Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

It was only when we drew up alongside the sloping, green fields that I realized where we were. A cloud of suffering still wafts up from the terrain. You can sense the concert and collision of wills, the carnage, the chaos, the mental blueprints for the fight being blown about in the chances of fate or providence. It is dense around these fields.

I may be wrong, but it’s my sincere belief that I was the first woman north of Greenwich Village to put on blue jeans for daily wear in Manhattan. At least, when I began the practice, it was not a common sight in my part of town.

A few months ago, a malicious third party made a comment about my mother, whom she had never actually known, that created distance between my mother and me. It was a puzzling, obscuring distance my mother had never occupied during her lifetime.

As a little girl, one of my vivid memories of being caught in the wrong belongs to the gift a camp counselor once gave me. This gift-giving happened the last day of the season of the Day Camp that sometimes held sway over part of the summer at Hilltop.

From precognitive dreams, where the future is recognizably predicted before it happens, we can infer that time is other than what ordinarily we think it is. 

Except for the dentistry, this old world seems to be going from bad to worse. It’s been downhill for decades. Neighborhoods going to hell. Small businesses and specialty shops closing. Anti-Semitism at a toxic high. Quaint, historic towns and country spaces overtaken by gas stations and fast food joints. Whole domains of inherited culture dropping out of memory.

Long ago, I waited in New York City for a promised letter from Paris that never came. My first love, not a good correspondent, nor a good keeper of promises, was a communist. Not a party member, but an intellectually ardent sympathizer.

What is standing, for a woman, and what is to be done about it? It’s a sign, ladies, of something we all know about: the unfairness of life. 

Having grown up in city apartments, owning a home had never been high on my list of desirables. In fact, co-inheriting one, when my parents died, felt like the hand of a heavy fate on my shoulders.

Being born and raised a Jewish girl from Manhattan’s old-rent, upper east side, the last thing I’m expected to like is country gospel. Or so I’m often told.

The Ariadne’s Thread that connects one episode of one’s life to the next is provided by our women friends – the ones to whom our stories can be told. 

I am suffering from burnout. Until the other day, I hadn’t noticed it as a specific complaint.

The Loser is the epitome, the spittin’ image, of what we don’t want to be.

It’s been “conversion” after “conversion,” each one carrying the pains and costs itemized above. I regret none of it.  .  .

In my life, the most painful ruptures were those that, for years, I wanted desperately to repair in the first instance, and prevent in the second.

Like many girls, I’ve always loved horses. What does that mean? I don’t know if it has to mean anything. When there were still dray horses on Madison Avenue, the household sugar cubes used to disappear into their large equine mouths via my small hands.

What is integrity? Is it a dull thing that you get by means of conformism and conventional thinking? Or is it interesting ? It’s really, I think, neither conventional nor unconventional, neither conformist nor anti-conformist, neither respectable nor defiant of the norms. Those just aren’t the right lines to draw. It’s a matter of living as you think, being who you say you are – as good as your wo...

What is Jane Austen's secret? How does she manage to be so wonderful?

Although never in my grownup life would I again see cheering supporters run across the green to shout the news, sometimes – even now — I win a few.

I suppose the opposite of forgiveness is holding a grudge – waiting and watching the person who wronged you till you can get your own back. If so, I must be a very forgiving type.

For some years I had a brilliant friend, male, with whom I used to talk far into the night about the most sublime and transcendent matters. . . .

I’m not an atheist at present, but I’ve been one. So, why did I go there and why, eventually, did I turn back?

I have never, never trusted doctors. It is not because my current medical support team is unskillful or uncaring. Of course, earlier white-coated cohorts, still standing out in memory, were deficient by comparison, but that’s not the heart of the mistrust.

The other day, I could not find my coat . . .

If anyone wants to control us, whether we’re women or men, short of violence the quickest way to get hold of us is by the guilt we carry. If we don’t want to fall prey to the controllers, we must do something about our guilt. But what?