Dear readers,
A while back, the Pikes Peak Bulletin ran an advice column called Peak Perspectives. It arose because a generous person wanted to do it as a volunteer, for fun. It didn’t last very long and didn’t generate a lot of buzz, and in retrospect I see I fumbled the rollout. There were too many other irons in the fire at the Bulletin at that time, and it didn’t get the promotion it needed to take off. I think we could have still given it a go, and the writer and I talked about it, but she’d had other projects come up and had gotten too busy.
However, it is our good fortune that another thoughtful and intelligent writer has come forward with an offer to create an engaging column of advice on life, love, money, parenting, difficult neighbors, or any sticky situations for which one might want the take of a wise and neutral third party.
I’m doing it right this time: Cue the drumroll, roll out the red carpet, and please give a warm welcome to “Dear Mrs. Hughes!” Her first column is slated to appear in our Feb. 7 edition.
Mrs. Hughes is the pen name of Raizel Weiss Heitzer, a licensed professional counselor, cancer coach, officiant and sacred passage doula in Colorado Springs.
I asked Raizel to explain her inspiration for the column, and her vision for it.
“As far back as I can remember I have been enthralled with advice columnists,” she said. “I envied Lucy from Charlie Brown and wanted to have a booth where people would pay me a nickel to tell them what to do. When I was little, my mom and I would get the paper and immediately turn to Dear Abby or Ann Landers.”
As a teenager, she’d discuss advice columns with her friends, and as a young mother she’d tune in to the popular talk radio host Dr. Laura.
“While she ultimately got booted for her intolerant and discriminatory views, she fascinated me with her gritty, nonapologetic, ‘get a spine!’ attitude,” Raizel said. “Once again, my friends and I would debate her advice.”
Raizel and I share a love for another advice column, Dear Sugar, penned by the author Cheryl Strayed – it may be the most profoundly intimate writing I’ve ever come across. (Letters to Sugar and her answers are compiled in the book “Tiny, Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar” and I suggest you move this one to the top of your to-read list right now.) After so many years bearing witness to the human condition and assisting others through life’s travails, Raizel sees becoming an advice columnist as a natural progression.
“As a psychotherapist I am a bit out-of-the-box, but specifically don’t give advice,” she said. “I help people strengthen their spines and encourage them to look at different perspectives. Now I am a grandmother. A crone, wisewoman, healer. I don’t want to be constrained. This column is my last professional hurrah. In it I will put all my life experience, wisdom, humor, cheekiness, toughness, understanding, intuitive take on things, irreverence and love for humanity.”
Why “Mrs. Hughes?”
“I am calling it ‘Dear Mrs. Hughes’ in homage to a character from Downton Abbey who is kind, wise, diplomatic and most always appropriate until she bends the rules to help someone in need,” Raizel said. “Everyone goes to Mrs. Hughes for help and advice. A good friend of mine and I would channel Mrs. Hughes and ask each other, ‘What would Mrs. Hughes do?’ when we needed this particular kind of wisdom.”
There’s one more crucial part of this project to get wonderfully real on the page about our experiences and challenges: you. This is a community project and we humbly, excitedly, directly ask for your participation in “Dear Mrs. Hughes.”
Please send your letters to Dear Mrs. Hughes to heila@pikespeakbulletin.org. No topic is off limits, though publication is not guaranteed. Use a pseudonym if you wish. Don’t delay in writing – Feb. 7 is right around the corner!
