Joni Edelman

When I had my first child, I couldn't have prepared for the way it would make me feel.

She says she’s worried that the cat, whose name is Jack, doesn’t know what’s going on. She tried to explain to him that she was leaving for a while.

You can work your butt off and still be left with a tummy. Bummer.

It doesn’t get any more difficult to insult ourselves, regardless of how old we are. It would be ideal if it got easier to respect ourselves, but it generally doesn’t do that either. Every year you age, and every year the aging you looks at the you of the years before and thinks, I can’t believe I thought I was fat/ugly/etc.

Help. Me. Please. And by help me, I mean, bring me my jumbo size jar of

My husband and I recently traveled together without our kids for the first time . . . in a while. And it was a brand-new ball game.

I guess the point of a spiritual awakening is just that; if you were already awake, you wouldn’t need a moment that was self-defining. You’d already be defined.

You do not have to hate your body — but you don’t have to love it either. While I'm happy with my fat body, I miss being thin.

Our relationship has been a little complicated. I've loved you a lot, and I've loathed you at least that much, but mostly you've just gone unnoticed. Except for those 5 to 7 days every four weeks when you made your presence quite evident, what with the river of life blood and the random excruciating, and from what I can tell, unnecessary, contractions.

...I’m going to help you! By “help” I mean “tell you all the things that didn’t work.”