Growing up, I’d race to open the newspaper three times a week, eager to read the latest hilarious column by one of America’s most beloved humorists, Erma Bombeck. As a suburban mom in the late ‘60’s and 70’s, Erma skewered the ironies, frustrations and rapidly changing culture with comic genius.

I wanted to grow up and make people laugh like Erma did and studied her work. She was more than a professional role model, though. After my older brother, Allan, died in a tragic car accident when he was 17 and I was 9, laughter would become the closest thing to therapy I had. Laughter really was the best medicine.

I sold my first humor column to a daily newspaper in my early 20s, the same one where Erma had been published. My hands shook with excitement as I saw my first byline. I was hooked on humor. Years later, as a minivan-driving wife, mother of four and occasional caretaker of the class guinea pig, I published my first book, “Carpool Tunnel Syndrome: Motherhood as Shuttle Diplomacy.” I dedicated it to my mom’s memory. Cancer stole her from us shortly before my book went to the printer. I was excited for my first speaking engagement at a local library, but the evening of September 11, 2001 turned out to be a bad night for self-promotion and levity.

Nothing seemed funny anymore, and my humor writing began to feel self-indulgent, even trivial. I asked my rabbi if I should focus instead on serious writing.

“No. We need to laugh now more than ever,” he said. “Keep writing.”

I remained a bit uncertain until I received an email from a woman who had read a humor essay of mine in Woman’s Day magazine. “You saved my life today,” I read in jaw-dropping disbelief. “I was so depressed by my medical condition that I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep fighting. You made me laugh, and it made all the difference.”

Her praise was a grandiose overstatement, but she believed it. Wasn’t that all that mattered? As I had learned from the catharsis of laughter during dark times of my own, writing for laughs was in its own way, serious business.