good enough is good enough by colleen duggan…

Sometimes my blogging world and my real life collide bringing me a gift and today is one of those days. My friend Colleen Duggan has a new book out from Ave Maria Press called “Good Enough is Good Enough: Confessions of An Imperfect Catholic Mom” and y’all it’s a real winner.

I’ve known Colleen for several years and she is is genuine as they come. She’s wickedly funny, humble and an incredible story-teller. Colleen has a achieved a beautiful balance between spectacular laugh-out-loud moments (I see you Mary Bernadette and I raise you one bead)  and tender heart tugs with this book. Knowing her in real life, reading this book made me feel like we were sitting in a coffee shop just chatting about the ups and downs that come with motherhood and married life.

Along with her humor, Colleen also draws you into her internal struggles as a wife to John and mother of six. She is very honest about being the child of an alcoholic father and perfectionist mother and what these childhood hurts meant to her marriage and family life.  She speaks of the importance of placing your marriage first and foremost, so that when this six kids leave what’s left behind is a solid friendship instead of a sad awareness that you and your spouse half nothing to talk about now that the kids have gone.

She offers her own hard learned lessons that the ideal mother and wife doesn’t exist, and that’s okay, because instead of comparing your family to everyone else’s what God is really calling  us to do as wives and mothers is show empathy and kindness to other women that are going through the same struggles we are.  She speaks with honesty and bares her heart in regards to the challenges we all face in raising kids who will remain with the church their whole lives.

Using humor and her own pains and struggle, Colleen offers an honest and hopeful take on Catholic motherhood, stripping away the shiny perfect misconceptions of what we think motherhood should look like and sound like and breaks it wide open with the realities of kids misbehaving in Mass, messy homes and an exhausted Mom who just wants to go to the bathroom alone in peace.

Perfect in not possible in motherhood. Good enough is really good enough. Love is the only thing required. That and a large cup of coffee.

You can follow Colleen on social media…Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

You can purchase the book here on Ave Maria Press.  You can use the promo code: COLLEEN through May 1 on the Ave Maria Press website for a 20% discount.