Momaholic Book Review

Momaholic  by Dena Higley

Every mom has felt the need to be perfect.

MOMAHOLIC is one woman’s private, dramatic, and often comical invitation to peek inside a time in her life when everything fell apart, causing her to take an honest look at what she was doing right and what she’d been doing terribly wrong. With this discovery, her wacky family’s season of becoming unraveled found a new glue that would re-bond her family and unite them in a deeper and more functional way than ever before.

The real life characters: A MOM who is literally the head writer of a network soap opera … at work and at home; A HUSBAND who can’t help but scratch his head in frustration as his family’s troubles seem to spiral out of his control; an autistic SON; a popular DAUGHTER who is suddenly pregnant; an ADOPTED DAUGHTER pulled from the jungles of Vietnam; and an ADOPTED SON rescued from the streets of Ethiopia.

This is a story showing the speed with which a “normal” family can fall apart. With the family running around as the tornado sirens roared warnings to take cover, mom becomes the biggest mess of all and ends up finding a whole new freedom for her soul. www.netgalley.com

Dena who was a head writer for Days of our lives is also a self-admitted helicopter mom. Her story opens with the crash of her helicopter. This is her story. What happens when someone takes on too much and stops taking care of themselves.

By far Dena does not see herself as a martyr, who gave everything up for her children and in return had a breakdown.  She sees it differently. While she could say having an autistic son, a pregnant daughter, another disabled daughter, and a son from the streets of Ethiopia was the cause of her breakdown she does not. Actually she very openly says they had nothing to do with it, that this breakdown was all on her. Her children play a minor role in this story, yes she talks about them. How her oldest has autism and is a college student and some of the things he has done. Her other son is running a soda ring at school, one daughter is pregnant, and the other has just had another surgery. 

Through the course of her story she learns that even if she says no the PTA will still function, the school will not close, and life will continue.  Not only was she a helicopter mom she became a helicopter grandma as well trying to be her grandchild’s second mom. Once she stepped back and took a break, she could see her grandchild did not need a second mom but a grandma. As soon as she realized this she could stop trying to raise her grandchild and enjoy being a grandma.

This book will be released on May 1, 2012. You can put it on preorder at many major bookstores.