The Smut Strut: When Pleasure Is the Medicine

How We Navigate Grief with Blair · Sep 15, 2026 · 5m

I’ve spent years reading autobiographies, grief memoirs, and self-help books. Books to sharpen my mind. Books as catalysts. Books as work.

This summer, everything shifted. I was on a grief trip when one of the women mentioned the book she was reading, casually noting it was “spicy.” I’d never considered romance novels. Not once. But I was heading to Europe for work and a soul reset, and the thought of turning my work brain off and imagination on appealed to me. So I acquired my first one.

A few days later, my best friend met me for my vacation in Portugal. We discovered we were both new to…