This book is a lot like motherhood itself full of joy, trauma, insanity, hard work, exhaustion, and more than a few good laughs.

A must-read for anyone contemplating motherhood and a bible for all of us whose lives have been warped, splendored, and expanded by our dear little ones.

This book is a lot like motherhood itself full of joy, trauma, insanity, hard work, exhaustion, and more than a few good laughs.

[These] essays...are not so much issues as personal truths, spun out with equal parts observation, honesty, and good humor. They are sad, and funny, and poignant, and real.

Finally, we who share the joy and the fury can share a book that embraces both and, unlike any other book on the subject, invites us to honor ourselves for simply doing the best we can.

Full of dames both besotted and fed up...Essays by these mothers who think deal with the sweet, the sour, and the unthinkable.

Here, at last, is a parenting book for those of us who have made the desperate search for some literature (any literature!) that reflects our own intense, horrific, hilarious, joyful, maddening, bewildering, sublime experiences as mothers.

Motherhood, apple pie, angst. This book offers proof that good parenting exists on many levels...Reflective and crisply written.

Coeditors Camille Peri and Kate Moses have assembled the best writing from the website's first two years, including works by "Mothers Who Think" regulars Anne Lamott, Chitra Divakaruni, Susie Bright, and Stephanie Coontz; eloquent new essays by Jayne Anne Phillips, Sallie Tisdale, Susan Straight, Jane Lazarre, Nora Okja Keller, Beth Kephart, Ariel Gore, and Alex Witchel; and more than a dozen un-forgettable new voices.

Irreverent, wistful, hilarious, fierce, tender, these essays offer an unsparing look at the myths and realities, serious and silly sides, and thankless and supremely satisfying aspects of being a mother.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD / ANNE LAMOTT