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Homing Instincts: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm
Sarah Menkedick spent her twenties trekking alone across South America, teaching English to recalcitrant teenagers on Reunion Island, picking grapes in France and camping on the Mongolian grasslands; for her, meaning and purpose were to be found on the road, in flight from the ordinary. Yet the biggest and most transformative adventure of her life might be one she never at 31, she moves into a tiny 19th-century cabin on her family's Ohio farm, and begins the journey into motherhood.
In eight vivid and boldly questioning essays, Menkedick explores the luminous, disorienting time just before and after becoming a mother. As she reacquaints herself with the subtle landscapes of the Midwest, and adjusts to the often surprising physicality of pregnancy, she ruminates on what this new stage of life means for her long-held concepts of self, settling, and creative fulfillment. In “Millie, Mildred, Grandma Menkedick,” she considers the nature of story through the life of her tough German grandmother, who raised two boys as a single mother in the 1950s and then spent her seventies traveling the world with her best friend Marge; in “Motherland,” on a trip back to Oaxaca, Mexico to visit her husband’s family, she finally embraces her Midwestern roots; in “The Milk Cave,” she discovers in breastfeeding a new appreciation for the spiritual and artistic potential of boredom; and in “The Lake,” she revisits her childhood with her father, whose relentless optimism and mystical streak she sees anew once she has a child of her own.
A story of a traveler come home to the farm; of becoming a mother in spite of reservations and doubt; and of learning to appreciate the power and beauty of the quotidian, Homing Instincts speaks to the deepest concerns and hopes of a generation.
In eight vivid and boldly questioning essays, Menkedick explores the luminous, disorienting time just before and after becoming a mother. As she reacquaints herself with the subtle landscapes of the Midwest, and adjusts to the often surprising physicality of pregnancy, she ruminates on what this new stage of life means for her long-held concepts of self, settling, and creative fulfillment. In “Millie, Mildred, Grandma Menkedick,” she considers the nature of story through the life of her tough German grandmother, who raised two boys as a single mother in the 1950s and then spent her seventies traveling the world with her best friend Marge; in “Motherland,” on a trip back to Oaxaca, Mexico to visit her husband’s family, she finally embraces her Midwestern roots; in “The Milk Cave,” she discovers in breastfeeding a new appreciation for the spiritual and artistic potential of boredom; and in “The Lake,” she revisits her childhood with her father, whose relentless optimism and mystical streak she sees anew once she has a child of her own.
A story of a traveler come home to the farm; of becoming a mother in spite of reservations and doubt; and of learning to appreciate the power and beauty of the quotidian, Homing Instincts speaks to the deepest concerns and hopes of a generation.
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 2, 2017
19 people are currently reading
429 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Menkedick
8 books44 followersSarah Menkedick's second book, Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America, was released on April 7th from Pantheon. It explores the scientific, psychological, historical, and spiritual roots of a silent epidemic of anxiety among American mothers. Sarah’s debut essay collection, Homing Instincts: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm (Pantheon, 2017), was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
Sarah's writing has been featured in Harper's, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Kenyon Review, Oxford American, The Guardian, The Paris Review Daily, Aeon, Guernica, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. She writes a column for Longreads on the craft of nonfiction. Her essay "Homing Instincts" was selected as notable in The Best American Essays 2014, her essay "Living on the Hyphen" was selected as notable in The Best American Essays 2015, and her essay “The Making of a Mexican American Dream” was selected as notable in The Best American Essays 2017. She was a 2015-2016 Fulbright fellow in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is a 2019 Creative Nonfiction Writing Fellow.
Sarah holds a B.A. in History of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.F.A. in nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh, where she taught nonfiction writing. She speaks fluent French and Spanish.
Sarah's writing has been featured in Harper's, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Kenyon Review, Oxford American, The Guardian, The Paris Review Daily, Aeon, Guernica, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. She writes a column for Longreads on the craft of nonfiction. Her essay "Homing Instincts" was selected as notable in The Best American Essays 2014, her essay "Living on the Hyphen" was selected as notable in The Best American Essays 2015, and her essay “The Making of a Mexican American Dream” was selected as notable in The Best American Essays 2017. She was a 2015-2016 Fulbright fellow in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is a 2019 Creative Nonfiction Writing Fellow.
