For as long as I can remember, I have had questions, so many questions, maybe more than most.  I had questions such as What is the meaning of life? and What do I say to people in the hallways at school?

I asked How can I not be sad about moving away from my friends? or sometimes Why don’t people seem to like me? 

I asked How do I choose a major? and How do I choose a husband?

I asked When will I feel like an adult? and How am I supposed to do this parenting thing?

I asked How do I cook chicken? and How long do I keep leftovers?

I asked and I asked.  I asked question after question.  Some of the questions were too embarrassing to ask anyone I knew so I looked in books.  Sometimes when I asked the questions I got responses; sometimes I did not.  Some of those responses were great, some mediocre and others, quite frankly, were bad. 

The question When will I feel like an adult? I asked my dad when I was around 21 years old.

His response: I’ll let you know when I start feeling like one.  That was powerful and told me a lot.  I learned that I wasn’t shooting for a specific goal, that there was no threshold I would cross into adulthood. 

Around that same time, I also asked my dad I can’t seem to afford my life – how do I manage my money?

His response: Use credit cards and take out as many loans as you can. I took that advice for the next several years but lived to regret that choice.

Regardless of the quality of the response, or my perceived quality of the response, I always considered a response better than no response at all. 

When I was in my early 30’s and my oldest daughter was a toddler, I was visiting my mom and asked her, Mom, will you please tell me things you’ve learned over the years – things that you know now that you wish you had known then? 

Her response: No. Just that single word.  No explanation or qualification.  At least she didn’t beat around the bush.

I asked my mother-in-law What do I do when my babies won’t stop crying?

Her response: I don’t know – my babies never cried. That wasn’t helpful.

I asked my new mom friends How do you get your toddlers to sit in the cart at the grocery store? My daughter keeps trying to jump out!

The general consensus: I just tell them to sit and they do. That didn’t work for me.

That was that. I was on my own.

It’s no wonder that I became drawn to advice columns – everything from Dear Abby to Dr. Laura to Dear Sugar to Ask Polly (my personal favorite).  I scrutinized every response, searching for something that would give me the answers I was so desperately seeking.

I also read every book I could get my hands on, hoping to glean any tiny scrap of helpful input I could get from them.  I read parenting books, books of letters, spiritual books, religious books, self-help books, inspirational books, how-to books, fiction books, memoirs, seemingly every book I could get my hands on.  You name it, I read it.  I was frenetically searching.

As my daughters grew, I realized that I was now being asked the questions – hard questions, sometimes seemingly unanswerable questions.  I admit that this did give me some empathy for those who had struggled to answer my similarly unanswerable questions.  But I still believed that some response was better than no response – well, usually.

I remember overhearing one father’s response to his 6-year-old daughter’s question: Daddy, are mermaids real?

His response: Of course they are, honey, they just live in castles under the sea and if you come close to them, they disappear.

When I later remarked on this fanciful and dishonest answer, his response to me was something like: Oh, you’ll learn over time to just make stuff up – kids don’t really know the difference. Say whatever you need to say to shut them up.

And that is where I differ.  Yes, a response is better than no response. As long as the response is honest.  I believed then and I believe now that kids do know the difference.  I believed then and I believe now that not only do kids deserve the truth, but it is our responsibility as their teachers and mentors to respond as honestly as possible to them, even when it’s difficult.

In fact, I take that a big step farther – I believe that everybody deserves a response, and everybody deserves the truth. 

So I have made it my mission over the years to respond to the questions my children (and others) have asked me. Even when I’m stumped and my response is that I don’t know the answer. Even when I need time to consider my response.  Even when I have to come back and correct my response later.  Even when my response is upsetting to them. 

My children, mostly adults now, still ask questions, challenging questions.

Is Santa Claus real?  I trust you to tell me the truth, Mommy.

At Grandma’s funeral: I miss Grandma, will I ever see her again?

After my husband was in a massive car accident: Why didn’t God protect Daddy in his car accident? We pray for that every night.

I paid Emma to make me a bracelet – why didn’t she do it?

A boy bullied me on the bus, what should I do?

I didn’t get invited to the dance and I really want to go – what should I do?

Why are my roommates being so mean to me?

Should I quit my job?

How do I know if my cucumber has gone bad?

How do I pick a spouse?

How do I pick a major?

While I admit that I don’t always have answers, I always respond.  I like to believe that my responses have improved over the years as I have continued to learn and grow.  My responses these days focus on sharing the best of what I’ve picked up through the years, imparting the most important finds that I wish I had found earlier on.  But most importantly, though, my responses seek to shed light on what the question asker already knows, whether they realize it or not.  My responses seek to bring awareness to the inner beauty and inner wisdom that lives inside the question asker.  Once we learn to recognize and embrace what we already know, we can let it guide us on our own unique journey.

What I share here is a collection of responses both to questions I have asked and to questions I have been asked over the years.  These responses are meant to guide, not answer. (Although, occasionally I can throw in a refreshingly answerable question – like, How do I get berry stains out of my dress?  For that one, I have an answer!)

When and if the time comes that one of my adult children asks me, Will you please tell me things you’ve learned over the years – things that you know now that you wish you had known then?, I will say to them, “Here, read this.”

If these responses can help anybody who finds themselves without a guide, mentor, a leader, a willing parent, my mission will be complete.

Enjoy.