Woman of Valor

This book begins where most love stories leave off: at the beginning of real life. The transition from being a young couple in love to a couple of parents is laden with higher expectations than ever before in history, especially for women. Today's woman expects to be the perfect wife, mother, career woman, self-actualised human being, and homemaker, all while remaining a size six. The idyllic picture that hangs on the wall of our hopes and dreams can t help but be marred by the ugly scratches of reality, and in this pressure-cooker environment, we re all too familiar with the resulting divorce statistics. This book follows the lives of two women in their first years of motherhood. One is a fictional character trying to live the happily-ever-after life we all imagined for ourselves. The second woman is the author herself, relating her real life story. It s a story of metamorphosis, from independent working woman to mother, helpless in the face of the discovery that there s something wrong with her small daughter something very seriously wrong. Interspersed are actual letters from readers of Lapid's popular newspaper column about women s lives, sharing their experiences of juggling their many roles. In trenchant, thoughtful, and often laugh-out-loud funny prose, Lihi Lapid tells a true-life story of women and men struggling to live up to modern pressures: a story about shattered dreams, and about finding the strength to gather up the pieces and to learn to smile again.