You may have first fallen for Lee Woodruff in "In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing," the bestselling book she co-wrote with her husband, anchor Bob Woodruff, about his recovery from a traumatic brain injury suffered while reporting in Iraq. In "Perfectly Imperfect: A Life in Progress," Woodruff stands on her own, with seventeen stories about life as a writer, mother, wife, daughter, and friend. "Perfectly Imperfect" is about juggling these myriad roles -- and not without mistakes, as the title suggests.

Woodruff covers a lot of ground here. She braves the transition of her oldest kids -- “Team A” as she and her husband refer to them -- from childhood to young adulthood in the "Adolescence" chapter and comes to terms with her daughter Nora’s hearing impairment in “A Different Ability.” In “Amusement Park Mecca,” Woodruff pinky-swears to her daughter Claire that her turn to ride the Hulk roller coaster at Universal Studios Orlando will indeed one day come (when she is finally tall enough), illuminating yet another dimension of parenting: making -- and keeping -- promises.“And the congealed remains of the giant Jimmy Buffett cheeseburger and red licorice did a little flip-flop in my stomach, as I understood that a promise was a promise,” Woodruff muses. As always, she navigates drastically varied, emotionally loaded terrain with humor and grace. Listen here to discover how she does it.