Introducing: Chicken Nuggets for the Soul, A New Advice Column

From the moment I started reading independently, I’ve been consuming Advice Content. I was a curious kid, but far too self-conscious to actually ask my parents the millions of questions I had about my changing body, weird brain, and relationships (both platonic and *gulp* romantic). I’m also an only child, so there was no cool older sibling to guide me through the tumultuous process of growing up. Instead, I did what any adolescent nerd did in the pre-internet days: I turned to books and magazines.

In an attempt to spark some kind of conversation, my mom bought me nearly every pre-teen guidebook in the American Girl collection. Some stand-outs include The Care and Keeping of You, a seminal book for every kid I knew with a vagina, and A Smart Girl’s Guide to Boys, which, despite my best efforts, led to me kissing a grand total of zero boys. I devoured these books, turning to them in times of pubescent crisis (what’s the difference between a regular pad and a maxi pad? Why is my crush so mean to me?).

My favorite part was always the advice section, where the editors answered “real questions” from “real girls.” It made me feel less alone to know that other people were dealing with similar issues to mine, and to see their questions answered in an informed, respectful, and generally light-hearted way. I also admired the courage of the girls who wrote in. Even though there was little to identify them other than their ages and potentially fake first names, I could never imagine asking a question about nipple hairs in such a public forum.

Once I had basically memorized the pages of the American Girl books, I moved on to magazines. Seventeen, YM, and CosmoGirl were lifelines to a shy girl like me (until the latter two folded in the late 2000s). I’d sit in Borders (RIP) reading the “Ask Him Anything” section of Cosmopolitan, knowing full well that my folks were not exactly willing to buy me a copy at 16-years-old.

As I grew older and (somewhat) wiser, I could see the holes in the paragraph-long answers provided in magazine advice columns. They weren’t always able to address the nuance of the particular situation in the space provided. Thankfully (although somewhat unfortunately), the internet can hold plenty of words, and people like Daniel Mallory Ortberg (of Slate’s “Dear Prudence”) and Heather Havrilesky (of The Cut’s “Ask Polly”) are answering complicated questions in incredibly well-written columns. Even more advice is available on more crowdsourced platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and that old chestnut Yahoo! Answers.

So why, in what seems like the Golden Age of Advice, and as someone too shy to even write in to these columns I love so much, would I want to start my own advice column?

I often feel like a mess of a person. It kind of comes with the territory of being in your 20s, but there are days when I feel like I have even less of my shit together than my peers. Then someone asks me for advice. It takes a lot of trust and confidence to ask someone for help, and it feels really great to know that someone has enough trust and confidence in me to do so. Every time it happens I reflect back on my life and realize that I do, in fact, know a few things.

I also just generally love helping people, and sharing some “wisdom” and advice (whether you choose to take it or not) is one of the best ways I know how to do just that. So that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Coming very soon, I’m starting a column on this here blog called Chicken Nuggets for the Soul. I’m no expert, and I’ve only been around the sun a little over 26 times, so I can’t promise that my advice will be particularly nutritious. But hopefully it’ll be tasty, and at least filling. We all need some nuggets sometimes.

In order to launch this, I’m gonna need some questions, of course! I’ve created a very fancy Google form for question submissions that doesn’t require an email or any other identifying information. All I need is a name to call you in the post (which can be a pseudonym), your preferred pronouns, and your question. Das it! So easy!

So send me some Qs and I’ll give you some As. And if you can spread this post and/or the form around on social media, or share it with anyone else who might be looking for advice, I’ll love you forever and ever. Let’s make this happen!