Ep 146: I Wanted To Be Wonderful with Lihi Lapid

Wanting life to be wonderful and wanting to be wonderful aren’t the same thing, and that gap is where today’s conversation lives.

Israeli journalist and author Lihi Lapid joins me to talk about motherhood’s messy truths, the pressure to be “more” than "good enough," and the writing choices that make a story feel honest. From bestselling novels to a children’s book that calms homes during chaotic times, Lihi's path as an author reframes what success and impact really mean.

We unpack her new book’s dual narrative: a “princess” self alongside the unfiltered woman doing dishes once the spotlight fades. It’s a sharp mirror of how we perform on the outside while wrestling with doubt inside. 

This episode serves as an important reminder that grace and grit can coexist, and that being real might be the easiest, hardest, and most wonderful act of all.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Leahy Lapide And The Title
• 4:31 Writing Career And The Cookbook Detour
• 7:31 The “Soldier’s Mom” Book And Backlash
• 11:41 Redefining Failure And Real Impact
• 16:11 The Magic Whisper And Helping Kids Sleep
• 21:26 Why Hebrew, Identity, And Connection
• 24:21 Blending Memoir And Fiction In Motherhood
• 29:31 Two Selves: Princess And The Real Me

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:42

Hi, everybody, and welcome back. I am I am truly thrilled today to get to finally talk to Leahy Lapide. Leahy is an Israeli journalist, photojournalist, author, mom. The list kind of keeps going on. Leahy, is this so you've got a book coming out November 4th, correct?

SPEAKER_01: 1:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04

So I wanted to be wonderful is the title.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

And has I when I was I was talking to my mom about you in this book yesterday, and I caught myself saying, I wanted to be wonderful, and thought that's almost a play on words, because if you say it too quickly, it could be heard as I want present tense it to be wonderful. So has any have you ever anyone else ever thought that or have you did you ever wow?

SPEAKER_01: 1:33

No, I I didn't think about it, but it's cool. Yeah. And yes, it's playing with the fact really. It's it's uh you know, when you when you decide on a long name for for a book or I don't know, or for a movie, it it it's a decision because it can go all kinds of places, and we hesitated a lot, but it was so exact.

SPEAKER_00: 1:59

I I love it. And then now knowing what it's about, it really drew me in. Because I think it's such a um like it's such a true sentiment for women and mothers. Like we all wanted it to be wonderful.

SPEAKER_01: 2:15

Yeah, we want it to be wonderful, and we wanted to be wonderful. We wanted, you know, it's also, you know, there there is this saying, good enough mother, and I'm saying none of us wanted to be good enough in anything. We just we want to be wonderful, we don't want to be good enough. Right. It's like when you you don't come to your like your daughter and say, Oh, you were good enough.

SPEAKER_00: 2:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 2:40

You say, yes, so so we want to be wonderful, we want it to be wonderful, and and many times it's not so wonderful, right? But it can be it can be good, it can be great, and it can be even funny.

SPEAKER_00: 2:56

Well, and I love that distinction actually between I I wanted to be wonderful and I wanted it. Obviously, the title is I wanted to be wonderful, like personified, but the the all there, gosh, you could really do a lot with this title, can't you?

SPEAKER_01: 3:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, actually you can.

SPEAKER_00: 3:17

So is this technically your fifth or sixth?

SPEAKER_01: 3:21

Listen, I have three novels that I wrote that were bestsellers. Besides that, I wrote a lot. I wrote three children's books. I wrote a recipe book when I was like, I didn't have an idea to do something else. No, I'm joking. I I wrote a column in the newspaper for 15 years, a weekly column. So I wrote every week and I gave recipes, so I needed to gather them together. And it's uh it's a cookbook for people who don't know how to cook.

SPEAKER_00: 3:52

So I'll be ordering that, and my children will be so grateful.

