has taken me through a shelf of self-help books, into therapy, nature, art, music, meditation and a return to my faith through my hometown church.
The constant and most inspiring through-line in this phase of late-middle age has been the deep connection I share with my readers and the people who are brave enough to air their problems in this space. At my deepest moments of personal questioning, I have anchored to the inspiring reality of this connection, and the sure knowledge that I am not alone. None of us is alone, if we are brave and generous enough to hold onto each other.