Book Review: Mama, Mama, Only Mama: A Single Mom on Parenting, Divorce, Dating, and Cooking, with Heavy Doses of Humor and Advice by Lara Lillibridge

Title: Mama, Mama, Only Mama: A Single Mom on Parenting, Divorce, Dating, and Cooking, with Heavy Doses of Humor and Advice 

Author: Lara Lillibridge

Stars: 5 

Review:
Being a parent in general is hard Lara Lillibridge bring humor to the day to day struggles of parents.  While she is a single parent the stories will have anyone as a parent laughing and saying "Yup that has happened."
The author is able to bring light to the darkest and hardest times of the lives of parenting. 
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher Skyhouse for a copy of Lara Lillibridge Mama, Mama, Only Mama

I am blessed to be married to an partner an amazing father who steps in when I need help or a break from being a mom.  With that said I am still able to understand the author feeling and humor.Review:


Synopsis:
Being a single mother means relaxing your cleanliness standards. A lot. Being a single mother means missing your kids like crazy when your ex has them, only to want to give them back ten minutes after they come home. Being a single mother means accepting sleep deprivation as a natural state. Being a single mother means hauling a toddler, a baby, and a diaper bag while wearing high heels and a cute skirt, because you never know when you’ll meet someone. Being a single mother means finding out you are stronger than you ever knew was possible.
Since birth, Lara Lillibridge’s children wanted, “Mama, Mama, only Mama!” whether they were tired or just woke up from a nap—whether they were starving or had just finished a bowl of goldfish crackers. Over ten years later, not much has changed. Between hilarious episodes and candid stories, Lillibridge offers the bits of advice and enlightenment she’s gained along the way and never fails to commiserate on the many challenges that come with raising children in a non-nuclear family. This creative, touching memoir will resonate with single moms everywhere, whether solo parenting is new territory or well-trodden ground for them.
Written in the style of a diary with blogs, articles and recipes tucked between the pages, Mama, Mama, Only Mama follows Lillibridge and her two children, Big Pants and Tiny Pants, out of divorce, through six years of single parenting, and into the family blender with a quasi-stepfather called SigO. Complete with highly useful recipes such as congealed s’more stew, recycled snack candy bars, instant oatmeal cookies and a fine chicken casserole that didn’t pass Tiny Pants’s “lick test,” Lillibridge grows into her role as mother, finds true love, and comes to terms with her ex-husband. 


About The Author:

Lara Lillibridge sings off-beat and dances off-key. She writes a lot, and sometimes even likes how it turns out. 

She is the author of two memoirs, Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home (Skyhorse Publishing, 2018) and Mama, Mama, Only Mama (Skyhorse Publishing, 2019).

Lara Lillibridge is a graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. In 2016 she won Slippery Elm Literary Journal’s Prose Contest, and The American Literary Review's Contest in Nonfiction. She also was a finalist in both Black Warrior Review’s Nonfiction Contest and DisQuiet’s Literary Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She has had essays published in Pure Slush Vol. 11, Vandalia, and Polychrome Ink; on the web at Hippocampus, Crab Fat Magazine, Luna Luna, Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, Airplane Reading, Thirteen Ways to Tell a Story, Weirderary, and Brain, Child magazine's Brain, Mother blog. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.