B (3:10)

Thank you. And I want to thank you for falling in love with this book. I think you read it before our last the podcast and you fell in love with it. I think it was such a wonderful, amazing surprise for me that you reached out to this book and now it's being published at your publishing house and in America. It's really great. Thank you.

A (3:38)

You're welcome. Yes. So for those listening, you may have heard my episode with Lihi. When was it? A year ago or so. Not even something like that.

B (3:47)

Even less.

A (3:48)

Even less.

B (3:49)

Even less.

A (3:50)

Yeah, we work quickly and I was supposed to be preparing for your other book, but I was like, oh, what's this book? Let me try reading Women of Valor as my way of prepping for the podcast. And I absolutely, as you said, fell in love with the book. And maybe I'll put a little clip or something in this episode to when I was freaking out about it and then somehow convinced you to let us have US rights. And now we're bringing it out with a new title called I Wanted to be Wonder in the US and we could not be more thrilled.

B (4:18)

And I think a little bit of editing that we did together, all of us and the editor, Kathleen, and you, and with a lot of thoughts about making it even a bit new, I.

A (4:35)

Think.

B (4:37)

Very different, but with the heart and soul of the original book. Yeah, it's.

A (4:43)

Yeah, it's like the book 2.0, new for the American audience. For those who didn't listen to the other podcast where we discussed that book even more in depth than perhaps you had wanted at the time. Why don't you tell listeners what I Wanted to Be Wonderful is really about and the whole journey behind it.

B (5:02)

I think most of the stories are being told like romantic stories, and at the end they are getting married and live happily ever after. And the thing that we know as adults, as married people, is that the journey starts there. After you found a great guy, he found a wonderful woman. It can be also men and men and women and woman. And at the end you stay home Everybody goes the party and, and. And now it's real life. It's like becoming a family, moving from being two young adults to being parents. This apartment of yours is. Suddenly needs to be a home. How do you do it? And I realized that they talk to us a lot about, you know, from dating to falling in love and, you know, even empowering women and things like that. But no one talks about this thing that we need to work at home to be a couple, to be parents, to see our kids growing up. And sometimes they are not so perfect as we want or as they were supposed to be, or how much can we give them and how much it's what they are. And what happened to me was that I was a news photographer before I was a mother. And motherhood being a mother kept me out of being a news photographer because the news photographer needs to go everywhere with a motorbike, which doesn't have place for kids. Sitting and to breastfeed every four hours doesn't work with going on assignments and everything. And I lost my job and I needed to find something else. And the first book that I wrote was about the fact that they told us we can be everything. And as women if we build a family, we realize that we need to change, we need to slow down, we need to give. We want to give to our kids, to our family. We want to dedicate a lot of time for them, a lot of thoughts, a lot of, I don't know, thinking about them, putting them first place before us. And when I got to this book too, I wanted to be wonderful. It was already at the point that I struggled and said, wow, wow, wow. I gave up so much. I gave up so much for my man to succeed and to have his career. I gave up so much for my kids. Where am I in all this? And can I say, now it's my turn. Can I say it? So I think that's the situation that I. I wrote the book in.

A (8:21)

Wow. Well, I think that raw emotion absolutely finds its way through your characters into the book. And you wrote it in such a unique way where there are two narratives, one is really you. So if the other half wasn't there, it could have been almost a memoir ish book, you know, with some liberties. And then the other thread is a completely fictitious family and you braid it together in such an interesting way. And both show us and teach us something very important about motherhood and about marriage. It's not the same story because of course we all have very different stories. But by showing the two in Parallel until they sort of intersect. You're showing us a lot. You're exposing the underside, if you will, of both marriage and motherhood and what doesn't often get said not only from the wife's point of view, but also the husband's point of view and those sort of deflated expectations as well.

B (9:25)

