For now, I’ll just focus on the fact that my childhood hero has grown up with me into a a powerhouse of a mom with two adorable little girls, her popular Moonfrye.com site, over a million twitter followers, an eco-friendly clothing line called The Little Seed, and her role as Target’s Mommy Ambassador. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not one to run out and buy the latest celebrity memoir, but when I was offered the chance to read and review Soleil’s new parenting book, Happy Chaos: From Punky to Parenting and my Perfectly Imperfect Adventures In Between, I decided my childhood dream of becoming Punky’s best friend was just a blog post away from coming true. I’ll keep you posted on how that works out, y’all.

Happy Chaos shares stories from Soleil’s childhood (she once had Johnny Depp show up as a surprise guest to a birthday party), precious moments with her children, and perhaps most importantly,  brings us non-celebrity moms right there with Soleil when she shares how she’s learning to accept that the mom she thought she was going to be is not the mom she became once her children were born. The beauty of it all is in the journey of discovery with our children.

And while not every mom can relate to a roster of celebrity BFFs or boast about directing her first film at the age of 18, reading Happy Chaos reads more like a chat over a cup of coffee with a girlfriend than anything else. Part memoir and part parenting manual, Happy Chaos reminds us to embrace the crazy that motherhood brings while taking a moment to celebrate the magic of cutting an apple sideways just to show our children the star inside.

***

Soleil has graciously offered a signed copy of Happy Chaos: From Punky to Parenting and My Perfectly Imperfect Adventures in Between with one Aspiring Mama reader. To enter, simply do one of the following (or more for extra entries!)

* Leave a comment for Soleil on this blog post.

* Tweet, Facebook, Google +, or include a link to this post on your own blog. Each counts for it’s own entry, so be sure to leave me one comment letting me know what you did so I can add up points!

* Comments will be accepted through midnight, EST, on Monday, January 16.

* One winner will be selected via Random.org and will be announced here on Aspiring Mama shortly thereafter.

***

I’d like to thank Soleil Moon Frye for offering me the chance to share her book with all of you.

I had never heard of Tracy Ross before coming across a short review of her new memoir, The Source of All Things, in a recent issue of Whole Living magazine. But the review intrigued me and I made sure the book was one of my purchases with the last gift card I had to spend from the holidays.

Ross tells a disturbing tale of sexual abuse at the hands of her step-father and the resulting self-destructive aftermath. Through it all, it was nature that helped Ross to heal and find the answers to the questions she was ready to discover. It’s not an easy book to read, but it’s a beautiful testament to the strength of Ross’s character.

What was also  interesting to me was what I took away from reading Ross’s book. As a writer and a reader, I closed the cover on my nook with the realizations that:

*Ross’s love for writing came after her love for nature and immersing herself within the elements on her many outdoor adventures all over the world. It might sound simplistic, but there’s writing without focus because you know you love to write and then there’s focusing on writing what you know. One will bring you great personal joy. The other will, too. The difference is that the audience won’t give a damn about the first.

*I am not as brave as Tracy Ross. I primarily write non-fiction but focus on the funny and hide the rest of the bits in layers of snark and chuckles. It’s part coping mechanism dealing with the crap I don’t feel like focusing on and mostly just the way my writing voice naturally manifests itself. But to go into the detail that she did, Ross had to expose herself and those in her story in a very real way. No pretty filters to alter reality’s image. Her ability to do so (and her family’s willingness to allow her the much-needed opportunity to tell her truth) is something to be admired.

*a great memoir will surprise you at the end. Even if you think you know the whole story. A great memoir takes you on the same journey the author has traveled. A great memoir is hard to put down.

*that the often-touted advice to get your work in print to bolster that all important platform is often-touted for a reason. The Source of All Things first materialized as a feature length article in Backpacker Magazine in 2007. I read the original essay and it left me wanting more. The rest, as they say, is history.

***

Even with the damned light-blocking curtains in our room, the bits of light peeking through the sides are enough to break into my happy little dreams. I curse myself for forgetting to put on my sleep mask the night before and decide to throw the quilt over my head for a little more time to rest. I’m allowed. My mom is visiting and I know that the minute she leaves, my chances for anything that resembles sleeping in will be out the closest window.

