Lihi Lapid makes it all look easy – even when she’s talking about I Wanted to Be Wonderful, her moving and painfully candid novel about the struggles of motherhood, marriage, career, and parenting a special-needs child.
I Wanted to Be Wonderful, her second novel in an English translation, was released in stores and online platforms by Zibby Books last week in the US.
Lapid is a best-selling Israeli novelist and author of an essay collection and children’s books, as well as a journalist and photographer who speaks regularly about women’s issues.
As president of SHEKEL, an organization that provides services to Israelis with special needs, she is an advocate for the most vulnerable members of society. She has recently been working as co-creator on a TV series adaptation by yes Studios of her previous novel, On Her Own, which will be called Strangers, starring the 2024 Eurovision sensation Eden Golan.
She has acquired her poise through the different paths her life has taken. Many know her name because she is the wife of Yair Lapid, the former prime minister, current opposition leader, and head of the Yesh Atid party. She has been an active political wife, and worked passionately throughout the war for the release of the hostages held in Gaza.
A meaningful story for parents of special-needs children
To say that she has a lot going on is an understatement, and she came to our interview at a literary café in Herzliya bearing a copy of her latest children’s book, I Wanted to Study Ballet, But My Mother Asked Me Why Not Basketball? (Hebrew), from Keter Publishing.
She brought me the book partly for a reason that requires a full disclosure statement: We both are the mothers of 29-year-olds on the autism spectrum who are considered to have profound autism (the kind where they need 24/7 support and can’t cross the street alone), and we have known each other for years from the special-needs community. Whenever we get together, we spend time comparing notes on her daughter, Yaeli, and my son Danny, and she knows that he still enjoys children’s books and thought we both might like her new one.
This connection was one of the reasons I could appreciate I Wanted to Be Wonderful, which begins where “happily ever after” stories end.
The novel tells parallel narratives of two women. One is identified as the “princess,” whose story is written in third person. The other is a thinly veiled autobiographical look at Lapid’s own life, told very openly and in first person.
Both the princess and the first-person narrator struggle with raising children, keeping the spark alive in their marriages, and maintaining a career at the same time.
But in the first-person section, the heroine’s second child turns out to have autism as Lapid’s does. The heroine and her husband go through a whirlwind of doctors, diagnoses, and treatments (most of which do nothing to help), and experience a level of anxiety over their child’s future that is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been through it. Lapid really nails that experience in a way that will be intensely meaningful to parents of special-needs children, but which is so beautifully and honestly written that I think it will speak to all readers.
She also cleverly weaves in the story of the princess, which functions almost as a road-not-taken parallel universe story, and shows that the early years of marriage and motherhood can be a challenge for everyone – even when there is no special-needs child – as opposed to the fairy tale of how blissful this time is supposed to be. I Wanted to Be Wonderful shows all too well how the popular culture kitsch image of new motherhood can burden those who have trouble adapting to this demanding role.
Speaking about how she decided to begin writing this novel, she said it was originally an outgrowth of a newspaper column she wrote for Yediot Aharonot. “I’d been writing my column for a few years by then. It was mostly about family, kids, love – and how to stay a woman with a full life when you have children and dreams. It was a little empowering, in a poetic way, and it became very successful. Then I decided to write a book about motherhood – or, rather, about parenthood in general. That was over 15 years ago.”
‘You write the whole truth – and then you erase a little bit’
When she began the book, she hesitated about how much of her own life to reveal. “I realized I couldn’t write it without writing about myself and my family. And my family includes Yaeli. Until then, we were open within our community – everyone in our family, all our friends, knew that we had a daughter on the spectrum – but we hadn’t talked about it publicly. We thought maybe she would ‘progress,’ that she was still very young, and all those hopes you read about online. We tried ABA [a type of behavioral therapy used as a treatment for autism], inclusion, other methods, and we thought, ‘Maybe she’ll grow out of it.’ We tried everything.”