SPEAKER_01: 3:56

Yeah, whenever a young guy coming to me on the street and said says, I loved your book, I know it's my recipe book because that's that's the presents that they give guys. Um and I had uh I had one book. Wow, I had one book that I wrote about being a mother for a soldier, but it was it was a how-to-do book, like what to pack for him when he is drafted, what to rule thing, like, and it it was a huge failure. It was a huge failure, and it surprised all of us because um like my books are thanks God are are successful. And then we realized that it was called being a soldier's mom. I think no mom wanted a book like that next to her bed. Like it's so frightening. We don't want to think about it, we just want them to come back home and finish with the army. So, so so I think many mothers were afraid to have this book, and it's also connected to like maybe disasters because you say she was the mother of a soldier that died or something like that. So no one touched it. So that was my failure.

SPEAKER_00: 5:15

But when was that?

SPEAKER_01: 5:17

It was like uh four years ago, okay. Uh before the war and everything, and really I I published it uh like really fun thing, as but because I'm Israeli, it sounds like because all of our kids are going to the army, not all of them for being combat soldiers, and not everybody are risking their lives, but everybody are drafting.

SPEAKER_00: 5:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:41

Also the girls, so it was like how to and what to, and like uh like send a pillow with them to the army when they go.

SPEAKER_00: 5:52

So I'm so curious. Okay, I've got another question, but this is what always happens is you you just do such a brilliant job of taking me down a different path, but that's okay, let's follow this one. So, how did you sort of process that? And I'm using your words, but failure in terms of like just how did that sit with you, and then how did you move on from that? Because it sounds like your expectation and even your publisher's expectation was that this would do better.

SPEAKER_01: 6:18

Usually, um, because this publisher had a book that succeeded, and it was a success, so so he could gather a failure. But it's it's like I'm laughing about it, but we did sit and thought about how how come it didn't work, and and we talked about it. It was now we're we're smiling now and joking, but but I realized that uh I touched something that is is is really difficult for women. And and and since then I realized how how unnatural it is to ask a mother to send her son and daughter to the army. How difficult it is. And and it and it gave me a whole notion of we treat it as as normal, but actually it's not. It's it's it's a it's a I I said once about about Israel that that that uh when you ask a mother and a father to send their kids to the army, you need to give them in return a wonderful country. Yeah, that's what it. And those last two years definitely changed the whole thing, and it's not funny anymore, really.

SPEAKER_00: 7:34

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and I I imagine, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that your intention was to provide support to these moms and a way that they could do something when in a moment that feels really scary and helpless, and then for it to kind of have the opposite reception.

SPEAKER_01: 7:56

No, it wasn't. The people that that bought it, like many people come to me and say, not many, but few people come to me and say, Wow, this book saved me when my daughter was drafted, when my son was drafted. It was whoever bought it or got it as a present, they loved it. Like one mother came to me and hugged me in the middle of the street and she said, You gave the the tip, I gave a tip that in the morning when he needs to go back to the army after he was awakened at home, you know, after three weeks that he wasn't at home, if you have a possibility, take him to the base. Put him in your car and take him. And she said, Listen, you wrote this, which I never thought because there's a bus going. And I took him every time. Oh, and we had the best time that we could could because he knew that he's going for two or three weeks and he won't be home. And I was there and I felt like the total wonderful mother that like I'm giving him the moon, and we had the best talks in their drive, and we had uh the time for ourselves. So, yes.

SPEAKER_00: 9:17

So well, and that you're really pointing out, I think so.

SPEAKER_01: 9:21

It's not a failure. If you exactly mother and son's life, it's not a failure.

SPEAKER_00: 9:26

That's that's what's so interesting, Leahy, is that I feel like you're pointing out the difference between a failure in the eyes of the author and a failure, I hate the word, in the eyes of the publisher. Yeah. Because maybe the book didn't sell quite as frenetically as the publisher hoped. But for you, if you helped even one person, I mean, what an amazing moment to have that woman approach you.

SPEAKER_01: 9:54

Yeah. Yeah. And I think at the end, we're here now to talk about that book, but the other one. But uh, I think I think that's at the end when you write a book, you want to go and reach out one soul. And if you really reach it, and and when when I write, I don't think about 10,000 people or 20, but I'm I'm I'm saying, wow, maybe there's a woman now, like I'm talking about, I want it to be wonderful, that there will be one mother that now feels that she's not good enough, that her life are falling apart, and she can't handle the being mother and being wife and being a successful woman and everything. She can't hold all of this together, and maybe she will read this and she will feel a little better. So at the end, when I'm writing, I'm I'm imagining someone.

