Joni Edelman

My decision to bed-share with my children despite potential SIDS risks has less to do with studies, and more to do with instinct.

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.

I’m lucky to be smart, to have an astonishingly good memory. Or maybe I’m lucky to be bipolar.

The Cabbage Soup Diet, aka The "Torture” Diet. You just put cabbage in water and cook it. And you eat it. All day. It is not good. You will still be hungry, and farting — very smelly, paint-peeling farting.

Is that incense I smell? A drum circle in the distance perhaps? Chanting? Herbal potions? Perhaps a cauldron? Could it be homebirth?

I don’t think anyone who has been to the spirited child parenting rodeo would call a mother who screams, “bad,” or who loses her temper, a “failure.” I think we all understand parenting is really really hard from the get go, and parenting a kid who won’t sleep, who screams and kicks and says they hate you, is its own challenge

I was told that feminism is man hate. That abortion is murder. And then I thought, "What am I doing here?"

I didn't get a lot of mothering as a child, but when I did, it was from her. She taught me how to sew, how to crochet. She taught me how to stand up for myself, to be tough. She taught me how to make fried chicken and fried okra, which I will never make, because it's fucking gross.

Being vulnerable, being seen (even lumpy and naked), admitting weakness, asking for help — these acts inspire and edify.

When you push a small human out of your body, things tend to get a little weird.