As she worked on the novel, she said, “I felt Yaeli was sneaking into the book. My ‘special motherhood’ kept appearing between the lines.”
Unsure if she should proceed, she consulted with her mother-in-law, acclaimed novelist Shulamit Lapid. “I asked her: ‘When I write a book, do I tell the whole truth?’ She gave me the best writing advice I’ve ever received. She said, ‘When you write a book, you write the whole truth – and then you erase a little bit.’ It sounds so simple, but it’s genius. We censor ourselves so much, worrying that someone will be angry, or hurt, or embarrassed. But in the beginning, you must tell the truth.”
We spoke about one particularly emotional section of I Wanted to Be Wonderful that I could relate to, when the heroine’s toddler daughter has her hearing tested. Often, children on the autism spectrum don’t respond to what people around them say, and doctors do tests to rule out a hearing problem. Lapid manages to explain the strange experience, where you hope that your child’s problem will turn out to be a hearing deficit rather than the often far more limiting diagnosis of autism.
“When I wrote that first draft, there was one paragraph I couldn’t bring myself to delete. It was about the day of Yaeli’s diagnosis – the heartbreak of it. I described praying before her hearing test: ‘Please, God, let them find a problem with her ears.’ I wanted her to be deaf because the other possibilities terrified me. I sat in front of that paragraph thinking, ‘If I want to publish this book, I have to erase this part.’ But I couldn’t. I told myself, ‘Either I don’t publish the book or I write the truth about Yaeli.’ So I didn’t publish it – not then. The publishing house already had a title and wanted to go ahead, but I said no.
“A year later, I was sitting with my husband one evening... and I said, ‘It’s burning inside me. This book has to go out. I need to say these things to other mothers.’”
She also discussed it with the rest of her extended family, all of whom have been incredibly supportive and have been involved in helping to raise her daughter, she said; and together they made the decision that she should publish the book.
“It felt like I had spent years hiding – writing columns about motherhood and empowerment while not talking about my own real motherhood. At that point, I realized that if I didn’t publish it, I couldn’t go on pretending to be two different people – the public one and the private one.”
‘Not a sad book but a story of struggle and real motherhood’
She said she does not regret that decision. “I think that’s why it succeeded: It came from real pain, from a deep place. It’s not a sad book, but it’s a story about struggle and real motherhood. Even mothers of children without disabilities told me they saw themselves in it – because when your child suffers, you suffer. There’s that saying, ‘A mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child.’ That’s so true.”
She mentioned a turning point in her life that came from something that her husband said after they realized that the treatments promising miracle cures for their daughter were only that – promises and nothing more.
“He said, ‘This is for life. Being Yaeli’s parents – it’s forever. And we need to be strong enough to live with that forever.’ Then he added, ‘I want this house to be happy again.’ At first, I didn’t understand what he meant. But later I realized he was giving us a kind of battle order. Publishing the book was part of that healing. Once it wasn’t a secret anymore, I could finally begin to see my life as something that could still hold joy.”
Yair Lapid has also been open in speaking about the challenges of raising their daughter, and she spoke with pride about how he was instrumental in the passage of the Social Services Law for People with Disabilities in June 2022 that earmarked NIS 2 billion to help integrate people with disabilities into the community whenever appropriate and to strengthen and protect their services. It took 12 years to receive Knesset approval.
Eventually, she said, their experiences with Yaeli strengthened the marriage, but she is candid about the turbulent early years.
“[An autism diagnosis] shakes a marriage to its core. That’s why I wrote about it in the book. The question becomes: Do we still love each other without all the roles – without being parents, without the struggle? Are we still just a man and a woman who want to be together? And for us, the answer was yes. Yair always says, ‘We were in the trenches together.’ And that’s it – this kind of experience either destroys you or makes you stronger. After that, politics, elections, the Prime Minister’s Residence – none of it could shake us. Once you’ve survived that together, you can handle anything.”
She admitted, though, that she wrote the original Hebrew version of the book before her husband was in politics, and she isn’t sure she would write as candidly today about their marriage.
