The Wilderness

by Aysegül Savas

A deeply felt chronicle into the wilderness of the first forty days of new motherhood.

In the final weeks of her pregnancy, Ayşegül Savaş becomes fascinated by the mythology around the first forty days after giving birth, and the invisible beings that are said to surround the mother. “In Turkish, we speak of extracting the forty days, like a sort of exorcism. My grandmothers assure me that it will all get better after forty days are out.” A friend lends a book that suggests forty days of rest and fortifying broths and avoiding wind and cold.

In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, forty days are seen as a period of trial and transformation. They are often journeys into the wilderness and “its vast and unruly territories.” When the baby arrives, Savaş charts her own path into the wilderness of new motherhood—a space of contradiction, of chaos and care, mothering and being mothered. “What is the trial of the postpartum crossing?” writes Savaş. “Where will mother and child emerge once they have left the wild?”

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, Short Stories, Biography, Biography Memoir, Parenting

104 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2024

About the author

Ayşegül Savaş grew up in London, Copenhagen, and Istanbul. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Granta, among others. She lives in Paris.

Reviews

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and wonderfully written essay by Savas about the 40 day period following giving birth. I devoured it

[kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written from notes taken during the first 40 days after the birth of her child, The Wilderness tells Savas’s tale of becoming a mother. The Wilderness meditates on mothering and being mothered; the splitting and mending of the self after having a child; the significance of the number 40; and the connection between motherhood and the wild. With searing honesty and deeply personal insight in to her own experience, Savas writes with her usual precision and keen observation, offering readers a look at the tumultuous first days of being a mother. A crucial read for anyone who wants a child, has a child, is a child (that’s everyone).

I have encountered another being, and have been torn apart. I am trying to put myself together, not sure how the pieces will fit back in.

[Yasamanv · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75

[Ruben · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In the last weeks of my pregnancy, while reading about the mythology of the Scarlet Woman and the invisible beings that disturb a mother after birth, I decided to document my first forty days. I found this a delicious prospect, like watching a psychological thriller. I was eager for it to begin, to test my limits and emerge victorious from the journey."

Unfortunately for Aysegul Savas things turn out very differently and the period is completely overwhelming and disorienting, as the baby sleeps and eats badly.

What follows is not a psychological thriller'l but rather a philosophical search/memoir looking for apt comparisons and metaphors to illustrate this unclassifiable post-partum period, which - for Savas - seemed to exist outside of the real world, outside of linear time and what she calls the wilderness.

I underlined a lot, but a lot went over my head as well...

3,5

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘In Turkish, we speak of “extracting” the forty days, like a sort of exorcism. My grandmothers assure me that it will all get better after forty days are out—In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, forty days mark periods of trial and transformation. Moses spends forty days on Mount Sinai to receive the ten commandments, Jesus fasts for forty days in the desert before his temptation, the Masih ad-Dajjal—reigns for forty days at the end of time.’

‘El-Zein offers several accounts across cultures of supernatural beings—the jinn queen Rawaha Bint Sakan; the wild women of the woods in Russian myths; the grandmother of the Maori demigod Tāwhaki. “One wonders why in all these stories across the world the supernatural wife never takes her children with her,” writes El-Zein. “Her love for her children seems to be different from that of a human mother.”’

‘—Eduardo Kohn articulates an “ecology of selves” in his ethnography of the Runa in Ecuador’s upper Amazon that consists of both the human and nonhuman entities of a community, as well as the spirits which help make sense of the density of the forest. Moving beyond our symbolic and dualistic thought systems, which decouple thought from its worldly referents, Kohn proposes “a kind of thought that is more capacious, one that holds and sustains the human. This other kind of thinking is the one that forests do, the kind of thinking that thinks its way through the lives of people, like the Runa (and others), who engage intimately with the forest’s living beings in ways that amplify life’s distinctive logics.

Why locate the metropolitan mother and child in the same wilderness as the Amazonian Runa? What interests me, in the extreme embodiment of the postpartum, is the swarm of encounters during this time: with the baby, more animal than human, more sensory than intellect, and with the invisible presences that flock to the site of birth, of new life. I find, in this liminal existence, a site for multiplicity, for experiencing the world beyond ourselves. It is a site for enchantment and renewal. It presents a possibility for redefining how we relate to the flesh of the world, and how we allow the world to touch us back.’