I think one of the things that jumps to my head when we talk about the man in the story is this thing that I write there and it comes from my life that the husband stands next to the door and he waits a minute before he opens the door and come back to his home because he doesn't know which woman he will find there, if his wife will be smiling or angry, what things she will have to say against him or with what would he need to struggle. And so it's a bit of the angle of the man I do think that I chose. It's like a fairy tale, we said, living happily ever after. So it's a prince and a princess. And I think most of us call our kids princess and prince in a sweet way. But growing up realizing, okay, I was the princess of my father or I was the prince of my mother, but now I live in this house and no one is not prince and not queen and. And so it was like they were the thing I was supposed to be. They were the good story of. And even in the good story, they really love each other and they want to help each other. She's giving up so much, the princess, since she is becoming a mother. And on the other hand, I told my story. I want to tell you something about this book on behind the Scenes. While I was writing it, I felt I'm exposuring myself too much, that it's too much, it's too personal, it's too real. And I went to my mother in law that she's a very famous writer in Israel, Shulamichalpid her name, and asked her just for a little advice. And it's a wonderful advice for anyone. She looked at me and she said, when you write a book. I ask her, when I write a book, do I write the whole truth? She looks at me and she said, when you write a book, you write the whole truth and then you erase a little bit. And it's such an amazing advice because we don't know how much we censor ourselves between our head and soul and the paper or the computer. We take out things because someone will know that it's about him and he will get insulted and someone will be angry that we said it and everything. And this advice allowed me to write everything. I really took the liberty of really, really writing everything. And then I will erase. And when I came to erase, when I read at the end, I said, wow, it's too personal, it's too much. And I erased, erased. And I left with one paragraph that I couldn't. I couldn't take it out because I felt that it's not the truth anymore. If I'm taking it out and if I'm publishing it like that, it's pretty too much. It's exposing myself too much. And I decided not to publish the book. And it stayed ready wrapped after being edited. It stayed for more than a year in my computer and in the publishing house computer, and I didn't publish it. And after more than a year, I sat with my husband, my man, and I told him, it needs to go out, it needs to be published. It's burning inside of me. And I can read you the paragraph that I was so hesitating about. I come one day to pick up my daughter from kindergarten. Her teacher says that she thinks something is wrong. She doesn't respond like all the other kids. I tell her we paid attention and we already have an exam with the ear doctor. While waiting for the exam, we are surrounding our daughter making noise and she doesn't respond. Throwing things and making huge noise and she doesn't respond. We start asking everybody that knows things and realize maybe it's not just the ears. At the night before the crucial exam, I hold my husband and he holds me and none of us is falling asleep. And I pray that night I pray, please let my daughter be deaf. Because all other possibilities are so much more frightening. I want a deaf child. And I want to say about. It took me so long to. We gathered the whole family and decided that we do published this book that Yael was, I think 11 or 12. Yael is now 27. She's. She's a young woman with autism. She's not deaf. She. She doesn't talk. She has classic severe autism. And. And she changed our life. And she, she. She changed me definitely. And the whole family and publishing the book was also talking about it. And I think that until now a lot of people are hiding, A lot of people are not talking about it. Some of them just because they don't want people to pity them. Some of them won't believe that they're kids. And a lot of times it happens that their kids are advancing and. And they can be normal, regular adults. But with Yael, it was the time that we realized it's a journey forever, that she will be special for all her life and need our support. So it's like this. You call it bridal, right? Bridal novel.

A (16:18)

Braided.

B (16:18)

Yeah, braided. Noble. Yeah, braided. You called it braided novel and I think it's exactly that. I could be the princess if my daughter was okay. But at the end we are all struggling. We all know it. It's like we can have the best husband, house, job and family is is something that demands so much of our soul and mind. And so so the book is I think about that.

A (17:00)

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B (20:21)

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A (20:22)

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B (20:53)

I remember one time, and maybe that's the essence, and maybe that's why you fell in love with this book. I remember one day that I was. I was. I was a total wreck. I was, like, devastated. I stayed home with my daughter for a few years, and I was, like, giving all of me to her. And, you know, we are in an era that everybody tells us if we'll try hard enough, it will work. And we don't know what to do when we try hard enough the hardest that we can, and it's not okay, and we can't fix, and sometimes we can't fix things. And realizing that there is something so important in your life that you can't fix is a devastating thing. So I was Iraq, and one day it was nighttime, and you said, I want to talk to you. And he said, listen, it's your journey for the rest of our lives, and there are other kids here in the family that needs you, and I need you, and you need the strength to continue because Yael needs you also. And then at the end, he said, and this house needs to be a happy home again. And he said that. And it was, wow, being happy, having a happy home. And I think that's the essence of. Of my. I'm dealing with the question, how can we continue having our house and our home and our family happy together and also our marriage? But. Yeah. Which is not easy.

A (22:49)

Well, the way you sort of excavate all of it and process it and show us a path forward that's not necessarily roses and sunshine, that is complicated and could very well go in directions we don't want. I think it's profoundly moving. And the way you write is so beautiful. And I'm just. It's just so moving. The way you tell your stories is so moving. And I wanted to hear more about. After you wrote this book, which now is coming out again years later, tell me about the other books you wrote, the other ways you pursued your creative life and what has happened since. I know there's a movie project. Talk about once you got that very deeply personal project out there, how you thought about what you should release next and all of that.

B (23:50)

I think here, my husband, he told me when I was hesitating, and he told me, are you sure you want to publish this book? Are you sure you have the ability to stand in front of what will happen? I thought he's exaggerating, but he didn't. He didn't. Like I said before, not many people talk about being a special parent and talking about, if we leave that aside, talking about being married to a very successful, successful husband and trying to find who you are in this world. And my husband was then a movie TV star, and he had a huge talk show. And he was like. And I was struggling at home to realize how. How can I breastfeed or not?

A (24:48)

And so wait, how did you meet your husband?

