Rumpus Columns

Dear Sugar

May 17th, 2012

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #98: Monsters and Ghosts

Dear Sugar,

My mother left my father the month I was born. She remarried and had my brother two years later. My stepfather (the only father I knew) committed suicide when I was five years old. My mother became a raging alcoholic following his death. …more

February 23rd, 2012

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #97: You Have Arrived at the Fire

Dear Sugar,

I stutter.
That is the truth that I have lived nearly twenty-eight years of my life trying to avoid. And of course there is no real avoidance because my stutter permeates every single goddamn thing that I do. My stutter is, as you would say, my Obliterated Place.

"Sugar Says" poster

"Sugar Says" poster

There is no real help for me since there is no known cure. There is only acceptance. I have spent a large part of my 20s attempting to come to terms with this reality, only to find, over and over again that having a stutter is the one unforgivable thing. At least in my mind.

I know I did not ask for this. I know it is a hereditary affliction. I know there is just something in my brain that doesn’t work the way other people’s brains work. I know I am not the only stutterer in the world. Yet, I cannot shake off this shame that I feel. It is deeply imbedded in my psyche. The shame is as much a part of me as having brown eyes or being left-handed.

The shame and just pure, raw fear that I feel every single day has led me to abuse alcohol on a very regular basis. I find that when I am drunk, the stutter is less prominent. Incredibly so. I’ve learned that the stutter doesn’t actually go away when I am drunk, it’s just that my inhibitions do. The fear I have of simply opening my mouth to talk is gone when I drink.

I am not sure how to go about letting go of the shame. I find myself apologizing to people if I happen to stutter in front of them. If not with my words, than with my demeanor. Confidence? I am sure that must be a wonderful thing. I have never known it.

When I’m stuttering, I go to a detached place in my mind. It feels like my heart is being ripped out of my chest. For the most part people are kind about it. When they aren’t, the shame is a neon sign pointing to my biggest flaw. My most human part of me. I always remember the people who are not kind about it.

As a child, my family never brought it up unless it was to make fun of me. They did what they knew and I don’t blame them. But this is where the shame started. I was maybe five years old when the stutter became prominent and it has been with me ever since. I have never received any kind of therapy.

I left my home in San Francisco to move to New York because I have never wanted to live in one place my whole life. However, I feel like I have not really given myself a chance to live. Really, truly live. I feel stifled and buried alive by the shame, yet I am hesitant and even afraid to let go of it because a part of me feels that I need to be punished for being a stutterer.

And that’s the gist of it, I suppose. I hate myself because I stutter. Even though I know better and even though I know I did not ask for this, I still blame myself. I blame myself for stuttering and I blame myself for letting my fear of my stutter control me. The fear and the shame rule my life and I am ashamed of that too. I blame myself for that too.

How do I let go and how do I live better? How do I forgive myself for something that is not my fault? I feel like I already know what to do. I’m just waiting to give myself permission to do it and I feel as though time is running out. Help?

Thank you,
Ashamed and Afraid

***

Dear Ashamed and Afraid,

Last December I took the baby Sugars to a winter solstice ritual at a hippy retreat center in the woods. The ritual was held just after sun set in a big community room in an old lodge, where maybe sixty of us were packed in. There was drumming. There were speeches delivered in mystical tones by people bedecked in beads and feathers about the symbolic meanings of north, east, south and west. There was chanting followed by ten minutes of total silence that even—miraculously!—the baby Sugars managed to endure. And then there was a great joyous ululating celebration in which we together welcomed the darkness.

After the joyous ululating died down, the people who were bedecked in beads and feathers lit a fire in the fireplace and before it they placed several giant loaves of bread.  We were all instructed to take a hunk of the bread and, from that hunk, take one bite. The rest was to be cast into the fire. The bread we consumed represented what we wanted to bring into our lives, to take in, or make manifest, they explained. The bread that went into the fire represented what each of us hoped to shed or push away.

When I reiterated this symbolic business about the bread to the baby Sugars they looked at me blankly. They couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea of bringing something that wasn’t a material thing into their lives and it was even more difficult for them to understand the notion of casting such a thing out. They did not have any real desire to be stronger or purer or better. They believed themselves to be that already. To them the word manifestmeans only bread in the mouth.

This is as it should be. They are children—so irrefutably of one piece that they’re incapable of making the psychic move it takes to see themselves from even the slightest distance. But you know what, sweet pea? You aren’t. It’s time for you to do the work you need to do to become the person you must be. That means tossing something out—the ugly and false notions you have about your stutter—and taking something in—the fact that you have the power to redirect the blow-torch of your self-hatred and turn it into love.

