Joni Edelman

You know what’s an epidemic? Making people feel second rate and ashamed, criminalizing them for something like having an obese pregnancy.

Sam: The first time you mentioned that you have five kids I was like WHAT THE ACTUAL. FIVE HUMANS. FIVE HUMANS CAME OUT OF YOU. Like, not at the same time, but they came out and like, that sounds painful and scary WHY DID YOU DO THAT??

As a stay-at-home mom, I've made plenty of sacrifices. Where are my accolades?

“I don’t even know what to say, Joni. Your baby isn’t alive.”

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.

As long as I can remember having paid attention to the media, I can remember a woman's weight—or body in general—being a news story.

I'll let you in on a little secret - being thin didn't make me happy, but being "Fat" does! Be fat and happy. Be unapologetically fat.

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.

A weekly trip to Walmart would end in tears — first theirs, then mine. Them pining in the toy aisle. Me saying no. Over and over. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to buy my kids whatever they wanted, it was that I couldn’t.

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