Nurse the baby three times in the middle of the night. Sit with the toddler who’s had a nightmare. Drag yourself through the morning playing with blocks and reading board books until, mercifully, naptime arrives. You are a Power Mom.

Do the shopping, fold the laundry. Off to a PTA meeting, plan a benefit for the local Red Cross. Drive for the field trip, pick up the baseball bat, the new ballet shoes and get home for the bus. Now there’s homework and dinner….

OK, you get the idea! When I was asked to edit a Chicken Soup for the Soul book about stay-at-home and work-from-home moms, I had no idea what the job would entail, no idea where to start and no idea where I’d find the time. The title of the book itself, Power Moms, was enough to scare the hell out of me. What was a Power Mom and how was I going to find 101 of them to write stories? It was one of those moments in life, a duh moment, where you just know you have to say yes and get on with it.

It was, actually, a perfect fit for me. My first novel, Four Wives, had just been released. The book is about a lot of things, but at its core examines what it means to be a stay-at-home mom. Though the characters are fictional, the book mirrors my ten plus years of experience in the trenches with my kids, and ironically was the beginning of a new career that has started my transition back into the paid work force. Four Wives got a lot of local press for touching on the realities that many women face after abandoning their careers, and because people found it a little nuts that I had written the novel from the back of my minivan while waiting for my kids at nursery school.

But nothing is nuts when you’re a mom and it occurred to me that I might actually be a Power Mom! As I began reading the 1000 plus submissions for the book from around the world, I realized that Power Moms come in all forms and that there is no shortage of supply. Chicken Soup for the Soul –Power Moms will be released on March 24th and the video trailer says it all! Author Jodi Picoult writes about her early years as a stay-home mom and writer. Lynne Spears writes about raising Britney. Mary Himes, wife of Congressman Jim Himes, writes about the sudden change in her life. Other moms write about making their decision to quit their paying jobs, and how they manage to afford it by digging coins from the couch cushions to pay the bills. There are doctors and lawyers, teachers and actresses, all doing the same job day in and day out – providing the primary care for their kids.

Reading over a thousand stories, I felt a powerful sense of community out there – a community of (mostly) women who have put their dreams and ambitions on hold to raise their kids. I began to see the arc of that life which exists across diverse socioeconomic and geographical divides – from making the decision, to living day-to-day, to becoming obsolete. The book began to take shape around this arc and I started to see my own life at a point upon it. I could see where I have been – the sleepless nights and sometimes tedious days with the babies, to where I am now – kids in school, a new career. And I can see where I am headed as I stuff bags full of outgrown clothing to give away.

There is the intellectual debate about women staying at home, or “opting out.” We all know the issues. Reliance on husbands for financial survival, declining value in the workforce. The decision is not easy and the social implications complex. Lisa Belkin of the New York Times has been covering this topic for years and writes about it in her foreword for Power Moms.

But this book is not a social statement. It’s a guidebook to a life that many women choose, a virtual support group for Power Moms everywhere who do a million jobs everyday, literally powering through the challenging task of caring for others and making it their work to raise human beings. To all of my fellow Power Moms, I hope you find this Chicken Soup for the Soul book as inspiring to read as it was to edit. And let me know what you think, because there are more on the way!

Stay tuned!

I came into the New Year with one pretty simple but awesome resolution. I was going to slow down. For the past five months, I have been working non-stop as the editor for Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms. It was a humongous project because I decided early on to include some celebrity moms. Mary Himes, Lynne Spears, Jodi Picoult, Jane Green, Liz Lange, Jill Kargman, Melora Hardin and several others all agreed to contribute which was incredible, but it also meant securing release forms and the like through publicists and agents. All of this in addition to reading over a thousand stories, choosing the right ones, editing them, collecting quotes and bios and cartoons. Then proofing. It was an exhausting but exciting journey, and one that fed into the manic, coffee-infused state of mind that I usually find myself in as a writer, editor and mother to three little boys.

