Even God Had Bad Parenting Days

About the Author\nAlicia Jo Rabins is an award-winning performer, musician, poet, and Jewish scholar whose recent film, A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, is being exhibited at film festivals throughout the US, most recently at the New York Jewish Film Festival. Her writing appears in Kveller, Ecotone Magazine, Tablet Magazine, and American Poetry Review, among others.\nShe is a 2020 Literary Arts Fellow in Poetry and has fellowships from RACC, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists. Rabins graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College (Creative Writing), holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson and an MA in Jewish Women's and Gender Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Winner of the 2015 American Poetry Review/Honickman Book Prize, and finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, she is also the author of Divinity School and Fruit Geode, and creator of Girls in Trouble, an indie rock song cycle abut biblical women. She lives in Portland, Oregon.\n"A deeply relatable, comforting guide for anyone who ever feels overwhelmed by parenthood . . . does not shy away from matters like the author's postpartum depression, loneliness, and financial strain. This authenticity sets Even God Had Bad Parenting Days apart from other parenting books."
--Leah Grisham, The Jewish Book Council\n"Heartfelt, funny, and poignant" --The Jewish Review\n"A multidimensional work of meditation and love" --Mikhal Wiener, Lilith\nNew parents get overwhelmed, regularly pushed to their limits and confused by contradictory feelings of elation and near-despair.
To soothe the frazzled and lift their spirits, writer and Bible scholar Alicia Jo Rabins has created “Even God Had Bad Parenting Days: ancient Jewish wisdom for new parents.” Humorous, self-reflective, and comforting, Rabins' musings on both heartening and cringe-worthy biblical examples of parenting can help any caregiver see beyond the detritus of day-to-day living with young children and recapture a sense of wonder at the process of raising small humans.
Parents do worry about their failed attempts to be perfect, and these short, personal essays can lead them to new perspectives and even to embrace a vital concept that English psychologist and pediatrician D.W. Winnicott called "the good enough parent." The supportive and inspirational writings of this gentle parenting book can help any soul embarked upon this wild, sacred work recognize the wisdom of poet Norman Fischer’s advice that “the only transcendence is fully embracing the ups and downs.”
This collection draws on Alicia Jo Rabins’ years of experience as a writer, Bible scholar, and feminist Jewish educator, and is based on her popular series of articles on parenting for Kveller.