We wanted to share this great article about Brooke, originally posted on the Huffington Post.
Just listing Brooke Burke's many accomplishments is a little exhausting: she's the co-CEO of ModernMom.com, the President of maternity outfitter BabooshBaby.com, and of course, the co-host (and past winner) of Dancing With The Stars. Now, she's also an author: her new memoir, The Naked Mom, hit bookstores last month.
In the book, Burke unpacks the joys and challenges of balancing career with blended family (she has two girls from her 5-year marriage to Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Garth Fisher, with whom she shares custody, plus a 2-year-old son and 3-year-old-daughter with her fiancée, actor David Charvet). But unlike many mommy memoirs, this one is blazingly honest ("Repeat after me," she writes in the first chapter. "There is No. Such. Thing. As. Balance"). What's more, Burke isn't afraid to puncture some widespread myths ("I'm convinced that every Brady in the Bunch had to have been smoking crack," she says in a hilariously candid moment that will ring true to any member of a step-family). Below, Burke shared more thoughts on the subject on the phone from her home in L.A.:
You write that the idea of balance is kind of a myth. How so?
I think it's a really high expectation that most mothers put on themselves. For me, raising a blended family is an everyday challenge. It has its ups and downs. It's difficult. I realize that the image that I had of how my family was going to be was only an illusion in my own head, and if I strove for balance every day, I would just be disappointed. I've learned to just listen, to accept what everybody's going through. I've learned to sort of manage the chaos.After you got divorced, what were the biggest challenges for you?
Learning how to communicate and finding those right words, especially when you're dealing with children. My daughters Sierra and Neriah were 3 and 5 and I actually went to go see a child psychologist which was invaluable. She really helped me find the right words to answer some of the really important questions that the children had, and to help them sort of deal with it. I think what happens with parents when they go through a divorce is they get so focused on their emotional state that it's difficult to really take care of the emotional needs of children. I don't think that I really neglected that but I think that was probably one of the most difficult times.
