The Wilderness

From the author of The Anthropologists, an intimate reflection on the first forty days of motherhood.

Everywhere in the wilderness I hear the cries of other mothers. I call back to them, asking for help, but sometimes they can’t hear me through their own cries.

A forty-day journey of trial or transformation has meaning in many cultures, including in Ayşegül Savaş’s own.

In this candid, tender essay, she charts a path through an unknown landscape - the first days with her newborn baby - in search of herself and the words for what has happened to her.