The Mother Dance: How Children Change Your Life

From the celebrated author of The Dance of Anger comes an extraordinary book about mothering and how it transforms us -- and all our relationships -- inside and out.

Writing from her dual perspective as psychologist and mother, Dr. Harriet Lerner puts the spotlight on how a woman is changed when she becomes a mother. Enlivened with personal tales and vivid case examples that run the gamut from hilarious to the heart-wrenching, The Mother Dance spells out what happens to a woman when two become three... and four. We see why her new life is so different from his -- and how children inevitably help us to discover things about ourselves and our partners that we would otherwise not know. Lerner shows us how kids call on us to grow up and are the best teachers of life's most profound spiritual lessons.

From birth to the empty nest, Lerner's own experience has taught her the basic lessons of motherhood: that we are not in control of what happens to our children; that most of what we worry about doesn't happen (though bad things happen that we fail to anticipate); and that our children will love us with all our imperfections if we can do the same for them.

Lerner helps us to distinguish what we can change (and how to do it), and when we need to surrender to the fact that our lives -- and our children's -- may not go as we expect or plan. With the insight, warmth and clarity that characterize all of Lerner's work, here is a gloriously witty and moving book about what it means to dance the mother dance.