SPEAKER_00: 10:58

That one person, yeah. And I so I want to talk about, I want it to be wonderful. And first, if I can, I want to say I found um your one of the children's books, The Magic Whisper.

SPEAKER_01: 11:11

Whisper. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 11:12

And I believe it's am I correct that it's out of print?

SPEAKER_01: 11:15

Yeah, it's no, listen, it's out of print and it's an amazing book. Maybe you'll help me publish it in the States, but it's I'll tell you how it's at the end. We'll talk about my new book. He's great and amazing. So the Magic Whisper started when I did my yoga, and at the end of the yoga, you know, they say breathe and relax and everything. And I fell asleep every time I fell asleep. And then one day I came home to try and put my kids to sleep, and they didn't, and I said, you know what? Lie down, breathe. So I took the yoga relaxation, and I I did, and then I I approached um my my uh brother-in-law, that he's a yoga person and and a kid psychologist, and we wrote something that helps kids to fall asleep, like take three breaths, slowly, slowly. And so if I'll tell you it's two more minutes, you'll fall asleep. And this book ran out like it was 10 years ago, and they are not publishing it anymore. And when the war in Israel started, someone wrote me, listen, my kids don't fall asleep. And the psychologist told me about your book, and I said, Wow, it ran out. And then another one wrote me, and another one said, Wow, I remember you had, but and now my kids with the alarms and all the the the the war that they can fall asleep. Can you? I called my editor and I said, Listen, parents need it. And they did a reprinting of the book, and now it's available.

SPEAKER_00: 12:59

So Oh good! Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 13:03

So I'm so happy about it. I'm so happy about it. I'll send you if you need.

SPEAKER_00: 13:07

Oh my gosh. I I'll order it. I would love and here's what really grabbed me about it. So when I found it on I found it on Amazon because I was just doing a search of everything you've done on Amazon because that's where I was. And um, I my youngest daughter is Ethiopian and their language is Amharic. And the alphabet, the Amharic alphabet is really beautiful to me. And I think when I was in college, I studied Japanese. And so when I went to Japan, I bought a bunch of children's books in Japanese because same thing. I just I loved seeing the difference. The Hebrew it is so beautiful to me, the writing of it. And so when I saw your the children's book and the cover, I thought, I really want a copy of this. I don't know how to read Hebrew, but I still want it in Hebrew because it's I said to myself, wow, she reads Hebrew.

SPEAKER_01: 14:02

Wow. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00: 14:03

But I'm I think I'm gonna try to teach myself or have you teach me because it's so beautiful. And my dad's side, this is a total aside. My father's side of the family was Jewish, and I I discovered about two years ago that I'm, you know, 50% Ashkenazi, and it got me very interested in all of that, the culture and the traditions and all of those things. And so put all this together, and I need a copy of that book. You will get a copy of that book. Okay, so let's talk about I want it to be wonderful. The thing I found most fascinating about this is that you wrote it sort of half, it's two characters, right? But one is fictional and one is either loosely or largely based on you, so memoir-ish. And I'm I think you've done that more than once. In another book, you you kind of took that approach as well, right? So I'm I'm really fascinated by that.

SPEAKER_01: 15:01

What I'll tell you what, I didn't think of writing about myself. I wanted to write something about motherhood, which will be it was after a few years, I wrote my column about family and about parenting. And I started writing, and then myself started going into the book and saying, okay, okay, that character has everything and everything is going for her nicely, but life is not exactly like that. And slowly, slowly, my parenthood and my and my my life went into. I I remember one day I went to my mother-in-law, that she's a famous writer in Israel, and I asked her, listen, I'm really worried because I'm writing too much about too much of me in the book. And and then I asked her, when you write a book, do you write the whole truth? And then she answered me by giving a wonderful advice that I'm carrying with me and I'm distributing it. She looked at me and she said, When you write a book, you write the whole truth. And then you erase a little bit.

unknown: 16:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 16:16

And it sounds easy, but we censor ourselves so much between what we think and what we write, because someone will get insulted and someone will know that it's about him. And so we censor ourselves. And so I wrote this book like really everything out there. And then I got scared a little bit. I started erasing a little bit. But then I realized that if I'm not putting myself in my own motherhood and my own relationship, marriage there, it's not the truth anymore. And you know, I thought about it this week, and I said to myself that I'm not so sure that today I would write or I would publish something so listen, it's really, really from my heart for my life. It's it's really, yeah. It's really, really yeah. I didn't do this enough.

