Category: Postpartum Realness

PLUS an anxiety/intuition quiz; recs out the wazoo!

People are wild. Their hearts are often in the right place and yet good intentions do not good sense make. An ur-exemplar of this is when people analogize publishing a book to having a baby. Now that I’ve done both, the former 4x, the latter twice, I can confidently say that they bear little resemblance.

A few key distinctions:

• You see your OB pretty regularly, at least once a month in the beginning, then weekly when you are colonized by enormous monster boy babies like I was.

• Your editor, semiannually.

• When you’re pregnant people are mostly nice to you, although they do like to offer unsolicited advice about breastfeeding and nascent intrauterine peanut allergies.

• When you’re writing a book, people mostly look at you with a blank expression and repeat back in innocent bewilderment, “You’re still writing that book?”

• And the biggie: When you’re writing a book you can stop. Anytime. One way out is… out.

• When you’re in labor you can’t. The only way out is through.

In the overlap of the Venn diagram: lots of sweatpants.

AND the tender bittersweet postpartum period.

You feel like you’re walking around exposed, vulnerable, skinless, holding so many conflicting emotions. The surprise that really had me gobsmacked was a kind of grief. Even though THIS AND THOSE KIDS ARE WHAT I WANT WHOLEHEARTEDLY, every birth is a kind of death: the death of one self, the death of the family that had only one profoundly spoiled royal prince of Brooklyn. And with those endings come some grief, a strange grief because it is wrapped up on so many other more victorious emotions (not to mention hormones). I write about this in the book, but after I had Theo, I also felt a kind of cosmic grief that was hard to explain. I now understood so viscerally the sacrifices and sadness of the women that came before me. It coursed through my veins.

So, I definitely experienced a postpartum something and yet “cosmic grief” is not a category on the PPD screener you get at six weeks, which is the first and last time the medical establishment inquires as to your wellbeing as a mother.

The publication of Everyday Intuition feels a lot more like an ending than my previous efforts. I think this speaks to just how much I loved this project. I never got sick of the topic, not once, whereas if you were to talk to me about pseudocide in 2015 or Prison Wives in 2020 I would have gone crosseyed and quietly left my body. I loved this book and debuting it to the world means the era of just me, the kitchen table, and my ideas is over. What’s next?

No, really, do you have any ideas? TELL ME.

Also, I’m experiencing grief for the (highly flawed, obvs) media landscape I came up in. Since 2016, the confluence of technology and That Man have created a morass that’s hard to cut through. Bestsellers are bestsellers because they are bestsellers, and then there’s everybody else. In 2016 with Playing Dead I was contending with “but her emails.” In 2021 the p*****c, and BookTok. Now, AI is generating must read lists of literal gobbledygook for real newspapers, nonexistent titles by nonexistent authors to….what? Cover space on the internet? Play a demented game of hide and seek? It’s hard not to feel despondent.

The only solution is to rewatch Vanderpump Rules from the beginning, which tells you everything you need to know about my mental health. This is the only medicine that makes sense in any postpartum period: reuniting with old friends, mourning the loss of Scheana’s first face, being reminded that these really are the best days of our lives. Having experienced human postpartum I’m trying to apply those lessons to myself this time around: be gentle, take it easy, eat everything in sight, and remember that it ends.

I texted Melissa that the challenge of this time is being with all of it: pride in what I did along with the inevitable comedown. Gratitude for the opportunity, fear for the future. “Holding so many different emotions,” I wrote. As ever, she was a fount of wisdom. She wrote back:

“We grow just from holding it all.”

Upcoming events that I hope you can attend!

May 28: In conversation with Jo Piazza at Head House in Philadelphia! RSVP here and preorder Jo’s TRADWIFE THRILLER here!

June 9: In conversation with Swan Huntley at Godmothers in Santa Barbara! RSVP here

And can you suggest me as a guest on Mel Robbins?!?! No really, me and Melly have a lot to talk about. Let YOU!

And while you’re at it, can you smash five stars here there and everywhere?! Please and thank you!

LIZ IZ EVERYWHERE!

Here are some cute articles and things I’ve published recently.

My “baby” is a #1 Amazon bestseller in both the categories of cognitive psychology AND ESP. Get you a girl who can do both!

I answered some questions for LitHub in a comical manner.

OPRAH, ever heard of her?!

Entrepreneur, get that shmoney.

Amanda Montell interviewed me on Magical Overthinkers.

An excerpt of EVERYDAY INTUITION on the WIE Suite.

Jessica Elefante interviewed me for her Substack.

As did Elena Sheppard, whose forthcoming memoir gives me chills.

And, this is really fun, this book of mine is going to be published in Brazil, Spain, the UK, and will be translated into Arabic! How to say “We’re f*cked”?

Is it Anxiety or Intuition?! A QUIZ!!!!