The Best, Most Awful Job

Book excerpt: Motherhood is life-changing. Joyful. Disorientating. Overwhelming. Intense on every level. It's the best, most awful job. From dating as a single mum to adopting your baby, becoming a stepmother to enduring a miscarriage, there are a million different ways to be a mother. Yet some voices are still too often heard above others. It's time to broaden the conversation. From the introduction: 'We need to talk about all the different ways of being a mother. The true, dirty business of motherhood is a constellation of experiences. That is the only universal: everybody finds their own way through. At its core, this is a book about love. It's a snapshot of reality, told in twenty-two dazzling voices; the best job in the world, and simultaneously the most awful. Because motherhood is everything at once: pleasure and pain, anger and tenderness, light and shade. In short, true love.'