SPEAKER_00: 17:55

Well, did you feel like having the fictional side and maybe having the the reader not know was was that sort of maybe a in a way a coping mechanism to to be able to share some things that you wanted to share, but you didn't want to Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:13

It started like that. I said, I will tell her story, but then I'll tell you what, I think each one of us has both of them. We have like one character is is is is a princess, married to a prince, like you know, all of us calling our kids prince, princess, and so it's she's not a real princess, but and the other one is me. So I think in a way, each one of us has a princess inside her and dreams and and the things she wanted, the wonderful woman she wanted to be. And we also have ourselves with the difficulties, with the struggles, with the fights at home, with with with the failures. Uh so in a way, it's not just two stories, it's kind of one story where you know, so many people can look at you, Elizabeth, and say, she has it all, she's so wonderful, she is so successful, she's so and and and you can see so many times just the things that you didn't do, and the thing so you didn't succeed. And and I think so many of us are looking at the things we don't have and the things we failed with. You know what? Even look at our talk. After two minutes, we talked about a book of mine that was a failure, which was the only book that was a failure in my life. And it's it's part of of uh being happy with yourself, happy with your life is saying, okay, uh not everything will be wonderful. I need to be happy with the things that did work out.

SPEAKER_00: 20:06

It's almost like writing a book from two POVs, like two points of view that are the same person. Because go ahead.

SPEAKER_01: 20:15

I just finished now shooting a series for TV from uh my previous book from on uh on her own. And I said, Wow, maybe I'll do I want it to be wonderful as a movie or as a series. And then immediately I thought that it will be the same actress playing the princess and me. And then I said, Wow! And you know, thinking about a book that was published a few years ago, and suddenly I wrote it and suddenly I realized that the only possibility is to shoot it when it's the same actress playing this one and this one, and that's the way I feel. I feel like sometimes I'm on stage or I'm being interviewed in a podcast, and I'm I'm this uh successful, wonderful princess, and then I go home and I take off my clothes, dress myself with something, and arranging the house and doing the dishes and putting laundry in the in the machines.

SPEAKER_00: 21:27

It makes me think. So we have in in the US, there's a woman, her name's Gailie Alex. I talked about her like two weeks ago, too. She seems to keep popping up. She's a she was a wall, she worked on Wall Street for Goldman Sachs, and now she's a home, she does home renovation, but that's really understating what she does. And someone had asked her a question the other day on her social media about, hey, like you always look so happy and put together and optimistic. And how do you pull that off? And her response, and I'm paraphrasing, was like, look, I don't social media is a highlight reel. I just don't show you me naked in the shower crying because A, I'd get censored, and B, nobody wants to see that. But all of those components of us make up who we are.

SPEAKER_01: 22:16

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:17

So to your point, like the it's the success and it's the rocking in the corner. It's all of it.

SPEAKER_01: 22:25

And I think great, uh that's why uh this book was such a use success because it gave women, wow, it's about me. It's about wow, I have those two moments. It's like one minute I'm home, and the other one I'm going out, and I'm like dressed the best I can. And and also there's there's one thing that is in the book, is that it's a line that comes that talks about being a parent for for for and realizing that my daughter is with special need slowly, slowly through the book. And I think this is also something that it's not just I wanted to be wonderful, I wanted her to be wonderful, or at least okay. So so it's also something that so many of us are are having, even if your kid is not with special needs, sometimes our kids are just having hard time with themselves, with school, with no friends, or something like that. And then and then again, we are so much uh our heart is broken for them, and we we want to help them, and not always we can help them. Right. Yeah, right. So it's also a line that uh that goes there.

SPEAKER_00: 23:48

Did did you find in the writing of the book that you were able to sort of like more lovingly bring those two aspects of yourself together?

