Dear Mother: Poems on the Hot Mess of Motherhood

By Bunmi Laditan

The first collection of poetry from Bunmi Laditan, bestselling author of Confessions of a Domestic Failure and creator of The Honest Toddler, capturing the honesty, rawness, sheer joy and total madness of motherhood. With the compassion and wit that have made her a social media sensation among mothers around the world, Bunmi Laditan puts into evocative and relatable words what so many of us feel but can’t quite express. For mothers who love their children with a fiery fierceness but know what it is to feel crushed at the end of those long days, Dear Mother is like a warm hug that says, “I get it.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781488038587

Bunmi Laditan

Bunmi Laditan is a regular contributor to Parenting.com, Mothering.com, iVillage.com, and The Huffington Post. She lives with her family outside of Montreal. The Honest Toddler is based on her youngest child. Not potty trained, not trying, HT enjoys attention, cake, television, running, and games.

Book preview

The magic of motherhood is how it manages to drain and fill you at once and always when you need it the most.

In her first collection of poetry, Bunmi Laditan captures the honesty, rawness, sheer joy and total chaos of motherhood. With the compassion and wit that made her a social media sensation among mothers around the world, Laditan puts into evocative and relatable words what so many of us feel but can’t quite express. For mothers who love their children with a fiery fierceness but know what it is to feel crushed at the end of those long days, Dear Mother is like a warm hug that says, I get it.

Bunmi Laditan is an award-winning, Webby-nominated writer from California who lives in Quebec, Canada, with her family. She’s contributed to the New York Times, Parenting magazine and the Huffington Post, and is best known for the satirical Twitter account The Honest Toddler, as well as her bestselling books Toddlers Are A**holes: It’s Not Your Fault and Confessions of a Domestic Failure, which immediately became must-reads for her thousands of fans and moms everywhere. Dear Mother is her first collection of poetry.

www.BunmiLaditan.com

DEAR

M THER

Poems on the Hot Mess of Motherhood

Bunmi Laditan

to the One who loves me

and knows me by name

Contents

Love

Where Can You Find My Heart?

The Audacity of a Child’s Demands for Love

What Kind of Magic Enchants

Most Days I Wake Up Tired

Motherhood Has Taught Me

When I Squeeze You

What Does It Mean to Be a Mother?

As You Grow into the Person You Were Meant to Be

On Days I Don’t Feel Loved

To Embrace My Child

How Can It Be

To Me There is Nothing More Beautiful

I Know I May Forget This Day

Motherhood Opened Up the Floodgates

For Mother’s Day

When I Tell a Man

I Weave My Love Around You, Child

An Angel Told Me That Love

You Were Not Born of My Body

Children Don’t Just Grow Up

I Want You to Grow

Laughter

The Toddler

Motherhood Requires More Sacrifice Than I Realized

If Muffin Tops

Dear Mother

What You Lose in Sleep

Showers Are Both

They Say You Should Do One Thing

Gift Ideas for Her

What