I've enjoyed reading your columns on separating from your husband.  You don't whine or blame the immature SOB.  Thats what allows you to write intimate columns about your real life.  Your writing is not sentimental or self-pitying.  Sentiment is good for a writer; sentimenality is bad.  The classic example are these different images of home.  Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."  Edgar Guest, a very popular, slighly older version of Robert Frost wrote, "Home is where the heart is."  If you gotta ask what's the difference, you ain't never gonna know.