SPEAKER_01: 23:59

Yeah, yeah. I I what what happened was while writing and then publishing it, is I said that the both of them are inside all of us. So I can be happily happy with with when I'm when I'm when I'm successful and great, and people say, wow, and I can also hug myself when I'm low and when things are bad, and when I'm crying in the bathroom, or or really it was like uh so many moments that are difficult in life, and to remember that the princess is in me, she she can go out one day today. Is like that and the other way, but today is not the day for me, Lee.

SPEAKER_00: 24:49

Today is not the day. So, okay, the last thing I always ask people, and I can't wait for your answer on this, is what are you reading right now?

SPEAKER_01: 24:57

Wow, no actually actually what I'm reading now is is uh uh I'm into scripts now because I fell in love with with doing TV and movies and things like that. So I'm like totally into knowing and reading better and knowing how how how to write. Uh so I'm I'm reading there's a book called it's um whoa, Robert McKee's book about about script writing. So so I'm reading that and I'm like I was in his course and I studied, but I'm like re rereading it in order to know how to how to write another script because I'm like totally different, totally different thing, right?

SPEAKER_00: 25:49

It's like switching from painting to you know drawing. Like it's it's still art, but it's just a completely different It's totally new.

SPEAKER_01: 25:59

Listen, they did um uh script from my book, but I was, you know, I just I tried to be a partner for that, but I was just a student there looking at what they are doing and learning. And I knew to say what I like and what not. When they drifted away from from the book totally, I said, hey, stop, that's yeah, wasn't my intention. But but it's it's a different profession. It's unbelievable. It's like, you know what? It's like photographing and drawing. It's it's it's both the same uh square, but it's like totally different things.

SPEAKER_00: 26:46

Different. And I think I don't think people realize that about different, especially in the writing space. People who have written I I've always written nonfiction and now I'm writing fiction, and it's I might as well have never written anything. It's a totally different to me way of expressing.

SPEAKER_01: 27:06

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 27:07

I'm still still a story, but different.

SPEAKER_01: 27:10

Yeah, yeah, it's totally different.

SPEAKER_00: 27:12

Totally different.

SPEAKER_01: 27:14

Wow, how does it work for you to be in a you mean right?

SPEAKER_00: 27:21

You mean switching over to writing fiction?

SPEAKER_01: 27:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:24

It's really underestimated. I thought, oh, this will be so see the air quotes easy. Because I can make up everything. I mean, when you're writing nonfiction, everything needed to be true and it needed to be logical and make sense. And I thought, hey, how hard can this be? Like I don't have to fact check, I can make these people up. Well, it turns out, Leahy, my imagination is just it's lost its mind. Like it's so I to rein it in, and I I spend a lot of time being like, Am I doing this right? Um, I wear my editor hat and my writer hat at the same time. That is quite challenging.

SPEAKER_01: 28:02

Yeah, it's challenging. I'll tell you what about prose, about fiction, that you have all the possibilities. Like there's a door open, it could be a man, a girl, a woman, I don't know, a dinosaur, like everything. And at the end, we need to decide and to give up on a lot of other characters that won't enter the book uh from that door. So yeah. So it's really, really right.

SPEAKER_00: 28:35

It's like I have to pick up a character and say, no, that she's in a different book. And I have to remind myself what I remind people with whom I work, which is like I can write another one after this. I don't have to fit every idea I've ever had into this one story, nor should I. But it's I love it, a dinosaur. I just hope that when I open the door, there's gonna be like a llama or a miniature, like a cow of some sort. That's what I'm hoping for, but maybe that's a children's book. I don't know. Well, thank you so incredibly much for making the time. I know you're so busy and there's a time difference and just the whole thing. I appreciate you, and I wish you the absolute best with this book. I cannot wait to read it, and I can't wait to get my hands on that children's book.

SPEAKER_01: 29:23

Thank you, thank you. So, the children's book, you are writing me your address and I will send it to you. You're amazing. And and and also, if we're so so I'm very happy about I Wanted to Be Wonderful that is being published now. And there is also On Her Own, which is really a wonderful book that you can all get on Amazon. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00: 29:47

Yeah, no, on her own is also very it's all very intriguing to me. I'm so so glad to be connected with you.

SPEAKER_01: 29:54

Thank you so much. And I was so happy to to meet you, really. I I am too.