I could be wrong blaming the Virgin Mary for the impossible standard we modern mothers are expected to reach. Still, when she found Jesus in the Temple and didn’t frog-march Him out by his ear and take away his donkey for a month, she might have started the whole trend.

Two thousand years later, we’re still trying to live up to the standard. The basic canon of motherhood: precious, sacred, a privilege beyond compare. Saying anything else is tantamount to dosing your kids with heroin and singing them to sleep with a Marilyn Manson lullaby.

To parent meant holding myself to the highest expectations, and that’s when the façade started to crumble. I saw all these parents carting their toddlers to Chinese language classes while I was just trying to get mine to stop hiding silverware down his pants. So after 23 years of trial and error, I wrote a book for the underachievers. 

This memoir celebrates the 10 to 90 percent, those wholehearted fathers and mothers who know what it’s like to be vulnerable. We are the ones dealing with kids who struggle with disabilities, depression, anxiety, bullying, or academic worries. We know what it feels like to be excluded. We question our capability and our worth as parents. And yet, we love deeply, laugh often, and lead with integrity, knowing only two certainties exist when it comes to parenting: no child comes with a manual, and, by law, the hospital makes you take the baby home.

Work in progress