“I don’t think I’d have the courage today. Back then, I wrote with total honesty – about marriage, motherhood, love – and that’s why it connected. It wasn’t political. It was human,” she said.
Discovered by Zibby Owens
There’s an interesting story behind how I Wanted to Be Wonderful was discovered by Zibby Owens, the American author and podcaster who founded the women-led Zibby Books publishing company and Zibby Media.
“Zibby was actually supposed to interview me about something else, but she picked up I Wanted to Be Wonderful [which had already been published in Israel] and started reading it. And she called me and said, ‘We have to publish this in the United States. It can’t be that this book doesn’t exist here.’ She saw that the book wasn’t just about one woman’s experience but about all of us. About how hard it is to be a modern woman – to want to be a loving mother, a partner, and still remain yourself.”
Lapid is convinced that the book will be just as relevant to American readers as to Israelis.
“It’s not about blaming anyone – not men, not society – it’s about acknowledging that this is just very, very hard. We grow up with dreams, we study, we work, and then motherhood arrives, and suddenly the world collides with everything we’ve built. That’s what Zibby understood. The book isn’t trying to make a point – it’s trying to tell the truth. And I think that’s why it found a home with her.”
She continued, “I once met a woman in the US who said her kids weren’t accepted to top universities and she felt like a failure. We live in a culture obsessed with ranking. Everyone says, ‘Don’t compare yourself to others,’ but no one teaches you how. And social media makes it worse.”
Find your community – even during wartime
Lapid credits her parents in helping her persevere through the tough times in her life.
“My mother is a redheaded, green glasses-wearing force of nature. My parents owned a small gift shop in Ramat Hasharon that sold Israeli crafts and Judaica to tourists. My friends’ fathers were pilots or CEOs, but my mother never let us feel we were less. She was proud, and she taught us to be proud, too,” she said.
Her father, who died a few years ago, was also supportive, and both her parents played a big role in helping to raise her children.
Finding the help she needed, from her parents and from friends in the special-needs community, has kept her keep going. “That connects to what I tell new parents: ‘Don’t stay alone.’ When Yaeli was young, I met two mothers at her therapy center who became lifelong friends. That’s my advice: ‘Find your community.’”
The turmoil of the war that broke out on Oct. 7 inspired her to fight for a different issue – bringing home the hostages and helping survivors cope.
“I met a wonderful group of women – actresses, journalists, and others. We called it a kind of ‘women’s power’ initiative. We went down to the Gaza border area and helped wherever we could – packing, organizing, delivering supplies, listening. I could feel it in my body when I came home – it got into my veins.... You can’t see people living with nothing – no food, no safety, no certainty – and come home unchanged.”
Asked whether she thinks the public might forget all the victims of the war and all the fallen soldiers now that the war is winding down, she said, “If those who remember stop speaking, everyone forgets. We must keep telling these stories – as mothers, as citizens – so that compassion and truth don’t disappear.”
‘This is my life, and it’s OK’
Compassion and truth were among the feelings she shared as we discussed a recent experience she had, something common among parents of special-needs children, but one that is rarely discussed.
While she was in Budapest recently, working on the Strangers television series, the day she was set to return to Israel was her daughter’s birthday. Yaeli would be turning 29.
“I went into a toy store to buy her a present, and suddenly I started to cry. I walked down the street with tears in my eyes and a big bag of children’s games, thinking, ‘This is my life, and it’s OK,’” she recounted.
I knew what she meant: Not that she doesn’t love her daughter and not that she isn’t happy to celebrate her birthday, but like me, she wishes her daughter could have the kind of life where she could live independently, where she could choose her own path. We wish we could be buying our children used cars or planning their weddings, but we know that they still like picture books and toys, so those are the presents we give them. I admitted to her that I never got upset on my own so-called significant birthdays but that I got upset on my son’s.
“Exactly,” she said before signing a copy of her new children’s book for both me and my son. “That’s our truth, and that’s the story I wanted to tell in the novel.”