Hello, my name is ‘Misfit Mom’ Radio host Sheri Lynch writes for others with troubled childhoods

Sheri Lynch knows her parents had a difficult time raising children. The problems were many: poverty, a bad marriage, too many offspring.

“And in my family, we like to add crystal methamphetamine, drug addiction, violence and abandonment,” said the only girl in an Irish-Italian Catholic family of three.

But when Lynch, best known as part of the radio team Bob & Sheri, the syndicated talk show that airs weekdays on 92.9 (WEZQ-FM), decided to have children of her own, she knew her past would follow her. She was determined to give her own children a better start and to reach out to other women who consider themselves “Misfit Moms.”

The introductory chapter in Lynch’s new book, “Hello, My Name Is Mommy,” reveals her childhood experiences of visiting her father in prison, being separated from her mother for 16 years, being raised by her grandmother and stumbling her way through a family life that offered little comfort and stability. Despite the obstacles, Lynch went to Temple University and leaped onto a career path, first in television, then in radio. She has been doing the morning comedy show with Bob Lacey since 1992.

Lynch’s on-air conversations with other mothers from dysfunctional backgrounds made her want to deliver a text that would help assuage the guilt and fear that a bad childhood can wreak on new parents.

“Over the years, I have talked to so many women who hear my story and say: ‘Me, too, but I thought I was the only one,'” said Lynch, who lives in North Carolina with her husband, Mark, and daughters Olivia, 3, and Caramia, 9 months. “I wanted to write this book because these women feel like my sisters – and I never had sisters. I wanted to write a book for women raised by wolves and a lot less worried about what kind of crib bumpers they were going to buy than whether or not their child would hate them.”

In “Hello, My Name Is Mommy,” Lynch also recounts her owns experiences with pregnancy and debunks some of its myths. Her tone is almost always amusing and often poignant.

“If there are four weeks in a month, and forty weeks in a pregnancy, how many months does a pregnancy last?” she quips in a sidebar in the book. “The answer is: ten. Pregnancy Lie Number One: Expect to be expecting for ten glorious months, not nine.”

Lynch, whose writing career began with a column on the Bob & Sheri Web site, also offers helpful and quirky insights about minimizing stretch marks (shea butter), lowering expectations around the house (“So what if it’s messy?”), and adjusting to going back to work (“Pumping [breast milk] looks and feels a little silly”).

While Mark is a mechanical engineer, Lynch is the breadwinner in the family, rising at 4 a.m. each day to go to work while Mark stays with the girls. “He was born to be a daddy,” said Lynch of her husband, who also has a son from a previous marriage. “I’m jealous because he’s with them for everything.” Still, she is home each day by 1 p.m. for the family lunch. The afternoons blend into naps, time with Mark, dinner (which Lynch often cooks) and bedtime stories.

“My priorities have dramatically shifted,” said Lynch, who recently turned 40. “This has been so good for my work. I used to obsess about every part of my job. Having kids has freed me of all that. The show has its right and healthy place in my life. I’m having a lot more fun.”

Lynch added that she would not have been prepared to have children in her 20s and not because she wasn’t done partying but because she hadn’t fully come to terms with her childhood.

“I came to adulthood battered,” she said. “I think if I had a child in my 20s, it would have been bad for everyone involved. Now I can honestly tell you that if there is anything more interesting, fun and funny than children, I don’t know what it is. We are just delighted with our kids.”

For Mother’s Day, Lynch has asked for a greeting card from her daughters and a picnic. Eating outside, in her husband’s estimation, is like a “root canal without anesthesia,” said Lynch, but her marriage, unlike her parents’, is one of compromise and nurture. Combined with her joy in her daughters and the stability she has created for herself, the real picnic is the pleasure of stepping forward to say: Hello, my name is Mommy.

Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.