‘To be ghost,” says Singh Soin, “is to be generous with boundaries. The ghost story allows us to construct a language of translucency: both is and can be.”

I cannot arrive at anything specific; no memory to reveal my state to me, as the ubiquitous logic of popular psychology demands. It is this same logic that has set me on the path to solving the problem. This idea that sadness must be hunted down and eradicated, and that it can be done by looking back and finding the culprit. But I’m too tired. Rather than confronting the feeling head on, I puncture it occasionally, letting it deflate, until it expands and fills me again. Over and over again, I am seized by sadness and anger, a wish to be cared for and an inability to accept care.’

‘I ask my mother whom, of the people she knows personally, she considers lucky. Without a moment’s hesitation, she names a family friend—a housewife who lives a suburban life in Istanbul. She and her husband often go on trips organized through tourism agencies. They have a summerhouse and a cat. The woman takes classes for self-development. She loves shopping for orthopedic shoes and practical handbags. She treats herself to a few cigarettes per week. She and her husband must be the most normal people I know. I can hardly believe my mother’s choice.

“She’s always in a good mood,” my mother says. “She enjoys her life.” My own lucky nemesis equally surprises my husband. An artist with a large network and many grants to her name. “You don’t even like her art,” my husband says. ”’

‘In September, when we were back in Istanbul, we went to have our coffee fortunes read at a café in Kadıköy—Other memories from that summer: the joy of being an adult. Our beauty, suddenly revealed. The threshold where we stood, looking out at life ahead, at the freedom to come. In classical Islam, thresholds were believed to be intermediary spaces—.’

[meliverse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ayşegül Savaş bebeğinin doğumundan sonraki ilk kırk gününü anlatıyor. Çocuk doktoru annesinin İstanbul’dan Paris’e gelişini, bir ay boyunca mesleğinin de verdiği yetkiye dayanarak bebeğin bakımında körpe ebeveynlere destek oluşunu ve Savaş’ın hem fiziksel hem ruhsal dönüşümünü yazma fikri süreci atlatmak ve üretimden kopmamak adına çok işlevsel görünüyor. Bir taşla iki kuş. :) Şaka bir yana, bu kadar kısa bir metinde "doğum sonrası annenin görünmezliği"nin yanında postpartum, mastit, kolik, yorgunluk, sınırlar, dönüşüm gibi pek çok durumu incelikli bir dille anlatması kurmaca metinlerine dair beklenti yaratıyor.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful essay following the first 40 days of motherhood. Savaş is such a wonderful writer - I’d read her grocery list. In this essay she talks about many different cultural markers of 40 day periods and of portals. Each day is separated into a different vignette - some being more focused on interiority and others being more focused on the actions happening around her. I love reading about motherhood and found this book to be really incredible!

[Emily Stepper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jesus

[elif sinem · Rating 4 out of 5]

That's a whole lot of wilderness mentions. I really liked this though. Savas is and remains a brilliant writer, full of verve and joie de vivre.

On a reread - LOVE that this immediately clarifies and shows a way forward for Savas' own work!!

[Keelan Ramsek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal.

[Ieva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you GoodReads for randomly recommending me this book, since I started exploring the works of Turkish authors. I devoured it 👏🏻

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book brought back memories of me from this time last year. The struggles of postpartum are real. This book brought up envious feelings to anyone who had family help them in the home during the first 40 days of post partum, an experience I didn’t have (my choice for a reason). The book was very relatable, and brought back some core memories for me, both the good and not so good.

[Cecilia Shelter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and brutal, quick read. I think anyone should read this, especially any men wanting to become dads.

Loved her writing and look forward to reading her works of fiction

[Zuziku · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author writes an essay about the 40 days after the birth of her daughter. She truthfully describes this period in a woman's life. Although a woman loves her child, she often encounters frustration that she cannot breastfeed, that her child does not want to fall asleep in her arms and just cries and cries... She writes about how many people idealize this period too much, even though it is so demanding. Gradually, however, the woman returns to ordinary life, because her relatives cannot help her forever, and instead of trying to erase this "wilderness" (associated with the baby and the changes it brings) from her life, she gets used to it, learns to live with it, and finds beauty and diversity in it. A very interesting and truthful description of the events and feelings of a woman after giving birth.

