Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

A reader with the initialism WTF claims that this question—the “what the fuck?” their initialism stands for—applies to everything in life. Sugar responds with the story of one of the most perplexing and disturbing parts of her life: when her paternal grandfather would force her to masturbate him. Although she became estranged from this man at age six, when her parents divorced, the memory of what he did to her remained and caused her to ask, “What the fuck was up with that?” (90). It took her years to realize the senselessness of this event, and it returned to her when she saw a dying baby bird that reminded her of her grandfather’s penis. She felt that she had to smother the bird to put it out of its misery—and also to finally exorcise the memory of her grandfather’s crime. Ultimately, she answers WTF’s question by saying that “the fuck is [their] life” and they had better figure out what it is about (91).

Considering Going Solo (CGS), a 26-year-old musician, is torn between his wish to see the world while he is still young and remaining in the same small town to stay with the band he has been in for six years.

Sugar tells him in no uncertain terms that he must leave on his solo adventure; otherwise, he will regret it in middle age.

Bewildered, a 38-year-old man asks for Sugar’s advice about how best to comfort his 35-year-old fiancée about the loss of her mother 12 years earlier. He feels insufficient in the face of her lingering grief.

Sugar advises him that he must accept that his fiancée has experienced an irretrievable loss and that nothing will make it OK again. The best thing he can do is be prepared to accept this fact and keep telling her how sorry he is for her loss. He should not seek a solution but instead be compassionate, which is “about giving all the love that [he’s] got” (98). He should also consider making a place for his missing mother-in-law in his life.

Worried Friend is a high-school freshman who is concerned that her friend “Jill” is dating “Jack,” a guy who has a girlfriend in another school. She wants to become involved in the situation and attempt to resolve it.

Sugar advises against becoming involved, saying that Worried Friend will need to learn boundaries. There is nothing she can do to personally influence other people’s actions, even though she can be honest with her friend.

Sharing Panties, but Not Fantasies, a woman, came home unexpectedly to find her boyfriend trying on her panties. He became so embarrassed that he slammed the door in her face and refused to discuss the matter. She wants to let him know the encounter did not turn her off but is unsure of whether to have the conversation.

Sugar urges the woman to talk to her boyfriend about what she saw, going as far as stating that if he refuses, their relationship is over. She also says that her boyfriend was likely supremely embarrassed and that he probably does not want to include her in his female-panty-wearing fantasy. Sugar relates the story of mutual confusion she and Mr. Sugar experienced early in their relationship on the subject of spanking, explaining that misunderstandings can occur and that sexual pleasure in a relationship should be a form of continuing conversation.

Mourning and Raging is furious with a woman who was in her employment and began an affair with her husband. She worries that she will not be able to let go of the anger she feels in her chest and find peace again.

Sugar advises Mourning and Raging that forgiveness may be a long shot for her at present, but that she can begin with accepting that the affair happened in the first place. Sugar also wonders whether the woman has displaced the anger she feels toward her husband, who also had the affair, entirely onto his lover because this would not require her to “dismantle [her] life” in the same way (111).

M, a single woman in her late thirties who is reaching the end of her natural fertility window, wonders whether she should go to a sperm bank and give up her initial dream of having a child with a partner.

Sugar intuits that M does want a baby and warns her that she is falling prey to the “goddamned man and baby dream” (116), which dictates that reproduction should be done in a couple and excludes women of M’s demographic. Sugar sees that in M’s case, having a baby and getting a romantic life partner might be two separate dreams. For example, M might have a baby on her own and then later meet the right man. She needs to take the long view and wonder whether signing up for sperm or remaining childless will be what she regrets most.

Sugar, a mother herself, urges M to think about whether she can afford a baby and whether there will be someone there to help and offer childcare so that she can work and date. Nevertheless, it is up to M to set the terms of her life, no one else.

Trustee’s elderly father is moving in with them and cannot stop divulging stories of his affairs and sexual misdemeanors. He confesses solely in Trustee because he thinks they will not judge him as their siblings would. However, Trustee does not want to bond with their father in this way.

Sugar advises Trustee to set firm boundaries regarding the stories they are willing to hear. Sugar also ponders that the father’s inappropriateness may stem from some undiagnosed brain condition.

A creative-writing tutor at the University of Alabama who calls themselves Cupcake & Team 408 requests that Sugar write an encouraging speech for her English-major students, as many of them are graduating with doubt and uncertainty.

Sugar encourages the students to embrace uncertainty, as the future will be composed of a mixture of who they already are and some unpredictable elements. She reassures them that life mostly turns out all right, “even if we fuck up entirely along the way” (129). While they do not have to fulfill others’ expectations for their lives, they must do simple things like paying their own bills, being kind, and giving their lives and dreams everything they have.

Sugar was also an English major but did not fully receive her degree because a final class was missing. Despite being a good student, Sugar could not bring herself to take the final class. When she went back to waiting tables, as her mother, a woman who had longed to go to college, had done her whole life, she felt that she had wasted her potential. Still, she managed to publish her first novel, and her mother, at the age of 40, finally managed to enter college and spent the last years before she died getting her degree. Sugar reassures them that the things they learn in their English degree will nurture them, even if they do not have an immediate application in the real world.

A woman who calls herself “The Friend” feels unable to stop spending time with or fantasizing about a male friend who has a girlfriend she admires, and he feels the same way about her, although he will not break up with his girlfriend. She wants to know how to preserve a platonic friendship.

Sugar advises that “The Friend” is not really friends with the object of her desire but is instead having “a sexually repressed, mildly deceitful romantic relationship with him” (136). As the man is not available to be with her, her only viable choice is to part ways with him definitively. This will force him to decide between the two women and liberate “The Friend” from her unsatisfying position of halfway house.

A woman called Abbie writes to Sugar from a pediatric intensive-care unit, where her six-month-old daughter is going to be operated on for a brain tumor. She is worried that the consequences could be life-threatening and struggles to believe in God, even though she wants Sugar to pray for her baby to be OK and wants to believe that all the prayers people are saying for them are working.

Sugar immediately replies with her well wishes and a request to publish the letter. Abbie writes back to state that they have learned her daughter’s tumor is noncancerous and she is likely to recover completely. She resolves that whether God exists and is behind her baby’s recovery or not, she will continue praying and asks that Sugar and her readers do so too. Yet she wonders what Sugar has to say about the existence of God.

Sugar confesses that she is a nonbeliever who knows little about the God of organized religion. However, when she became a mother, Sugar found that her children were interested in the stories of Jesus—but from the perspective of his human suffering. She found that they had encountered a truth “they were ready to know. Not about Christianity, but about the human condition: that suffering is part of life” (144). However, she notes, we all tend forget this when something truly awful happens to us. She further adds that reducing the question of whether God exists to the ups and downs of our individual luck might reduce our ability to feel true compassion. Those who believe in God would see evidence of his existence in the compassionate emails that came through from strangers as the woman’s daughter’s life hung in the balance. Regardless of the outcome, their love would have provided a kind of grace that carried the woman. She suggests that the woman allow her God to exist more in human compassion than in desired outcomes.