Joni Edelman

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

Oh hey remember that time in 1804 when Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton had an actual duel, with actual guns and Burr shot Hamilton and Hamilton did not shoot Burr. And then the next day Hamilton died.

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

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

When it comes to your physique, your mind can actually work against you.

1. All vaginas are good vaginas.

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.

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.

Now that I've embarked upon the decade I once considered "old," there are a few things I'd like my 20 (and 30) year-old self to know.

My mother didn't teach me how to be a mother. But my babies did.