How Have You Violated the Good Mother Rules?
May 11, 2009 by Practical Mommy · 5 Comments
MONDAY, MAY 18, NOON EST… the ladies of Looking Glass Lane reconvened our online discussion following our talk with Ayelet Waldman’s about her memoir and latest book, Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace.
Listen to the RECORDING! Um… yes, the rumors of [a__ slapping] are true! Thank you, @MissIve!
But I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised considering the color of last week’s conversation! Evidence of “bad mothering” ran rampant, including Morgan’s swollen-belly-with-no-ring and Ayelet’s Dead Baby Club, and “acts of service” that keep marriages alive!!!
Ayelet says, “People bring everything of their own experience, of their own life into [what I write] and they end up responding to their own anxiety rather than to me.” So what are YOU bringing? You can still download the FREE chapter from her book here. You can watch our segment… click more! Read more
BADMOTHER: How to Stop “Should-ing” on Yourself!@#
May 4, 2009 by Zen Mommy · 8 Comments
Author Ayelet Waldman’s newest book, Bad Mother, inspired this video on “mother guilt” and the tendency we all have to “should” on ourselves. I hope you’ll watch, rate and comment. Let’s get this conversation G-O-I-N-G!!!
What conversation?! We’re having a book club discussion on THIS book. Practical Mommy has all the details HERE. Sign up here and the #badmother crew will send you Bad Mother’s Chapter One for FREE. Then join us… we’ll be TALKING May 11, 11am CST.
(no spamming, renting or selling of names, per usual)
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How to Lay Off Other Moms
May 3, 2009 by Practical Mommy · 7 Comments
Today is THE DAY!
I’m reading Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace, the new book by Ayelet Waldman that officially hits bookstores on Tuesday, May 5. Ayelet has been gifted with wit, audacity and dare I say it, some serious balls! This new book follows on the heels of her highly controversial essay, Mother Love.
I want to discuss this book with YOU. It is at the core of our experience as moms and women… yeah, that’s YOU! Download a FREE copy of Chapter One below and let’s talk!!!
Waldman minces no words that Bad Mother is a reaction to being raked over the coals in mommy blogs and mainstream media and essentially being condemned (along with others like Britney Spears) as a “bad mother” herself. Note that not unlike the Salem Witch Trials, judge and jury in Waldman’s case were other moms!
“They speculated publicly, down in the toxic mud of the comments sections on blog pages, that I was crazy, evil, a menace, that my children should be taken away from me. They cross-examined me on the set of Oprah. And New York City’s elite Bad Mother SWAT team, the warrior shrews of urbanbaby.com, sank their pointy little incisors into my metaphorical ankles.”
What inspired such vitriolic reactions from the Mom Police? Waldman’s confession in the New York Times that she loves her husband more than her kids. That’s all. Read more
