The Wilderness

'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 and transformation has meaning in many cultures, including in Savaş’s own. In this candid, tender essay, she charts a path through an unknown landscape – the first forty days of motherhood – in search of herself and the words for what has happened to her, following the birth of her baby.