But first I think I’ll check my email. You know, in case an agent has decided overnight that my book is Super Crazy Awesome and has sent a message asking me to call them as soon as I wake up because they are considerate enough to realize Arizona is three hours behind New York? So I reach for the phone on my nightstand and with a precision only a social media addict can attempt, have my email loading before I even open my eyes to focus on what I am looking at.

Blah, blah, new twitter followers, blah, blah, blah, I am now rich because of a dead relative I have never heard of in Zimbabwe and can I please forward all of the necessary banking information to the kind lawyer handling the matter, blah, blah, my mother-in-law wants to be friends on Facebook, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and WHAT IN THE HELL?

The fuzziness from sleep is instantly replaced by an overwhelming sense of HOLY FUCK WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW and I resist the urge to reach over to the other side of the bed and backhand the still sleeping Husband because my cover being blown is like, totally his fault. Or maybe it’s mine for actually saying yes when he asked if he could like my blog Facebook page. BFF Mel totally warned me that was a bad idea.

“They’re gonna find you,” she had said.

Who pays attention to that crap?

My mother-in-law, apparently.

Before anyone new here gets too confused, I have a strict Public Blog Policy. In short it goes like this: You are allowed to read if you don’t already know me. That might seem ass-backwards to normal people but when you stop to think about it or stop taking your medication it makes total sense. For starters? My in-laws say things like, “Dangnabbit” and “Dadgum” instead of, you know, real swear words. I usually behave when in their presence or on the phone with either one of them, but here?

Have y’all read my shit?

And once the in-laws get on my little social media bandwagon, all hell (sorry, I mean heck…oh shit, it’s happening already) will break loose because then my side of the very Mexican and You Can’t Say Things Like Fuck family will find out and I’ll start censoring what I write and then things will get all boring for me and for you and I’ll replace posts like this with posts not like this. Obviously, this is a major problem.

Besides, if I approve the request, there’ll be questions about my book and people will assume I like to Share My Feelings with them on a regular basis and I’ll most likely piss everyone off, alienate myself from The Family, and The Husband will just sit there looking confused when I try to explain to him Just One More Time the logistics behind not letting anyone know about my writing until I get an agent, a book deal, and make the best seller lists (maybe even all in the same week, right?) because then I will be established and I would totally be okay with that.

But until then this was all supposed to be my secret word garden. Password: Strangers Only.

Before I start to unnecessarily hyper-ventilate, I blink a few times and focus on the phone screen again. Her name is still there. Shitshitshitshitshit!

“What are you doing?” The Husband is now awake and staring at his crazy wife checking her email on her phone before she has even gotten out of bed to brush her teeth and pee. “You realize that if technology as we know it were to disappear tomorrow, you would probably go clinically insane from the withdrawals within a matter of moments, right?”

I don’t answer. I don’t trust myself to speak. Instead, I hand him the phone and climb out of bed to take care of the morning bathroom routine. As I reach for my toothbrush, I hear him start to laugh. It’s probably a good thing he is still in bed because I am pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to stand at this point.

I am proven wrong just a moment later.

“Quick, turn around and give me your best Deer Caught in Headlights” look.” The Husband is standing behind me with the phone, ready to snap a picture.

I turn around, my expression unchanged from the moment I first saw the email.

“Perfect.”

Behavior Centered Health.

According to Ragen Chastain on Dances with Fat, behavior centered health is a concept in which healthy choices and behaviors are the goal, not a particular size, weight, or shape. I have officially been riding the diet yo-yo since the first time I begged my parents into letting me sign up for Weight Watchers as a sophomore in high school. At 5′ 6”, I weighed 150 pounds and wore a size 10. My ass was admittedly not the issue. My head? Big fucking problem.

I’ve dealt with an eating disorder and a negative body image. I’ve binged and exercised. I’ve lost and gained the same 50 pounds only to gain and lose them again. So why did Ragen’s blog strike a chord with me?

Because every diet I have ever been on, every workout I have ever done, and every goal I have ever set for myself (until recently) has been focused only on the scale and the size on the clothing tag. Maybe that’s why every time I hit a snag on the Path to a Smaller Ass (like pregnancy and the resulting body aftermath) I just plain gave up.

My bottom line kind of read like this:  Why bother trying if I wasn’t going to get where I wanted to be? Why put in the effort for something I could never see happening?