That you got frozen in the place of fear and shame that first gripped you when you were a child is not surprising. It’s not another thing about which you should silently condemn yourself. Your letter does not convey your weakness and failure to me, darling. It conveys your resilience and your strength. At five, you learned you had a communication disorder and no one helped you make sense of that. You received neither emotional support nor therapeutic treatment. That’s a travesty. But a greater travesty would be that you, at twenty-eight, allow yourself to go on this way.

I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to. It isn’t too late. Time is not “running out.”

Your life is here and now. And the moment has arrived at which you’re finally ready to change. I know it. The thousands of people reading these words right now know it. And you know it too. It’s the reason that you wrote to me.

It’s heart-squinchingly terrible that you’ve been so alone with your stutter for these twenty-eight years, but you have the power to end your isolation in ten seconds if you choose to. Just click on over to the National Stuttering Association, where you will find oodles of information that will help you connect with others who stutter, find therapists and specialists who treat those with your condition, and access other resources that will very likely play an important role in your ability to overcome the shame and fear you’ve gathered around you like a tomb constructed of the shame that has buried you alive.

I implore you to do everything you can to connect yourself to peers and professionals who will offer you support and guidance. Doing so won’t likely make you feel great in one day. You might not even feel great in a year. But you’re going to feel a whole fuck of a lot better, I can promise you that. There isn’t any reason for you to be alone in this, dear one. You are not alone. There are so many people out there who will nod their heads in understanding and recognition when you tell them all the things you just told me.

You have a right to know those people. You deserve to receive their kindness, camaraderie, and expertise. You don’t have to make the same choices your parents made for you. You get to have your real, giant, gorgeous life. As you so clearly articulated, your stutter is not what’s keeping you from that. Your ideas about what it means to have a stutter are. So you need to change them.

Nobody worth your attention gives a damn if you stutter. Write this down on pieces of paper and tape them all over your room. Put one in every pocket of all of your pants. Nobody worth my attention gives a damn if I stutter! They might blush when you stutter. They might awkwardly try to help you communicate. But not because they think you’ve got “one unforgivable thing.” They do that because they have a moment of surprise or discomfort, that in their desire to make you feel okay they don’t quite know what to do and some of them do the wrong thing.

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You don’t need to take responsibility for that. You need to find a way to laugh it off or address it directly or let it simply be there, unconnected to you. The people and resources I directed you to will help you begin to stop internalizing this crap. And so will a lot of other people. It might help you to remember that your struggle is ultimately so much like the struggles many of us have to feel right in the world. Many of us have had to make life-changing emotional and psychological shifts about who we are so we could become the people we’re here to be. You are not outside of us, even if it feels to you like you are.

I believe someday you’ll know that in your heart. I think years from now you’ll look back at this time of your life and you’ll see that this was your growing up. One of the hardest things about doing that—I mean, really, truly, actually growing up—is that in order to do so we must come to terms with the past. And for a lot of us who didn’t get as kids what we needed to get from the people who were supposed to give it to us, we can’t really grow up until we find a way to give what we need to ourselves.

But that’s also one of the most beautiful things. Because we can. We have the power to heal what needs to be healed. We get to give ourselves that. We have the capacity to stand before the scorching flames and decide what to swallow and what to cast out. That’s where you are, Ashamed and Afraid. You have arrived at the fire. Here’s the bread. Grab a hunk.

Yours,
Sugar

***

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***

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February 10th, 2012

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #96: The Dark Cocoon

Dear Sugar,

Please oh please help me. I’m so mixed up and in so much pain that I’m beginning to be afraid I might kill myself, though I have two small children and basically know I can’t and would never, and I definitely know how crazy and self-dramatizing that is. The very fact that I think of killing myself when I am a mother is scaring the shit out of me. …more

January 27th, 2012

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #95: The Dudes In the Woods Debacle

Dear Sugar,

Three of my best college buddies and I go away for an annual guys weekend at a cabin in the woods. …more

January 13th, 2012

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #94: The Amateur

Dear Sugar,

I just heard that you plan to reveal your identity at a party The Rumpus is having for you on Valentine’s Day. I don’t know how I feel about that! …more

December 29th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #93: How The Real Work Is Done

I’m answering two letters at once this week, sweet peas. …more

December 15th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #92: Your Invisible Inner Terrible Someone

Dear Sugar,

I’m 29 and dating a man that I adore; we’re planning to move in together soon. I have a stable job that I hate, but I hope that I’ll one day find something I enjoy. I have family and friends and hobbies and interests and love. So much love. And I’m desperately afraid that I’m going to have cancer. …more