And so, upon my return from a much needed vacation, I was starting the year with a clean slate on which to create my next novel, finish the family photo album, clean out some closets and generally get my life in order. And, being divorced for almost a year now, a social life would be a good thing! The plan was to do all of this slowly. To take a break every day for things like yoga and (no laughter from those who know me) meditation.  I had read Eat, Pray, Love like every other woman in America, and if Elizabeth Gilbert could endure months at an ashram, I could find time to meditate once a week. I was, for the first time in my life, going to stop drinking five hundred cups of coffee a day and move at a slower pace.

The first week went really well! I did not start yoga or meditation, but I went online and printed out some class schedules. I even took a half hour nap one day. I made lunch dates with friends I had neglected and I started compiling photos for an album. And, to my amazement, I was doing all of this very slowly. Then came Tuesday.

There were a few odds and ends from Power Moms to tend to and, as editor, this book was ultimately my responsibility. That morning, I received the final manuscript to review and within a few moments, I saw something in the document that could have meant total disaster. It was almost 2pm – time to hit the road to get the kids. I sent an SOS to the Chicken Soup team and told them I would figure it out by the end of the day. And in that instant, every molecule of “chill” left my body as I made a huge pot of coffee.

I ran upstairs to get dressed while the printer churned out the two versions of the manuscript. I got the kids. Home for 2 seconds. Change for karate. Grab the manuscripts, all the while trying to figure out if this really could be true.

We got to karate. I helped my son get his belt on and looked for a place to work. There were no seats and on this day, of all days, it was all dads everywhere. The only place for me to work was on the floor. Which meant I would have to sit on the floor in jeans that were a little snug after the holidays. In case you’ve never been in this situation, think of these words from a clever 10-year old I know: “crack kills.”

I sat down, pulling my sweater down as far as it would stretch. Side by side, I placed the manuscripts in front of me on the floor and started proofing. My butt was cold when I got up, which meant I’d done a poor job with the whole cover-it-with-a-sweater thing. I didn’t even look at the dads.

Home for dinner. Homework, showers. Kids in bed, then more proofing. When I finally had read enough to realize we were OK, the day was over.

I sent the emails out. We’re good! I downed the last sip of my coffee then poured a large glass of wine. It took an hour of TV and another glass of wine for my heart to stop racing and that’s when I knew I would never meet my resolution for the New Year. So I decided to change it!

No – this is not the time in my life to slow down. Finally, after almost ten years of being at home with my kids and trying to build a life as a writer so I can continue staying home with them, it is starting to happen. My first novel, Four Wives, was published last year. My second novel will come out next fall, and I had the privilege of editing this incredible, star-studded Chicken Soup for the Soul book. It’s really here, this career I have been working towards for close to a decade. I plan to do everything in my power to nurture it, to honor it with every ounce of me I can spare after taking care of my kids. I plan to write about it here. And I plan on drinking a lot of coffee.

Stay tuned!

On the other hand, having made this choice myself over a decade ago, I am perplexed by the incomprehension that the discourse now reflects.

What Betty Friedan did so brilliantly over forty years ago in her groundbreaking work, The Feminine Mystique, was to describe the cultural coercion that led women to believe they were destined to be housewives. It is precisely because of her work that I have never felt the weight of such antiquated expectations. What did, in fact, drive me to abandon my career as a lawyer were societal forces that have been given surprisingly little attention in the recent “opt-out” conversation. The reason for this may very well be that what underlies these forces is as sexy as tree bark. Economics.

Suburban Connecticut is outrageously wealthy. The average price of a home in Greenwich is over $2.6 million. Enough said. The jobs that create this wealth simply do not support the two-job models that have been posited as a solution to the “opt-out” crisis. To the contrary, obtaining this echelon of wealth requires a level of commitment that stretches people to their human limits, and necessitates the complete abdication of family responsibilities to others.

It is not surprising that no matter where they begin, the families that are shaped around these jobs gravitate towards a complete division of labor – the moneymaker and the caretaker – and become part of a highly specialized economy that makes the two-job model not only impractical, but verging on aberrant. Husbands are unavailable. Houses are enormous. And schools are constructed around the presumption that a parent will be available at all times. Add to this the exorbitant income of the primary moneymaker that makes a second income inconsequential, and the scale is tipped right off its hinges in favor of the one-job family.

