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—and why her new life is so different from his new life—when two become three. 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. From birth to the empty nest, Lerner helps 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 children’s’—don’t go the way we expect or plan. Her book is filled with reassurances and good advice about being a mother in today’s world.