Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the Webby-nominated podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

I'm really excited to be welcoming Leslie and Bruce today to moms don't have time to read books.

Leslie is a five-time New York Times best-selling

co-author and an award-winning entertainment journalist formerly of Us Weekly and the Hollywood

reporter. She's the founder of Unpacified, an online community for modern women to discuss

motherhood through an unfiltered judgment-free lens of honesty and humor. Her latest book,

You are a Fucking Awesome Mom.

Should I say fucking or effing? Whatever you prefer. I don't know. Continues the online conversation. She lives in Laguna Beach with her husband and her two children. So thanks for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. So first the title. Do you say effing? Do you say? I think it depends on the audience. when I try to be respectful that not everybody was born and raised in the south side of Chicago and has that word as part of their vernacular. But yeah, so I'm, I mean, in a comfortable setting, I'm happy to say you are a fucking awesome mom because I believe it. And you just met me. Yes. And yet you know. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Can you please tell us what

you're a whatever awesome mom is about? And what inspired you to write it? It is, you are a fucking awesome

mom is a, I say it's a mama book. It's not a baby book. It is a book for women who are transitioning into motherhood. It is a book that

focuses on that journey because so much of preparing for becoming a mom is baby-centric. We plan for

the nursery. We plan for the hospital in our diaper bag and what kind of crib mattress to get,

but we're not

planning for what happens when we become mothers when in that moment when your child is born and

you realize you're the least important person in that room. And when I had my daughter in 2014,

I really struggled with that transition. I felt I went through on top of the, you know,

the hormone shifts and the body shifts and all of that. I was going through a real identity

crisis. You know, I had spent so much of my life being one person and overnight I was becoming

someone new and I didn't have the foresight to really honor that change. So this

book talks about that journey and, you know, largely about my journey. And it is, its goal is to

help women, support women who are going through it as well, and also offer them a little bit of

guidance. I don't, I don't like to say

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