There are two truths at work here. First, is the fact that these jobs will never change. Driven by the heart and soul of capitalism, they are the jobs of the wolves. And while token efforts are made to accommodate families, there will always be someone willing to make more sacrifices.

The second truth is that we are nowhere near the kind of social upheaval necessary for men and women to swap their roles within these families. This is what remains of the traditionalist gender expectations Friedan wrote about, and indeed not even the most stringent back-to-work advocates suggest this as a viable solution. After three years working as a wolf myself, first as a banker and then as a lawyer, I saw first hand that for a woman to pursue these jobs and have a family, she would have to find not only a husband, but a wife as well.

As I read the back-to-work literature now, it seems my life is a case study in the pitfalls of “opting-out.” Leslie Bennetts in The Feminine Mistake, sets them out quite hardily. I lost my financial independence, watched my self-esteem deteriorate. And I fell readily into the trap of being the perfect mommy – making organic baby food and obsessively organizing my kitchen drawers. But the time I spent with my children was profoundly important to me. Given our family structure and the world we lived in, the choice was the right one. For all the things I gave up, I would not rewrite my own history. There are no easy answers here.

Still, I am grateful to be leaving the “opt-out” universe for a career as a writer that is both family friendly and hugely rewarding. It is ironic that the years I spent in that universe led me to become a writer, and gave me something important to write about. I have great empathy for my peers who struggle with the consequences of an impossible decision. And I consider myself lucky that I have found a way around them. The cages that hold us may be gilded, but they are still cages. And the forces we are up against are nothing less than those at the very core of our culture.

When I finally turned away from the window that day, I began to write. I wrote one page. I wrote again two days later, then two days after that. When I was overcome with morning sickness, I stopped writing. When it passed, I started again. Then came the second baby, more stops and starts. I took my laptop with me everywhere. I wrote in the back of my car in the pre-school parking lot. I wrote during naps and drop-off swim class. I wrote when my husband watched the kids, when the sitter came. I wrote and wrote through years that were filled with self-doubt, with moments of clarity then confusion as to why I was so intent on pursuing something so inherently evasive – and, most alarming, something that had nothing to do with the life I had chosen as a stay-home-mom.

For the next year, I searched for an agent, finally finding one a few weeks after giving birth to the last of my three sons. She encouraged me to write women’s fiction, but I was once again overwhelmed with the demands of a newborn. At thirty-seven years old with three children under six, I was officially embarking on a new career – a career I had come to desperately need. And yet, what was I thinking? How was I going to write an entire novel in the midst of the sleepless nights and frenetic days that constituted my life? It was, ironically, from this core-shaking doubt that the four characters in my first novel were born.

Four Wives was written in six months, pouring out of me and into these characters, filling page after page. As I await its publication this coming February, I am frequently asked how it came to be. I have to stop and think because my life doesn’t feel that different. Still, it is within this same life that the answer emerges.

Here is what I have learned about pursuing a new dream in the midst of stay-home-parenting. First, say no to your house. No to redecorating, antiquing, and gardening. Your house can be your worst enemy. Second, micro-manage your time and resources. Every hour your kids are at school, with another parent or a sitter can be spent working. Third, work from your car. The vast majority of Four Wives was written from the back seat of my minivan in the school parking lot. Your house won’t find you there. Fourth, say no to daytime socializing that does not include your kids. No to lunches, coffees and shopping sprees. Skip TV and see your friends for a night out. And last, say yes to your kids – school plays, field trips, baseball games. It is possible to stop working after they get home.

I came to be a writer one page at a time, starting with the first one I managed to write that day in my study. Through the guilt and doubt, it was built like a house, brick upon brick. It was built around everything that was in its way. It was built because beneath it laid a profound need to be seen and heard and valued in the world beyond my front door that so many stay-home-parents come to feel. And it can be done.