“On that magical day when you’re born and God talks to you and he asks, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I probably said, ‘I want to be a writer.’ But as you grow up, you get busy. Other things come up.”

Veronika Obeng is a newly single mother of five. She catapulted into the public eye as part of the cast of E! Network’s tempestuous reality show, Second Wives Club. The docuseries followed six women who were married to wealthy, older, previously divorced men… and the baggage that came with them. Veronika is a strong, levelheaded woman. She is unflinchingly honest and beautifully real.

Besides being an attentive and caring mother as well as a television personality, Obeng is an entrepreneur and a podcast host. Additionally, between raising her kids and walking the red carpet, she’s finally managed to work writing back into her hectic schedule.

“It was a lot of fun for me seeing the exposure from the show and getting so much feedback from people I’ve never met before, people from all over the world,” Veronika expressed, her voice soft and comforting yet crackling with an engaging vivacity. “I wanted to take a blog I already had and really grow it, just put a lot more information in there.”

“My blog, Modern Womanhood | Modern Motherhood, focuses on the truth behind womanhood and motherhood. We make it neat for our husbands, for our friends, and especially for television. But in reality, it’s complex, it’s crazy, and sometimes, it’s highly stressful.”

Veronika considers herself a “night reader.” What that means is after two or three glasses of wine, she goes surfing and finds herself on the strangest websites, digesting the most ridiculous information you could imagine.

“But I also find some incredible people with really cool blogs,” she pointed out. “I end up saving these different bloggers’ information and I reach out to them because one of the best things you can do is crave knowledge your whole life. Never stop learning and growing.”

“I love the fact that I’m putting something out there with my blog that might help other people, but I also want it to be a two-way street. ‘My husband left me for my best friend.’ ‘My baby daddy left me via text message.’ Send that story to me to get closure. I’m not sure why, but I have this need to put out there into the universe what motherhood is really like to me and what womanhood is really like to me, and I want to give other women a place to do the same.”

Veronika told Entertaining Options that we all lie or gloss over the truth, especially when it comes to motherhood. With her blog and podcast, she’s trying to sprinkle a little bit of honesty back into the mix.

“Jessica Alba is amazing. She’s an A-lister. I love her beauty products, Honest Beauty. I love the bloggers on her site. But I was reading this blog she had posted shortly after she had her last baby and it went something like, ‘I looked deeper into my daughter’s eyes and I knew I was complete.’ After I had my last child, there was so much blood running down the inside of my legs that the only thing I could think was, ‘There is no way in hell that I am going to survive because this isn’t normal!'”

“My site is for that twentysomething with stars in her eyes who thinks she is going to be back to a size two twenty minutes after having a child,” Veronika noted. “Everyone apparently forgot to tell her that no matter what she does, her breasts are going to sag! But that’s okay because it happens to everyone, so don’t beat yourself up over it. No one is special, it’s called surgery.”

“We need to stop glamorizing everything,” she continued. “Sometimes I’ll be sitting in front of a mirror and I’ll realize that the lady who just charged me $150 to wax my legs missed a spot. So I’ll be sitting there with my leg propped up with a pair of tweezers because I know I’m going to be wearing a bikini the next day. That’s what womanhood is really like, it’s not what you see on the red carpet.”

Another one of Veronika’s concerns is political correctness. It’s not about being sensitive to others, political correctness is a way to judge and shame others while pretending that’s not what you are doing.

“We’re trapped in this world where we let other people determine how and what we should do as parents,” she explained. “People should mind their business to a certain extent and we shouldn’t feel bad. We shouldn’t feel guilty for imposing rules and parameters and boundaries on our children because if a child has been set loose at four and can’t behave, how is he going to get through this world where everything is a boundary? You go to work from 9 to 5 — you can’t be early, you can’t be late. Your child has been doing anything he wanted for 18 years and you’re shocked that he’s a failure when he’s never been given any restrictions and he’s never been told, ‘No?'”

“Pick a task and be good at it. I’m talking about 8-year-old little kids. Growing up, we were outside doing manual labor at that age, but it never made me afraid to work hard. It never made me afraid to sweat or break a nail. It builds character. There’s something to be said about old-school traditional values. I have to kick ass and take names because I’m raising young black men. When my kids leave West LA and they’re not in mom’s Rolls-Royce, they’re just black kids out there somewhere. So I’d better raise them right! You really don’t have a choice because children grow up and they don’t stay in these bubbles that we create for them.”

Because she started life out at the bottom, Veronika knew that left her with two options: take charge and fight for her future or give up and feel sorry for herself. She decided to fight for her future in a simple, yet incredibly inspiring way: Veronika was nice to everyone.

“My mother was very religious, and being kind and having morals mattered to her. I’m so scared for my children’s generation because I don’t feel like we teach values and morals to be the most important things anymore. Bad sh*t happens to everybody, let’s just all do our best. If you see somebody and you can help them, do it. Then, when you need help, I believe the universe will do you a solid. I try to teach my kids that and I try to live by that, and I want anyone who crosses my path to feel that from me.”

Veronika’s blog is called Modern Womanhood | Modern Motherhood: I’m a Good Enough Mom and That’s Okay. In it, she covers topics that help answer the question: “How can you do regular to the best of your ability?”

“When I go to bed, can I look back over my day and say, ‘I did good enough today?’ My family is happy, my kids ate great today, I helped an old lady across the street, my hair is kind of nice, and I’m pretty sure my relationship is going in the right direction. That’s good enough. We don’t have to be organic vegan freaks with kids taking 50 classes. Live your best life and give yourself a break because life is already hard. It’s hard being a woman. I’m not this bedraggled figure in a chaotic sea of emotions, I’m just a woman who got f***ed over. I’m just a mom doing her best. I put on some lipstick, I count my babies, and I move on with it. Live a life you’re proud of, it makes it easier.”

Veronika Obeng: blog • Facebook • Instagram • Twitter

And, for the realist pillow talk ever, check out The Sac Podcast by Veronika Obeng, Melissa Forde, and Laura Govan.