You Know How I Feel About You (Essays)

A luminous and deeply relatable essay collection about the transformative first decade of motherhood, for readers of Mary Laura Philpott and Maggie Smith.

I may not have had a job, but I had never had more work to do.

With humor, vulnerability, and lyrical precision, Caroline Langerman chronicles her journey from a twentysomething aspiring writer waiting for her real life to begin, to a mother of three experiencing the bone-deep challenges and incandescent joys of raising children full-time. From her Manhattan single-girl professional days in which she longs to meet her perfect match, to the suburban cul-de-sacs of Charlotte, North Carolina, where her family eventually settles, and where she endeavors to make new friends, new routines, and a new identity, Caroline takes the reader deep into the heart of female experience, probing the big questions that keep us up at night. How do we give to our families without losing ourselves? Is it possible to have a truly symmetrical marriage, or is one partner always sacrificing more than the other? And if we keep up with the Joneses and the Sign-Up Geniuses, what might we miss?

With the warmth and honesty of I Miss You When I Blink, the narrative grace of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, and the poignant clarity of It. Goes. So. Fast., You Know How I Feel About You is the journey of a storyteller coming into her own. Through essays that chart the emotional rollercoaster of imagining a certain kind of future—only to discover that the lived reality is something entirely different, both better and harder than expected—Caroline is an everywoman whose observations and experiences readers will ache with, cheer on, and see themselves within.