June Diane Raphael: I had several moms who knew and didn't bring gifts...

That's my big fear, and not enjoying things as much as I could and realizing actually how awesome life is right now.

June Diane Raphael

awesome-life realizing life-is

[The Women's Room by Marilyn French] was in my house somewhere, blew my mind, I was changed forever. And then I continued to read it at various points in my life, and it sort of opens up in a different way.

June Diane Raphael

mind house forever

I think my real fear is that I will get to old age and think I spent too much time concerned about the way that I look and other bullshit. That's really a fear of mine.

June Diane Raphael

bullshit real thinking

I'm not referring to an up-and-coming comedian. I am referring to the host of The Profit. He invests his own money into small businesses that need to be turned around. He becomes partners in them. And I love the way he does business, and I love his integrity, and I love where his head's at, and I love what he has to say, and I learn from him.

June Diane Raphael

comedian doe integrity

[Postpartum] is a raw time when you need your friends and family to swoop in in a very real way.

June Diane Raphael

family-and-friends real needs

I think, is a cultural thing, too. You know, everyone wants to see the baby. Everybody's bringing gifts for the baby.

June Diane Raphael

want baby thinking

For me, I was the most vulnerable and needed the most in my postpartum experience and got the least. It was just kind of a drop-off. That would be my focus - on the woman, afterwards.

June Diane Raphael

focus kind would-be

I feel like there's so much focus on the woman when you're pregnant, and it's amazing and beautiful and everybody's taking care of you, and then you have the baby and nobody's interested. And yet you are the most vulnerable you've been - I mean, I'm speaking on my own experience. Other women may have very different experiences.

June Diane Raphael

beautiful baby mean

One thing that I would like to do that I've seen them not do that well is take women all through the process of the postpartum period in a more meaningful way. That would be my agenda.

June Diane Raphael

agendas would-be meaningful

I feel I've learned a lot about [experience of giving birth], and I think it's amazing. Men and women who are ob-gyns are pretty amazing.

June Diane Raphael

giving men thinking

I know that it feels dangerous and scary and working without a net, so to speak. And working without a net, for me - maybe other women do it a totally different way - means being vanity-free. That's how, as an artist, I know that I need to work.

June Diane Raphael

vanity artist mean

My perfect Sunday is waking up at 10 - which, you know, those days are over for me - but waking up at 10, breakfast with children, hanging out with well-behaved children.

June Diane Raphael

sunday perfect children

I love being a mom. Being a mother is my favorite thing ever.

June Diane Raphael

mom mother love-is

I never sleep in. By the way, when we're like, "We alternate waking up for the kids," the other person's waking up at 7 a.m. It's not like you're waking up at 10. It's like, "I'm really going to give you a treat and you're gonna get your ass up at 7 instead of 5:59." Which is when our son wakes up.

June Diane Raphael

sleep kids son

I remember watching 21 Jump Street and thinking I'm attracted to Johnny Depp - "What are these feelings?" I remember all of this, the first time you feel things. I mean, yes, boys in class, whatever, but to specifically go back to those experiences, it's kind of amazing.

June Diane Raphael

boys mean thinking

The sexual revolution... it was the first time I had read anything that came close to describing those feelings of being outside of my body, feeling the shame, all of it, that I really was able to connect to in that book. So it sort of blew my mind. I was also listening to Tori Amos at the same time, so I was like, "Wait, what's happening?!" It was all a part of that, probably when I was, like, 13.

June Diane Raphael

waiting feelings book

It certainly wasn't taught in school beyond the idea of "girls can do anything that boys can do" - I understood that kind of pop culture feminism. I did not understand anything else about feminism.

June Diane Raphael

girl boys school

[The Women's Room] was the first thing I read that explained a lot of the feelings I was having and a lot of the rage and the feeling uncomfortable in my body and knowing that I was feeling a certain way in the world, but I didn't have the language for it.

June Diane Raphael

knowing feelings world

There were a lot of different things [in The Women's Room ]. I don't really want to summarize it in this way. It's about a woman's awakening, a woman who came of age in the '50s and is a teenager - actually, she's a little bit older - in the '60s and part of the women's movement and how she ends up there.

June Diane Raphael

teenager movement different

[The Women's Room] is one of those pieces of fiction that reveals itself in a different way every time. It's incredible.

June Diane Raphael

pieces different fiction

I had several moms who knew and didn't bring gifts for the baby and instead brought me food, candles, journals - the women who were like, "Actually, I know this is a tough time for you, and it's much more important that I show up here instead of to the baby shower."