[Laura Winnick · Rating 4 out of 5]

need more on motherhood like this

[Ioana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very compelling. I understand everything, having gone through it myself. The wilderness is the fresh experience of having a new baby, becoming a mother.
The final phrase was incredible:
'And the past, before we set foot in the wilderness, appears so tame in my memory.'

[Katelyn]

This is a quick read, a written lecture that I read in two sittings, pondering the change from not a parent to parent. Savas details what this time was like for her, immediately following the birth of her child, a baby who cried constantly during her first weeks. Our cultural narrative around this time is that it's a happy, joyous time. However, it's also a tough time, filled with wild hormonal changes if you've just given birth, and a huge lifestyle change.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m reckoning with the fact that I’ve never read a book from the perspective of a mother in the earliest stages of motherhood - those first 40 days. With this being such a profound yet disorienting and traumatic time that most women experience, I was so grateful for Savas’s honesty about her experience and her exploration of how others (cultures, thinkers, etc) think of maternal “wilderness” and transition.

[Rith · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ………. I honestly can’t tell if this made me want kids way more or way less…..

[pranavv · Rating 3 out of 5]

pacing is a little off but i think it’s bc i’m reading this instead of consuming it as intended—as a lecture

really valuable tidbits to pick and choose from. would probably be great in a GWSS class

[Anna Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t normally leave reviews for nonfiction but this one will stick with me. What a beautiful, honest, painful review of the early days of motherhood. I look forward to reading this many times in the future 🤍

[annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

aysegul savas is truly such a thoughtful, skilled writer; i've now read all but one of her books and i'm kind of falling in love with her work. they've all been around 4-star reads for me, none are all time-faves, but this is my favorite of her books so far and i'm really excited to read her short story collection hopefully soon. i feel like she has an all time annie fave in her lmao

anyways enough about her work in general! the wilderness is a smart, observant, and deeply felt of the early days of motherhood after childbirth. i enjoyed the elements of research, where savas brought in stories from varying cultures and texts, both ones directly about the early days of motherhood and others that she felt related to the strange, unknowable, yet at the same time deeply common experience of new motherhood, but i loved the more memoiristic (is that a word? i've decided it is one lmao) elements of this book. savas is just so, so good at capturing her emotions during this time, but also her almost lack of memory or understanding, i guess, of her own experience and relationship with her newborn daughter during this time. really well-done.

highly enjoyed this one! can't wait to read more from savas

4.25 stars

[Cristina O'Hanlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super super interesting account of a the author’s (absolutely brutal) first 40 days after giving birth and becoming a mother. There’s lots in here about the forces that threaten new mothers and their children in Turkish mythology, as well as more general reflections on how changing attitudes toward mythology affect the way we move through periods of intense transformation like the one the author goes though. Definitely recommend!

[Nadz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aysegul's account of her first 40 days postpartum resonated deeply with me. Her honesty about motherhood during such a vulnerable time was raw and relatable, I felt seen. She also beautifully weaves in elements of Turkish mythology, offering a unique lens through which to view the similarities in cultural practices surrounding motherhood. 4⭐️

[Savarna Pahari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Really good. Exploring mythology around the postpartum experience was not something I realized I needed to hear about. Sometimes I got lost with the references to other works but that’s prob more on me lol. Definitely recommend for a quick thought provoking read

[Roxane Dumontheil · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful, moving, and harrowing account of the author's first 40 days of motherhood & the wilderness it entails - loved the addition of mythology and cultural tales and wish there had been more of it in the essay

[olive parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

forever staff pick incoming; an unexpected delivery this past tuesday and one our bookselling team is coveting/devouring/sharing in joyfully! i'm passing my copy on to jess, and we will be talking about this all summer. thank you jarrod + the transit team, we love you! x

[Caroline]

Yes, it is this way.

[Tallulah · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There is nothing creative in the outward form of our days, even though we are living through creativity itself: we are in the reverberations of Creation, covered in stardust”

Ate this up in one sitting. I love women and matrescence is incredible.

[Nihar Satsangi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25⭐