Dena Higley 'Momaholic': They told me this so many times that I actually started to believe them

Former DAYS OF OUR LIVES and ONE LIFE TO LIVE scribe Dena Higley has written a new book, "Momaholic: Crazy Confessions of a Helicopter Parent." The book chronicles Higley’s meltdown in the face of workplace and family pressures, as well as her own self-imposed requirement to be a supermom to four children.

"Momaholic" is one woman's private, dramatic, and often comical invitation to peek inside a time in her life where everything fell apart and she had to take an honest look at what she was doing right and what she'd been doing terribly wrong. With this simple discovery, her whacky family's season of becoming unraveled found a new glue (other than her blood, sweat and tears) that would re-bond her family and unite them in a deeper and more functional way than ever before.

The real life characters:

* A MOM who is literally the head writer of a network soap opera… at work and at home
* A HUSBAND who expects perfection from his kids and his wife, but who has the wisdom to know he's being unrealistic and yet, can't help but scratch his head in frustration as his family's troubles seem to spiral out of his control
* An autistic SON
* A popular DAUGHTER who is suddenly pregnant
* An ADOPTED DAUGHTER pulled from the jungles of Vietnam with no leg below the right knee and fingers fused together
* An ADOPTED SON from Ethiopia, rescued from the streets at the age of 9.

This is a story showing the speed with which a "normal" family can fall apart. No one dies. No one gets kidnapped. They just have to deal with each of their own issues….and then one unwanted and unplanned pregnancy. This was a church-going family whose kids were taught abstinence until marriage. With the family running around as the tornado sirens roared warnings to take cover, mother, Miss Drama, becomes the biggest mess of all and ends up finding a whole new freedom for her soul.

The book is being published by Thomas Nelson, Inc., a publisher of Bibles and contemporary Christian books and materials.

"I worried that the deeply personal tone of the book would upset my family," Higley said in a recent interview, "but the only one who actually comes across deeply troubled is me. The stories about my children are stories of courage and fortitude and they’re proud of who they now are individually, and who we are collectively."

She introduces her job at DAYS OF OUR LIVES in this way: "...in my spare time I was responsible for the entire content of a television show that airs at one o'clock in the afternoon.  A show that was suffering dwindling ratings.  Ratings that were my responsibility to raise.  In other words, I was head writer for DAYS OF OUR LIVES.  It was a stress-filled, nail-biting, soul-sucking job.  And it seemed as though I had about a hundred people breathing down my neck all the time."

"There were network representatives, producers, various types of executives . . . all of whom were my bosses.  I call them the Suits.  Some of the men and women did actually include suits in their wardrobes, but execs of both sexes opted for leather jackets and jeans--socks optional--if casual was their thing."

"I took meetings with the Suits at least once a week, and they were constantly asking me the same question over and over: 'What comes next?' 'Yeah, Sami shooting EJ in the head sounds good, but then what's next?' 'The airplane cabin loses pressure mid-flight and everyone onboard is dead. But then what?' 'Hope walks in her sleep, mugs wealthy men, then during the day has amnesia, works as a cop investigating crimes she has committed . . . but then what?'"

"Soap scribes write thousands of words a day.  Seven acts a show, five shows a week.  We use ridiculous over-the-top phrases like vortex of emotions and gut-punched and thunderbolt of inspiration, but we never get to write the words.  The End.  And that is why the Suits keep asking the $64,000 question: 'And then what?'"

One early passage in the book sums up the pressure Higley felt as head writer of DAYS after it became NBC's only remaining daytime soap: "My bosses kept 'reminding' me that the future of DAYS OF OUR LIVES depended on me and me alone. We were an institution. We were a franchise. We couldn't just fold up our tent and walk away. We'd been on the air forty-five years. If we got canceled it would be for one reason -- because I couldn't hack it. They told me this so many times that I actually started to believe them."

You can order the book at Amazon.com.