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One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both
Is it possible to pursue your passions, love your family, and not feel guilty about wanting to do both? One Beautiful Dream is your invitation to the unexpected joy of saying yes to the life you long to live.
Work and family, individuality and motherhood, the creative life and family life—women are told constantly that they can’t have it all. One Beautiful Dream is the deeply personal, often humorous tale of what happened when one woman dared to believe that you can have it all—if you’re willing to reimagine what having it all looks like.
Jennifer Fulwiler is the last person you might expect to be the mother of six young children. First of all, she’s an introvert only child, self-described workaholic, and former atheist who never intended to have a family. Oh, and Jennifer has a blood-clotting disorder exacerbated by pregnancy that has threatened her life on more than one occasion.
One Beautiful Dream is the story of what happens when one woman embarks on the wild experiment of chasing her dreams with multiple kids in diapers. It’s the tale of learning that opening your life to others means that everything will get noisy and chaotic, but that it is in this mess that you’ll find real joy.
Jennifer’s quest takes her in search of wisdom from a cast of colorful characters, including her Ivy-League-educated husband, her Texan mother-in-law who crushes wasps with her fist while arguing with wrong number calls about politics, and a best friend who’s never afraid to tell it like it is. Through it all, Jennifer moves toward the realization that the life you need is not the life you would have originally chosen for yourself. And maybe, just maybe, it’s better that way.
Hilarious, highly relatable, and brutally honest, Jennifer’s story will spark clarity and comfort to your own tug-of-war between all that is good and beautiful about family life and the incredible sacrifice it entails. Parenthood, personal ambitions, family planning, and faith—it’s complicated. Let this book be your invitation to the unexpected, yet beautiful dream of saying yes to them all, with God’s help.
Work and family, individuality and motherhood, the creative life and family life—women are told constantly that they can’t have it all. One Beautiful Dream is the deeply personal, often humorous tale of what happened when one woman dared to believe that you can have it all—if you’re willing to reimagine what having it all looks like.
Jennifer Fulwiler is the last person you might expect to be the mother of six young children. First of all, she’s an introvert only child, self-described workaholic, and former atheist who never intended to have a family. Oh, and Jennifer has a blood-clotting disorder exacerbated by pregnancy that has threatened her life on more than one occasion.
One Beautiful Dream is the story of what happens when one woman embarks on the wild experiment of chasing her dreams with multiple kids in diapers. It’s the tale of learning that opening your life to others means that everything will get noisy and chaotic, but that it is in this mess that you’ll find real joy.
Jennifer’s quest takes her in search of wisdom from a cast of colorful characters, including her Ivy-League-educated husband, her Texan mother-in-law who crushes wasps with her fist while arguing with wrong number calls about politics, and a best friend who’s never afraid to tell it like it is. Through it all, Jennifer moves toward the realization that the life you need is not the life you would have originally chosen for yourself. And maybe, just maybe, it’s better that way.
Hilarious, highly relatable, and brutally honest, Jennifer’s story will spark clarity and comfort to your own tug-of-war between all that is good and beautiful about family life and the incredible sacrifice it entails. Parenthood, personal ambitions, family planning, and faith—it’s complicated. Let this book be your invitation to the unexpected, yet beautiful dream of saying yes to them all, with God’s help.
Audible Audio
Published May 1, 2018
8 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Fulwiler
15 books299 followersJennifer Fulwiler is a mom of six, a standup comic, and the host of a daily talk show on SiriusXM. She’s a bestselling author whose new book is Your Blue Flame: Drop the Guilt and Do What Makes You Come Alive. After being told that there wasn’t an audience for standup comedy done by a minivan-driving woman from the suburbs, she self-produced her own tour, which is selling out venues across the country. Follow her on Instagram at @JenniferFulwiler.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 21, 2025
Jen magically weaves together the absolute chaos of parenthood and life in a way that makes you cry a little, laugh a lot, and inspire you out of individualism into a messier but much more fun mentality of the more the merrier. Thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed!
February 3, 2025
A great listen! Jen Fulwiler (writer turned comedian) tells a hilarious and heartwarming memoir about how she went after her dream of publishing a book even while juggling 6 kids at home, and encourages all moms and women to go after their dreams.
June 4, 2025
Summary of book: the author has 6 kids in a short period of time while she is trying to achieve her dream of being a writer. She discusses their challenges and blessings during this time. The following are quotes that meant a lot to me.