Yeah…I know. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Because every time I ended up giving up on myself. And if I wasn’t trying, I was hell-bent on making it worse. If I can’t lose the weight I might as well have that Twinkie, right? Hello Ben & Jerry. Secret late night binges followed by even more secret late night cry-fests followed by The Hiding of the Evidence at the bottom of the trash can lest The Husband have actual proof of what I had been up to when I was supposed to have been sleeping peacefully next to him.

It would take months (and sometime years) to drag myself back out of the pity party and back to the Land of the Living. Eventually I would wake up ready and willing to Give it My All and Try Again. And everything would be hunky-dory until another snag would knock me back on my ass and into the nearest pint of Cookie Dough ice-cream.

Not very productive, if you ask me.

Then, one day? My head fixed itself. I’m not sure what happened. Maybe it was the year I spent trying to lose more weight so I could have material for a book only to realize the journey was the destination and not the other way around. Maybe it was my daughter looking at me with the truth that can only be found in the eyes of a child and telling me that I am beautiful. Or maybe it was realization that the scale didn’t fucking matter; how I feel when I eat right and take care of myself does.

So even though I am still in it for health and still strive to reach a lower number on the scale for that single reason, the number on said scale is no longer my only reason for living. Instead, I focus on how I feel. I’m going to keep working out because my body needs it. I’m going to eat clean because my body needs it. I’m going to smile in spite of the scale.

And telling myself that I’m pretty. Because that’s always a plus.

***

What about you? What do you think? Is Behavior Centered Health the way to go?

Always.

But don’t you dare light up a cigarette in front of The Family. Ever since tio quit 13 years ago, it’s been understood that if you did smoke, it’s a habit that needed to be talked around similar to the way no one ever questioned the frequency with which 10-pound premature babies are born to sons and daughters of friends and cousins not too long after weddings.

“Five months early, eh?” Knowing eyes. Secret smiles. Brand new baby clothes, price tags already removed. Nothing smaller than 3-6 month in the gift bag. “She’s beautiful.”

My father, who gave up his Miller Lite for Lent every year but never made it to church on Easter Sunday because he was nursing the hangover he got started on at midnight, once told me that even after being married and having five girls, smoking was still off limits in front of his father. It wasn’t a habit Dad relied upon. More of a social thing in which he might or might not bum a smoke off a friend and be happy without another until the next cookout maybe a year later. But too many beers on too little food made Dad careless one day. Dad stepped out onto the porch with a friend only to be caught by my grandfather as he was getting ready to leave.

“He never said a word,” Dad said. “He just looked at me. I threw the cigarette on the ground and went back inside.”

My grandfather didn’t talk to my father for a week. My father never picked up another cigarette again.

At least when my grandfather was around.

***

I am standing in front of the courthouse, tears heated with the anger of betrayal falling from unblinking eyes as I look into the storm. My four sisters, backs braced against the reality they are choosing not to acknowledge. They stand close, arms interlocked, lips tight. My cousin stands with them, her eyes focused on her mother across the divide. Occasionally, one of my sisters almost loses control when a corner of their mouth starts to twitch. Even with my eyes trained over their heads, even with my focus directed on blowing smoke into the faces of the women who helped raise us, I understand that my sisters are fighting a battle between tears for what we have lost and laughter in response to my actions.

So do my aunts. They attempt to concentrate their nervous glances on the sky and on imaginary pieces of lint on their jackets,  anywhere but where I am standing while our respective lawyers attempt to make peace before the storm of misplaced loyalties intensifies. We had lost our father. They, their only brother. There hadn’t been time to prepare.

“Do you think he would be proud of what you are doing?” My cousin had asked her mother before court. “Do you honestly believe he would stand back and let you hurt them like this?”

She laughed in her daughter’s face before walking away.

Family before self.

The lawyer told us not to say a word to them. They told us it was better this way.

And that’s just fine. Because with each inhalation, I stand straighter. With each new cigarette lit off the still burning butt of the one currently being smashed out beneath my heel, I redefine the word family. With each unblinking exhalation aimed directly into the faces of strangers we once knew, they can hear it.

We all can.

Fuck. You.

This post was written in response to a The Red Dress Club prompt asking writers to describe an emotional fight. What I have written above is non-fiction.