December 1st, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #91: A Big Life

Dear Sugar,

My question is not about love or sex, but rather one of identity …more

November 24th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #90: 94 Ways of Saying Thank You

Dear Readers,

Last week I asked you to write to me about what you’re grateful for. The response was overwhelming. …more

November 17th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column: A Special Request

Dear sweet peas,

As long-time readers of this column know, it’s my tradition that every time I reach a “new decade” of columns I write shorter answers to several questions instead of the usual longer, single question column. …more

November 3rd, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #89: The Thing That Turns You On

Dear Sugar,

Ever since I was small girl of about six, I have delighted in the idea of growth. And I don’t mean spiritual or emotional or mental growth. I mean literal growth. The idea of expansion has always excited me. …more

October 21st, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #88: The Human Scale

Dear Sugar,

I’m writing this from my little couch/bed in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Egelston Children’s Hospital in Atlanta. …more

October 6th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #87: In the Direction of Real Life

Dear Sugar,

I’m 26 years old and finally in a relationship I cherish and feel proud of. I want so much for it to thrive. …more

September 29th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #86: Tiny Revolutions

Dear Sugar,

I’m a woman in my mid-50s. I read your column regularly and believe that my question is pedestrian but am humbly asking for your advice and support anyway as I sit in the pain of it all. …more

September 15th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #85: We Call This a Clusterfuck

Dear Readers,

This week I’m answering two letters together. Each letter is from one of the women involved in the situation detailed in the letters. I wouldn’t have known the two letters were connected but for the (unpublished) postscript one of the letter writers added, informing me that she knew the other woman involved had written to me as well. …more

September 8th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #84: The Distance of the Leap

Dearest Sweet Peas,

One month ago I received an email from a woman named Colleen Wainwright. She wasn’t asking me for advice. …more

September 1st, 2011

DEAR SUGAR Appreciation

The following visual representations were sent in from Sugar enthusiasts far and wide, …more

August 25th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #83: The Major Notes

Dear Sugar,

I’ve been dating a man — whom I’ll call William — for nearly three years. …more

August 18th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #82: The God of Doing it Anyway

Dear Sugar,

Do you think there will ever be room for me …more

August 12th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #81: A Bit of Sully in Your Sweet

Dear Sugar,

I’m 29 year-old woman who is engaged to be married to a man I’ve been with for about two years (we’ve lived together for one). I’m very close to my sister. …more

August 4th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #80: The Ordinary Miraculous

Dearest Sweet Peas,

Long-time readers of my column know that it’s my tradition that every time I reach a “new decade” of columns I do a Q&A, in which I write shorter answers to several questions instead of the usual longer, single question column. …more

July 15th, 2011

A Grittier Acknowledgement of What We’re Up Against: A Sugar Addendum

Dear sweet peas,

I’m taking some time off, so I don’t have a new column for you, but I’m still sending a weekly message out to the members of my Google group. I sent out this one earlier today and Stephen Elliott suggested we publish it on the site. …more

July 14th, 2011

“SUGAR SAYS” Poster Now On Sale!

A beautiful high quality matte paper poster made up of quotes from everyone’s favorite advice columnist, Sugar!

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE!

[Larger image after the jump] …more

July 7th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #79, Soul-Sucking Spirit Death

Dear Sugar,

I’m seeing a woman I love and I believe she loves me, but she’s very insecure. This manifests in several ways, …more

July 1st, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #78: The Obliterated Place

Dear Sugar,

1. It’s taken me many weeks to compose this letter and even still, I can’t do it right. …more

June 24th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #77: The Truth That Lives There

This week Sugar is offering her advice in a response to five letters. …more

June 16th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #76: The Woman Hanging on the End of the Line

Dear Sugar,

I need your help with forgiveness. I am carrying a fierce anger in my body every day, and I can’t seem to find my way out of it. …more

June 2nd, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #75: The Three-Year Dry Hump

Dear Sugar,

My brain is unquiet today. I had a sex dream about my wife this morning and woke feeling terrible. I realized that at some point in my life, I became a man who feels terrible fantasizing about his wife. I have never had sex with my wife, almost three years now. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. …more

May 26th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #74: Ten Angry Boys

Dear Sugar,

I am a mother of two beautiful little girls, ages 4 and 2. …more

May 19th, 2011

DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #73: I’m Standing Right Next To You

In this very special Rumpus interview, Lidia Yuknavitch interviews our beloved Sugar: …more

About Dear Sugar

Sugar is Cheryl Strayed.

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