10/Wholeness of Vision: Jennifer leaves her anti-clotting meds at the church and has to go back. The church door closed with a hefty thud behind me, just as I sensed the message: Stay. Watch. I gathered from snippets of conversation that they were here for a wedding rehearsal. The Mexican family gathered together for a group picture. They smiled in unison and just as the photographer began snapping rapid-fire pictures, a baby took off his mother’s floppy sun hat and waved it in the air. The woman was attempting to get it back when a gust of wind whipped it out of her son’s hands. For a brief moment, the woman burst out in unexpected laughter, just as everyone turned toward her, their faces registering a mix of delight and confusion. The photographer got the shot. Wholeness of vision. That is what I was missing in all of my tortured calculations about family size. I never imagined that same baby as a 25 year-old passing the gravy at my Thanksgiving dinner. Or as a 50-year-old walking into my hospital room with a bouquet of flowers. My controlling tendencies led me to fixate so much on my immediate problems that I couldn’t see past them.
11/For the Love of Blob: Now wait a minute, Jennifer. Just wait one minute. You think you can’t do your writing just because you’re staying home with the children? It’s something you like! How else are you going to take a load off with all these babies running around everywhere? Shoot I’m worried about these kids if you don’t work on this stuff you enjoy. You’ll lose your mind. Yaya (author’s MIL) was an endless source of wisdom (Albert Einstein of common sense).
18/Poopocalypse: Do you think there’s any chance that God is trying to show you how you might be able to get this project done, and you’re not seeing it? I mean just now. I could easily give you a whole afternoon of writing time. I’m happy to. I want to! And you turned me down. (Friend Hallie offering to babysit).
20/Bible Charades: Remember this, where there is no unity, there is no God. God Is always calling us to connection, to unity, and if we don’t have that, we are not walking with God. Do this work that God is calling you to do but do it as one part of something bigger – your family. Have you ever asked what work your family is supposed to do together? We always think like individuals, like the work that we do has nothing to do with anyone else. God wants us to see what we do as just one small part of something greater. Unite with your family. Bring them into what you do, and bring what you do into your family. My child, if you do this, you will find joy - more joy than you can imagine. Don’t forget that.
21/Tex-Mex epiphany: Joe pointed out that many of our friends from other countries and cultures saw interdependence on family as a natural part of life. Just the week before, a family friend had taken off days of much needed work to help an ailing brother back in Mexico. It never occurred to her not to go to him, even though taking time off meant she would struggle with her bills. Other family members came together to help her pay her rent that month. The way they saw it, you make time for your work as it fits into your family; you don’t make time for family as it fits into your work.
22/Banana Man: Joe had an expression for situations like this, and it was one of my favorites: Life isn’t about having it all, but about being good at not having it all. I tended to drift from one want or need to another without pausing to ask if there was actually something we wanted or needed even more that would be a better use of our limited resources. Joe’s business school background had trained him to prioritize ruthlessly, even when it meant making unexpected choices, like this one (bigger house, baby sitter, new car).
24/Beautiful Home: Hallie came over and ended up dealing with the poopacalypse, and more recently, my experience with Monica (earning money for a car by babysitting). Combined with Father George’s insights about letting go of individualistic thinking, I was starting to see that being completely self-sufficient wasn’t necessarily a virtue. My constant insistence on being able to handle everything on my own, with no assistance from anyone, was usually rooted in pride more than anything else. She asked Pawpaw to cook the dinner for the priests.
26/Resistance: With a jolt, I realized that these were the whispers of Resistance. And, as with all effective lies, they contained a grain of truth: I wasn’t the best. There were real issues to manage in terms of being a good mother to my children. There were plenty of areas of life I needed to improve. The dark tone of these feelings that moved through me like a tsunami, leveling any hope or excitement in its path-that was the hallmark of Resistance.
28/Life Party: Igor Stavinsky: the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself. When water is confined in a narrow space like a tube or a ravine, it will rush forward with power; when it has infinite room to expand, it becomes a puddle. The same thing happens with our creative juices. These past few years have shown me that there is great power in pauses, whether they’re chosen by you or foisted upon you. Like a stream slowly smoothing over rough stones, these moments had eroded my old way of thinking. I no longer thought that my ‘real’ life was waiting for me out these, in the future, when I’d have perfect freedom and control over my days.
33/That could have been me: Joe: what if you let it go? Jennifer: let what go? Joe: the Salyer opportunity. The magazine column. How much less stress would you be under if you loosened your grip on these things and just let them pass? Jennifer: Joe, come on. These are the kinds of opportunities I’ve been dreaming about all my life. I’m not going to choke now. Joe: But is it bringing any kind of joy into your life? Until now, I hadn’t understood just what this life that I was trying to craft for myself, and my family would really look like. I had set out on this quest to try to have it all. I saw the entire concept differently. It occurred to me that you can having it all in the sense of having a rich family life and pursuing excellence in your work, but you’re going to need to re-imagine what having it all looks like. Your work will never be your number one priority. You might need to walk away from glamorous opportunities that don’t allow you to live a love-first life. You’ll be bombarded with one interruption after another, yet you’ll find that those interruptions are the very building blocks of a good life. Joe: It’s not like you’re completely shutting down your work. You’re just letting go of opportunities that sound cool but are actually ruining your life. Who knows? Maybe something better will come up.
