A deeply moving and extraordinary book about mothering and how it transforms us--and all our relationships--inside and out.

Written from her dual perspective as psychologist and mother, Dr. Lerner puts the spotlight on the mother's experience as it has never before been told. With personal stories and vivid case studies that run the gamut from the hilarious to the heart-wrenching, Lerner spells out what children evoke from the past and demand from the present. When two become three, we see why her new life is so different from his new life--and how children inevitably help us to discover things about ourselves and our partner that we would otherwise never know.

Lerner's own experience taught her the basic lessons of motherhood; that we are not in control of what happens to our children, and that this fact needn't stop us from feeling totally guilty and responsible, that matters of life and death turn on a dime, and that most of what we worry about doesn't happen (although bad things happen that we fail to anticipate). Lerner shows us how kids are the best teachers of life's most profound spiritual lessons.

From birth to the empty nest, Lerner draws upon her three decades of work as a psychotherapist and expert on the psychology of women, to help mothers distinguish between what we can change, (and how to do it) and when we need to surrender to the fact that our lives--and our childrens'--don't go the way we expect or plan. In keeping with the insight, warmth and clarity that are Lerner's trademark, the book is filled with good advice about what mothers can do differently when family relationships get stuck in too much fighting, distance and pain.

Praise for The Mother Dance:

"Lerner writes with charm, precision and at times almost unbearable honesty about what motherhood is. This book shows us the way." -Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of Reviving Ophelia

"The Mother Dance is one of the wisest and most honest books on parenting I have read. As a parent myself, I ate up story after story, insight after insight." -Thomas Moore, Ph.D., author of Care of the Soul and The Soul of Sex

"I love The Mother Dance; it's wonderful-true, touching, practical, spiritual, sanity-saving, and I laughed out loud a number of times, with recognition, surprise and gratitude." -Anne Lamott, author of Operating Instructions

"Harriet Lerner pioneers on behalf of women's whole humanity. Each chapter in The Mother Dance is worth the price of admission." -Gloria Steinem

"In The Mother Dance, there are no mistakes in parenting -- only learning experiences told with a great sense of humor." -Benjamin Spock, M.D.

A note from the Author:

Being a mother comes as naturally to me as being an astronaut. Nor do I occupy any moral high ground when I help other mothers to achieve clarity, objectivity, and calm. When I started this book, I had one son in high school and another in college. I completed the project two years later from the vantage point of a newly empty nest. I've valued the opportunity to look back at my own complex experience of mothering, and I've not hesitated to share the best and worst of it. Your kids will make you love them in a way you never thought possible. They will also confront you will all the painful and unsavory emotions that we try so hard to avoid. Children will teach you about yourself, and about what it's like not to be up to the demands of the most important responsibility you'll ever have. When you become a mother, you learn that you are capable of deep compassion, and also that you're definitely not the nice, highly evolved person you fancied yourself to be before you became a mother. The novelist Fay Weldon puts it best. "The greatest advantage of not having children must be that you can go on believing you are a good person. Once you have children, you realize how wars start."

Harriet Lerner is sorry that she cannot personally answer your letters or questions.

For comments and suggestions about Harriet's Web site, please e-mail JLWorley@aol.com --Thank you!