It was a bottomless sleep, the kind of drooling, narcotized slumber known only to shift workers, summering teenagers, and the mothers of small babies. This was a thick, pillow-faced oblivion that claimed me, not so much restful as desperate. I might have remained unconscious in the same position for hours longer, maybe even days, had it not been for the moist thumb that was gingerly peeling back my eyelid. Instinctively I jerked my head away, still lost in a fog of dreamless exhaustion. But the thumb came again, this time poking into my eye as it pulled the lid up. A giant, blurry cartoon of a face swam into view, all fuzzy halo and cheeks, toothless, with enormous blue eyes. I shrank away, but the thumb was relentless, yanking my eyelid up toward my hairline. Panicking, and with both eyes open now, I struggled to fit together who and where I was. Was I being probed? Tortured? Drugged? Was there any hope of escape? Then my blurry tormentor leaned in closer and I could smell its sweet, faintly milky breath. “Mama!” it crowed, face splitting into a wide, gummy grin. “Mama! Mama! Mama!” Relief flooded my body. This was no alien seeking to harvest my eyeballs, but only my eight-month-old daughter deciding that it was time for mommy to wake up and join the fun. I pulled her onto my chest for a hug and tickled her under her plump chin. She squealed and giggled and patted my face with her damp little hands. If you can live with the occasional sharp poke in the eye, babies make the perfect alarm clocks—no snooze button, no batteries to wear out, and no denying when sleepy time is over. Good morning, mommy!

It took no time at all for my wild baby girl to teach me that every expectation I had regarding parenthood was off base. Instead of allowing herself to be propped up in various charming poses—the better to model her many chic ensembles—she made it clear that she hadn’t come into this world merely to be decorative, but to spend every waking moment in my arms. Rather than snoozing the days away while her daddy and I carefully researched the optimal intellectbuilding toys (or slept, ate, and showered), she insisted on remaining happily alert, her eyes never leaving our faces. She stood on our laps from birth, her legs wobbly but strong, so determined to finish anything she started. She scared us a little, to be truthful, especially me.

My first mistake came in assuming that newborns arrived without much personality to speak of, that it took them a bit to turn into people. I thought she might loll about in a knit jumper like a sweetly scented blob while I caught my breath and tried to figure the whole scene out. Wrong. Right from the start I fumbled everything, from the sticky tabs on her diapers (baby lotion renders them instantly useless), to the bewildering array of snaps on her pajamas (imagine cramming an octopus into a bagpipe). When I scratched her leg with the sharp prong of my engagement ring, the sight of her little face twisting in pain nearly ripped the heart from my chest. Afraid of burning her, I made her bath water too cold. Afraid of starving her, I woke her repeatedly to eat. Afraid of dropping her, I squeezed her too tightly. Holding her in my arms, I couldn’t believe that she was really mine, and I wanted to gobble her up, from her wee niblet toes to the silky and fragrant crown of her head. She made me deliriously happy—and horribly afraid. This was more than an awesome responsibility; this was an actual life, gazing at me with complete trust, deeply interested in whatever I planned to do next. Knowing me, how could I not botch it up?

I wanted more than anything to be a good mother, but I knew that good intentions alone wouldn’t get the job done. Not with my background, riddled with the kinds of dysfunction more common to gangsta rap and good old-fashioned country music than any middleclass family fairy tale you’re likely to hear. My mental home movies are filled with action-packed scenes of lying and leaving, guns and police, drugs and coked-out, barely legal girls with semen smeared on their faces—a picture made complete with the requisite seamy visits to daddy in prison. It was enough to convince me that I might make a poor candidate for parenthood—even pet ownership seemed like a dicey proposition.

Face it: You know when you’re screwed up, when you’ve got issues, baggage, unresolved conflicts. You know when you’re damaged goods, even if no one else can tell—particularly if no one else can tell. Having spent my twenties as a ticking time bomb of maternal neurosis waiting to happen, I slid into therapy and my thirties panic-stricken at the thought of having—and possibly hurting—a family. And I was tired enough for someone twice my age. Tired of running in place, of making everything seem perfect when it was anything but. I’d been screaming, “I can do it!” my whole life, but I washed up on a therapist’s doorstep whimpering just the opposite. I felt like one of the poorly made or damaged toys in the old stop-motion animation Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the ones who banished themselves to a lonely island, a haven for a Charlie-in-the-box (as opposed to “Jack”) or a train with square wheels. I was a misfit toy too, and it was time to admit it.

We’re the girls who’ve ducked the toughest punches thrown our way, the lost girls who’ve beaten the odds, the products of broken homes and ruined families. We’re the ones they counted out. Except, we were different. Somehow we turned the booze, drugs, violence, deceit, abandonment, abuse, or apathy of our early lives into the foundation for something strong and resilient, something good. We transformed ourselves from victims into survivors. Now, all grown up, we look perfectly normal, better than normal even. Competent. Driven. Focused. Disciplined. Perfectionist, high-achieving go-getters. Bred in chaos, we’re now the rock in a crisis. Too bad we don’t feel that way on the inside. That dark place is a jumble of noise and emotion, a place where we are terrified of repeating history.

What do we know about nurturing, stability, or patience? Our deepest fear is that we’re too ruined to be good mothers, a fear that’s magnified every time we open a magazine or flick on the television only to find yet another expert explaining how abused kids tend to grow up to be abusers themselves. It doesn’t matter that friends and colleagues consider us the undisputed master of the three C’s: calm, competent, and confident. The voices in our heads are screaming something else, and it’s that message of fear and craven lunacy that you really believe. Screwed up, it says. Ugly, stupid, useless, selfish. Not good enough, phony, fake, a fraud. Success, cash, toys—nothing drowns out that voice for long. Motherhood, the biggest, most awesome and overwhelming challenge in life might only make it louder, at least temporarily.

Even those lucky enough to have grown up in ideal Beaver Cleaver—type families have their own lurid tales to tell. There are plenty of Misfit Moms...