34/The drive: I let go of my desire for a bigger house and bigger car. Now I didn’t need to worry so much about when I would make more money from my career. Joe could continue doing work he enjoyed and wouldn’t have to switch into a high-paying, high pressure job. I had spent so much time worrying about how we would pay for a lifestyle upgrade, and now all that stress disappeared into the cool night air.
35/The night watch: Her father had taken the night shift with her baby in the NICU and she didn’t know it. When Joe and I made the decision to put down roots in this area despite the career sacrifices it would involve, we were following a vague sense that this was right for our family. As we sat at that Tex-Mex restaurant, under an elm tree, we were just doing our best to follow Father George’s advice. Only now did I understand just what an invaluable gift we’d accepted when we made that choice. Her mom and Joe’s mom regularly helped with the kids, and her grandpa lived nearby as well.
38/Release: I tried to conjure up something to wish for, but I kept coming up empty. There were plenty of things I might want, but at that moment, they were all dwarfed by an overpowering sense of gratitude for this crazy and beautiful life I was living. If these balloons were to symbolize messages we were send up to God, the only one I could think of right now was simply: Thanks!
10/Wholeness of Vision: Jennifer leaves her anti-clotting meds at the church and has to go back. The church door closed with a hefty thud behind me, just as I sensed the message: Stay. Watch. I gathered from snippets of conversation that they were here for a wedding rehearsal. The Mexican family gathered together for a group picture. They smiled in unison and just as the photographer began snapping rapid-fire pictures, a baby took off his mother’s floppy sun hat and waved it in the air. The woman was attempting to get it back when a gust of wind whipped it out of her son’s hands. For a brief moment, the woman burst out in unexpected laughter, just as everyone turned toward her, their faces registering a mix of delight and confusion. The photographer got the shot. Wholeness of vision. That is what I was missing in all of my tortured calculations about family size. I never imagined that same baby as a 25 year-old passing the gravy at my Thanksgiving dinner. Or as a 50-year-old walking into my hospital room with a bouquet of flowers. My controlling tendencies led me to fixate so much on my immediate problems that I couldn’t see past them.
11/For the Love of Blob: Now wait a minute, Jennifer. Just wait one minute. You think you can’t do your writing just because you’re staying home with the children? It’s something you like! How else are you going to take a load off with all these babies running around everywhere? Shoot I’m worried about these kids if you don’t work on this stuff you enjoy. You’ll lose your mind. Yaya (author’s MIL) was an endless source of wisdom (Albert Einstein of common sense).
18/Poopocalypse: Do you think there’s any chance that God is trying to show you how you might be able to get this project done, and you’re not seeing it? I mean just now. I could easily give you a whole afternoon of writing time. I’m happy to. I want to! And you turned me down. (Friend Hallie offering to babysit).
20/Bible Charades: Remember this, where there is no unity, there is no God. God Is always calling us to connection, to unity, and if we don’t have that, we are not walking with God. Do this work that God is calling you to do but do it as one part of something bigger – your family. Have you ever asked what work your family is supposed to do together? We always think like individuals, like the work that we do has nothing to do with anyone else. God wants us to see what we do as just one small part of something greater. Unite with your family. Bring them into what you do, and bring what you do into your family. My child, if you do this, you will find joy - more joy than you can imagine. Don’t forget that.
21/Tex-Mex epiphany: Joe pointed out that many of our friends from other countries and cultures saw interdependence on family as a natural part of life. Just the week before, a family friend had taken off days of much needed work to help an ailing brother back in Mexico. It never occurred to her not to go to him, even though taking time off meant she would struggle with her bills. Other family members came together to help her pay her rent that month. The way they saw it, you make time for your work as it fits into your family; you don’t make time for family as it fits into your work.
22/Banana Man: Joe had an expression for situations like this, and it was one of my favorites: Life isn’t about having it all, but about being good at not having it all. I tended to drift from one want or need to another without pausing to ask if there was actually something we wanted or needed even more that would be a better use of our limited resources. Joe’s business school background had trained him to prioritize ruthlessly, even when it meant making unexpected choices, like this one (bigger house, baby sitter, new car).
24/Beautiful Home: Hallie came over and ended up dealing with the poopacalypse, and more recently, my experience with Monica (earning money for a car by babysitting). Combined with Father George’s insights about letting go of individualistic thinking, I was starting to see that being completely self-sufficient wasn’t necessarily a virtue. My constant insistence on being able to handle everything on my own, with no assistance from anyone, was usually rooted in pride more than anything else. She asked Pawpaw to cook the dinner for the priests.
