To anyone who is not a new mother, babyhood may seem like a nanosecond long–a quick blip on the radar of life. But to a new mother, it feels never-ending. A child is born, a thunderstorm comes barreling in, and the idea of buckling down to raise said baby seems like an eternity–and feels totally impossible. How will I ever make it through?

This is especially true for women today, who are raised to foster strong personal and professional identities. Becoming a mother is a complete restructuring of one’s life, and there’s a necessary psychic reckoning that gets buried under dirty diapers and lost amid the nipple shields and mashed peas.

Loaded with unfettered support from a mom who has been through it, You Are a F*cking Awesome Mom offers a welcome acknowledgement that motherhood is a mind f*ck–and that women deserve more than trite oversimplifying and sugarcoating about the miracles of child-rearing. It is not a parenting book, it’s a mama book, one with an irresistible, irreverent voice, sharp insight, and some welcome doses of truth salad, plus a few experts thrown in for good measure. It’s You Are a Badass for new mothers, and a long-awaited life raft for all the mothers drowning in maternal confusion and terror.