And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready, Paperback/Meaghan O'Connell

Selected as One of the Best Books of the Year by: National Public Radio, Esquire , Bustle , Refinery29 , Thrillist , Electric Literature , Powell's, Autostraddle , BookRiot , Women.com Smart, funny, and true in all the best ways, this book made me ache with recognition. -- Cheryl Strayed A raw, funny, and fiercely honest account of becoming a mother before feeling like a grown up. When Meaghan O'Connell got accidentally pregnant in her twenties and decided to keep the baby, she realized that the book she needed -- a brutally honest, agenda-free reckoning with the emotional and existential impact of motherhood -- didn't exist. So she decided to write it herself. And Now We Have Everything is O'Connell's exploration of the cataclysmic, impossible-to-prepare-for experience of becoming a mother. With her dark humor and hair-trigger B.S. detector, O'Connell addresses the pervasive imposter syndrome that comes with unplanned pregnancy, the fantasies of a natural birth experience that erode maternal self-esteem, post-partum body and sex issues, and the fascinating strangeness of stepping into a new, not-yet-comfortable identity. Channeling fears and anxieties that are still taboo and often unspoken, And Now We Have Everything is an unflinchingly frank, funny, and visceral motherhood story for our times, about having a baby and staying, for better or worse, exactly yourself. About the Author: Meaghan O'Connell's writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Longreads, and The Billfold, where she was an editor. She lives in Portland, OR, with her husband and young son.