26/Resistance: With a jolt, I realized that these were the whispers of Resistance. And, as with all effective lies, they contained a grain of truth: I wasn’t the best. There were real issues to manage in terms of being a good mother to my children. There were plenty of areas of life I needed to improve. The dark tone of these feelings that moved through me like a tsunami, leveling any hope or excitement in its path-that was the hallmark of Resistance.
28/Life Party: Igor Stavinsky: the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself. When water is confined in a narrow space like a tube or a ravine, it will rush forward with power; when it has infinite room to expand, it becomes a puddle. The same thing happens with our creative juices. These past few years have shown me that there is great power in pauses, whether they’re chosen by you or foisted upon you. Like a stream slowly smoothing over rough stones, these moments had eroded my old way of thinking. I no longer thought that my ‘real’ life was waiting for me out these, in the future, when I’d have perfect freedom and control over my days.
33/That could have been me: Joe: what if you let it go? Jennifer: let what go? Joe: the Salyer opportunity. The magazine column. How much less stress would you be under if you loosened your grip on these things and just let them pass? Jennifer: Joe, come on. These are the kinds of opportunities I’ve been dreaming about all my life. I’m not going to choke now. Joe: But is it bringing any kind of joy into your life? Until now, I hadn’t understood just what this life that I was trying to craft for myself, and my family would really look like. I had set out on this quest to try to have it all. I saw the entire concept differently. It occurred to me that you can having it all in the sense of having a rich family life and pursuing excellence in your work, but you’re going to need to re-imagine what having it all looks like. Your work will never be your number one priority. You might need to walk away from glamorous opportunities that don’t allow you to live a love-first life. You’ll be bombarded with one interruption after another, yet you’ll find that those interruptions are the very building blocks of a good life. Joe: It’s not like you’re completely shutting down your work. You’re just letting go of opportunities that sound cool but are actually ruining your life. Who knows? Maybe something better will come up.
34/The drive: I let go of my desire for a bigger house and bigger car. Now I didn’t need to worry so much about when I would make more money from my career. Joe could continue doing work he enjoyed and wouldn’t have to switch into a high-paying, high pressure job. I had spent so much time worrying about how we would pay for a lifestyle upgrade, and now all that stress disappeared into the cool night air.
35/The night watch: Her father had taken the night shift with her baby in the NICU and she didn’t know it. When Joe and I made the decision to put down roots in this area despite the career sacrifices it would involve, we were following a vague sense that this was right for our family. As we sat at that Tex-Mex restaurant, under an elm tree, we were just doing our best to follow Father George’s advice. Only now did I understand just what an invaluable gift we’d accepted when we made that choice. Her mom and Joe’s mom regularly helped with the kids, and her grandpa lived nearby as well.
38/Release: I tried to conjure up something to wish for, but I kept coming up empty. There were plenty of things I might want, but at that moment, they were all dwarfed by an overpowering sense of gratitude for this crazy and beautiful life I was living. If these balloons were to symbolize messages we were send up to God, the only one I could think of right now was simply: Thanks!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 18, 2025
Yeah... no.
Fulwiler comes across as annoyingly self-focused and uninteresting in this book that is supposed to be "relatable" and "empowering".
I get that she's trying to be funny, and maybe she'd actually be funny if she wasn't trying so hard. She apparently has a radio show and another book about herself...but despite all the enthusiastic self-promotion, she doesn't seem to have much to say. After reading this book, I know that she likes telling stories about her kids being wretched and about herself. She likes implying that other people are judging her and she really needs an editor.
Fulwiler comes across as annoyingly self-focused and uninteresting in this book that is supposed to be "relatable" and "empowering".
I get that she's trying to be funny, and maybe she'd actually be funny if she wasn't trying so hard. She apparently has a radio show and another book about herself...but despite all the enthusiastic self-promotion, she doesn't seem to have much to say. After reading this book, I know that she likes telling stories about her kids being wretched and about herself. She likes implying that other people are judging her and she really needs an editor.
August 19, 2024
This book opens women’s minds to look at what is important in a new way. What is important to each woman individually and how each woman can follow the path she is on creatively to encompass everything she believes she is called to do. No two women are exactly the same in terms of goals, priorities and dreams. Some are mothers and/or some want careers and/or some want to follow their artistic side.
November 18, 2024
The book I needed for the time I needed it.
April 3, 2025
On paper, I should love this book; in reality, it really grated on me! Acknowledging that the 2 stars are more of a reflection of my experience of it than of the book itself.
January 25, 2026
I loved this book. I listened to it and couldn’t stop listening.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews