Hey woman! Congrats on the new book. I can't WAIT to read it :) I have been pimping it out to everyone I know, trying to do my part in getting you new readers. But mostly, I just know you're such an awesome mom that the book has to be amazing. When working with you, I was a new mom myself and I (secretly) looked to you and your true, honest, real ways of parenting the kids and it gave me hope, gave me a break on beating myself up for a few minutes on everything I was probably doing wrong with Noah, lol. I still tell anyone who will listen that I'm so grateful for being in your world when I needed it most, as a new mom, learning that it was okay to sometimes really wish your kid would just shut the hell up and let you *BE* for awhile :)

You want guilt? How about dragging your family from Western NY, where being a Yankee and a Jew was perfectly fine, to live in TEXAS, where Berkeley, ACLU and Jew are not only alien words, they are DIRTY words.

So both my kids' friends have their church groups, and my kids are all alone, most of time, and my daughter is hounded out of high school by the anti-Semitic football players.

And when the Gideons come to my kid's elementary school classroom to hand out the new testament to all the fifth graders, the constitution be damned. The kiddos (mine included) are paraded by the Gideon's table (set up on school property) to get their CUTE LITTLE RED BOOKS!

REALLLLY BAD MOM.

You live in Berkeley, where people are sane and the food and coffee are really good. No sweat. GOOD mom.

I listen to the radio and come and see your website. I feel so identify with you!
You are not BIPOLAR. Trust me, I am a psychoanalyst (Lacanian and from Argentina). Bipolar is a concept create but certain psychology, it is not a stone true. I am coming from another country, another point of view, another concepts to categorized humans. We just do not categorized mental health like here, they are other ways. We use some general concepts to get oriented in the practice, but we do not label people, it is not helping patient or therapist.
If anyways you like to be label in some kind, this are our categories: NEUROTIC- PERVERSE- PSICOTIC. For psicoanalisis: there is not NORMAL. There is not out of problem and "normal": you are in any degree in any of this categories. I cannot said about you, because I do not know you, but I almost sure you are neurotic, so you are in the best category possible! I would go and check out your new book as soon as possible. I always feel like you: why I am a bad mother?, and always think about writing about it, because I am tired of the lies about motherhood, sooo tired of them. If you need a Spanish translator, call me.
Carina.

Enjoyed the Fresh Air; found your website mostly to find out how your name was spelled!

We need to figure out how to tamp down the spurious related-to videos that youtube offers!

I just wanted to say what a pleasure it was listening to you on Fresh Air today. I tuned in when you were discussing your abortion decision, and I was so thrilled by your honesty. What a pleasure to hear a real HUMAN being, human in all the best and most interesting uses of the word.

I was not familiar with you or your work before the interview, but by the end of the interview I was seriously sitting in my car at the Cleaners not wanting to get out until your interview was finished. I don't even agree with all you said, but I never doubted that you were speaking truth as you see it, and I loved that. Thank you.

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits kept me company back when I had to commute one hour each way during my first semester of grad school. It also kept me from falling asleep and becoming attached to the back end of a semi truck. Though I hear the wind block gives you better gas mileage, and gas was pricey then.

Oh, and by the way. I listened to it on CD, lest you picture me with a book on the steering wheel, being a total asshole driver.

Hey, Ayelet -- How do you pronounce your first name? I want to talk about you and your Bad Mother book, but I don't want to embarrass myself by saying EYE-let (like the fabric) when everyone in the world but me knows it's really ah-YELL-let. Thanks.

Dear Ayelet Waldman,

Oh, you frustrate me! Do you know how long I’ve been thinking about putting a proposal together for a Bad Mother type of book, culling from my blog posts for half the material? Then YOU – another Berkeley mother of four, but one who’s already a successful writer (not to mention guest of Oprah, associate of Barack Obama, wife of Michael Chabon), beat me soundly to the punch.

Even though I’ve loved every Ayelet Waldman essay I’ve ever read, and forwarded them to friends with glowing recommendations, I want to hate your guts. But geez, you pop up on NPR or KFOG or whatever and I can’t help myself. You are so freakin’ funny and intelligent and charismatic – I love you, dammit, and it's infuriating. Worst of all, I know I’m going to have to buy your book, and it’s going to be great, and through gritted teeth I’ll recommend it to all my friends. I think I’m even going to link to your blog on mine, because I can’t resist.

Well, shoot. I hope you'll visit my blog, where there's currently photographic evidence of what a bad mom I am right on the home page. (What kind of mother takes pictures of her bloodied 5-year-old in the ER?)

You're awesome,

Bethany M.
www.prettygoodday.com