B (24:51)

How did I meet him? I was a news photographer in the army newspaper, and he was a correspondent in the. Like, he came to do reserve, and I met him. Two people said before we met that we will get married. And I remember my boss in the. In the newspaper, my commander, someone told him, don't meet them because he's married. And if she will meet him, they will fall in love. I don't know how come, but. And then he said he's being separated from his wife. If he wouldn't, I would never met, let them work together. So you know what? I can say another thing that I don't think it's in the book, but I was 20 and Yair was 25, on the way to be divorced with a 2 year old kid. And all my friends told me, you are crazy. Get away, run for your lives. You don't need to do it. It's a problem. Why do you need a stepson in such an early age? Like. But I looked at him and I found him amusing and smart. And we are like 35 years later still. So I'm still the second young wife. Like.

A (26:25)

Oh, that's funny. But then at some point, what happened when he went into politics? Were you. Did you want that to happen? Was that like a team decision?

B (26:36)

You know, when we talk about it now in our talk. So I think that, like, we gathered the family when we decided we want to tell them or to tell them and ask their opinion about publishing the book that will expose the whole family. And we gathered everybody. And so few years later, we gathered everybody and Yair said, I want to go to politics and it will change everything here. I can say that maybe because Yair was very famous before, maybe because his father was a public figure, we kind of succeeded in having our house clean from all the noise.

A (27:26)

Mm.

B (27:27)

It's something that I want to tell myself because I, I know that our kids are struggling with that. It's not easy. You know, many, many times when they talk about it, they say, oh, you know, I met this girl, or I met. She doesn't know whose son I am. And she's like. And so I don't know. It's actually, it's so many years that Yehr is a public figure. I do say that I'm really into his journey. I'm really fighting for him to succeed. I'm not. And if, you know, when you read the book, it's kind of there. Even though he wasn't in politics yet, but we were dealing with these issues, there are so many. I don't think there's a type of, of a politician's wife. Okay. And even when I was the wife of the prime minister, it was like, there's no textbook about how you do it and you need to trust yourself. It was a huge privilege to be and to serve as the wife of the Prime Minister. And it wasn't long, but it was very quick the moment it happened. But I'm totally. Whenever there is elections, I stop everything and I stand outside the mall and I'm heading leaflets and I'm telling vote to my husband. He's the best. He's the best is the one most wonderful. So it made the whole family. We're sharing it. We're talking about it a lot. But our kids chose not to be in Twitter and not to be part of the whole thing. Yael, of course, is different, but also, Yael, like, when we have a campaign bus, she comes with us in the campaign bus and she helps and she sees her father's pictures. So it's weird for her. But I think, yeah, Ella understands much more than we thought. She now started writing a little bit, which is a magic. So I think besides the whole book, talking about really being married to a successful man, building a family, wanting to succeed by yourself and be the person you wanted to be, it was very, very strong. And it is a book that, until now, women that realize that there are special mothers really embrace this book to their hearts.

A (30:13)

Wow. Well, thank you for sharing all of that. I do think it's. Although other people's spouses may not succeed on the scale of yours, I think when you start out and you don't know where your life is going with your spouse or where their life is going, who's going to be more successful at which time, when. And of course, things can go back and forth, but. But I think navigating that and all the stuff with the kids, I mean, it's really a miracle that anybody stays married.

B (30:41)

Yeah, actually, it is. It demands a lot of. Yeah, a lot of love, I think.

A (30:51)

Yes.

B (30:52)

But, yeah, you know, I was thinking about it not long ago that if I knew what I know now, if I knew then what I know now, when the kids were so small and I felt that everything I worked for, everything I studied everything, and at the end, I'm just with diapers and staying at the playground with the swing, and I'm like, why did I study? Why did I tried so hard? And if someone would take me and say, look, 25 years from now, you'll have a book being published in the United States by someone that really loved it, that you will be able to travel and your daughter can wait, would be able to wait for you and not be totally destroyed from the fact that where are you? And if someone would Tell me. So I do want to say it's a bumpy road having small kids trying to make it you and him. But after a while, suddenly they are growing up. And then you have time really to fulfill so many dreams and so many things. So in that sense, I think that men are doing things step by step, like the book. And women, I call us kangaroos because we do something and then we are really into it, into motherhood. And then we have a huge jump, and then we do something else, and we do it. Wonderful, wonderful. And then we do another jump.

A (32:41)

I love that. Oh, my gosh. Well, Lihi, I could talk to you for hours. I'm so excited that we have so many events that we're doing together that you're gonna be doing in the States, around the everything. So many more opportunities for conversation. But thank you so much for coming on today, and I'm just so honored to be on this journey with you. So thank you.

B (33:01)

And thank you for being my publisher, really, and for choosing this book. Wow. It's a wonderful gift for me. Thank you.

A (33:10)

Book chose me. Let's say it that way. Okay. All right.

B (33:15)

Bye, Lihi.

A (33:16)

Talk to you soon.

B (33:17)

Bye.

A (33:18)

Thank you for listening to Totally booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, Leave a review. Follow me on Instagram, ibbeowens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.

B (33:40)

Ready to order?

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This is so nice. Had a feeling you'd want 3% cash back on dessert. Ooh, tiramisu.

B (34:02)

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