Dr. Laura: 

Please follow and don't be offended. You have helped so many and deserve all the respect your career has given. People contact you for advice, but I wish to offer you some advice in return. 

You are a wonderful, brutal, horrifically honest therapist ... thank God for you. When the other pop therapists on the street corner offering lollipops and hard candies you are clear across the street on your own corner slapping people across the face with a cold wet, dead, cod fish ... thank God for you. After the short satisfaction of the candy is gone, no true resolution is accomplished. On the other hand, once being whacked with a fish across the face gets your attention, people "wake up" and finally are tuned in as to how to "do the right thing". 

I read a popular book a while ago that was more annoying than informative. It was called "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands". I kept flipping to the back cover while reading it and saying, "Who is this woman who wrote this damn book?  How annoying to read my own personal autobiography!!!" I'm 45 and everything in that book does me no good now because I have already lived it through my failed marriage. "Why the heck couldn't this person author the book 20 years ago so this annoying thing could actually be of some help to me?" Oh, I kid.

Thank you for doing what you do. I only wish I did not take the Wile E Coyote path of learning through trial and error of what is right and wrong and would have much preferred to be pre-educated like the Road Runner instead. 

Burk