DEAR IRIS
MARCH 5, 2026
THE RETURN OF DEAR IRIS
Dear Reader,
Some columns are born from theory. This one was born from responsibility.
In 2014, I began an advice column called Dear Advised.
I was navigating a significant life transition while raising my children and rebuilding our home. Stability did not arrive on its own. It was built through structure, discipline, and daily decisions that carried long-term consequences. Rebuilding required steadiness more than sentiment.
Women began writing to me about their own turning points. A marriage under strain. Confidence shaken. Friendships fractured. The fear of beginning again when life had not gone according to plan. I answered in the margins of my day, between work and home, doing my best to respond with clarity and composure.
I kept every letter.
What I did not anticipate was the sharpness of the online world. Advice offered in good faith was often met with dismissal and ridicule. I was still forming my voice. I stepped away when I realized conviction must be stronger than commentary.
Life continued its education.
Long before Dear Iris, I was a homemaker learning through practice. Keeping a home led me into catering. Catering required precision, timing, and the ability to serve others well under pressure. That work led me to formal study in etiquette and social protocol so I could bring structure and civility to every table I set. Culinary writing followed naturally. Food put me at tables. Tables led to conversation. Conversation revealed the questions women carry.
It was daily homemaking that gave those lessons weight. Managing a household, rebuilding after hardship, and showing up consistently shaped the judgment behind the advice. One discipline flowed into the next.
Over the years, I learned how to hold boundaries without anger, how to correct without humiliation, and how to apologize without surrendering authority. I have seen both failure and strength within marriage. I have experienced seasons of loss that reordered my understanding of permanence. Responsibility has a way of clarifying what deserves attention and what does not.
The questions women ask have not changed.
How do I rebuild after betrayal.
How do I strengthen my marriage without losing myself.
How do I become confident without becoming hardened.
How do I make decisions that will affect my family for years to come.
What has changed is the depth from which I answer.
I have returned to those early letters and rewritten my responses with clearer judgment and steadier resolve. I am less interested in sounding agreeable. I am committed to being responsible with the influence words carry.
Dear Advised has matured.
It now returns as Dear Iris, a weekly column at American Country Living.
For generations, American women sought counsel from those who had lived a few seasons ahead. Advice was exchanged across kitchen tables while coffee cooled in porcelain cups. It was offered after Sunday service in vestibules and shared in sewing circles and on front porches at dusk. The counsel was practical, measured, and grounded in the daily work of keeping a household intact.
Dear Iris stands in that tradition.
Each Sunday, one letter.
Each Sunday, one considered response shaped by study, responsibility, marriage, homemaking, loss, and the discipline of keeping a life together.
The first Sunday letter publishes this week.
We begin again.
Steadily yours,
Iris ✍︎
write to dear iris✍︎ Every letter begins with a story.
There are seasons in life when the heart feels certain, and others when it feels tangled. You may be standing at a crossroads in marriage. You may be carrying a private disappointment. You may simply need someone steady to help you sort through what you already know but cannot quite name.