Sarah holds a B.A. in History of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.F.A. in nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh, where she taught nonfiction writing. She speaks fluent French and Spanish.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
February 8, 2021
Sarah Menkedick spent her twenties consumed by wanderlust, trekking across the globe from one adventure to another and sitting still long enough to wax poetic about her travels. At 31 she returns to her family’s Ohio farm to live in a small cabin with her husband and start a family.
Homing Instincts collects eight essays that explore the many stages of her life and impending motherhood. While the writing was too flowery and aimless for me the majority of the time, there were several truths I found that I could identify with as a mother who often looks back on the first few months with shock and awe at how all-consuming it was immediately.
While I didn’t love it, it’s still worth recommending to readers who appreciate memoir, prose, and thoughts on motherhood and parenting.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
Homing Instincts collects eight essays that explore the many stages of her life and impending motherhood. While the writing was too flowery and aimless for me the majority of the time, there were several truths I found that I could identify with as a mother who often looks back on the first few months with shock and awe at how all-consuming it was immediately.
While I didn’t love it, it’s still worth recommending to readers who appreciate memoir, prose, and thoughts on motherhood and parenting.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
May 13, 2017
A friend told me about this book as we are both mothers of young children. My goodness, Ms Menkedick has given identity to emotions and feelings I have experienced but couldn't express. My interest was piqued because I heard it was about motherhood, but then I found it to be about so much more. I can imagine each reader will recognize his/her own experiences in Menkedick's perceptions about life. Her words reveal the worth of the seemingly mundane details of living.
I'm so grateful for her honesty and courage in sharing her deepest thoughts and experiences. And I'm so in awe of the shear brilliance she has in doing so.
What a gift to myself to steal away the time to read each essay.
I'm so grateful for her honesty and courage in sharing her deepest thoughts and experiences. And I'm so in awe of the shear brilliance she has in doing so.
What a gift to myself to steal away the time to read each essay.
July 18, 2018
Oh my, I loved this one. Reading it felt like a breath of fresh air, like being outdoors, like slowing things down... it felt like one long, beautiful meditation on life, on change, on growth, and on growing a new life - on giving birth. I could relate to so much of her book (despite not having kids). I loved hearing about the changes the author has gone through, from a life full of travel and adventure to something slower, to something more mundane and yet in finding beauty and happiness in a new way in a slower way of life. It was just.. gorgeous and soothing. Highly recommend.
January 2, 2021
This book of essays is one of the most beautifully written essay collections I've read. Menkedick does a fantastic job of writing about the seemingly indescribable shifting of the self upon becoming a mother. Highly recommended to moms, nature lovers AND people who appreciate gorgeous writing!
February 7, 2021
Genuine and heartfelt and honest- the psychogeography of motherhood and home and learning to love the provincial.
June 30, 2017
I have loved Sarah's essays since the Vela days, and I devoured this book between three long, hot June afternoons. I am not a mother, and yet she writes about motherhood and pregnancy and place and wandering and ambition and writing in ways that gripped me.
A favorite quote: "Part of the task of the self is to organize the world into hierarchies, tiers of relationships and preferences and desired outcomes and should. But death levels all that, and we are left with a cup of coffee, does of trinkets, the green lichens on bare branches, pizza."
A favorite quote: "Part of the task of the self is to organize the world into hierarchies, tiers of relationships and preferences and desired outcomes and should. But death levels all that, and we are left with a cup of coffee, does of trinkets, the green lichens on bare branches, pizza."
May 12, 2025
I loved Menkedick’s perspective and the woman can write a metaphor for the natural world, man. My only complaint is that sometimes her essays were so dense and intelligent that I got fatigued from parsing them. But that’s on me, tbh.
December 19, 2017
Since I’m 23 weeks pregnant, I expected to *love* this, but it wasn’t quite what I hoped it would be... maybe it was the way her essays meander, the fact that I can’t relate to her cozy family life, the zen quotes, that despite the subtitle “Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm,” 2/3rds of the book was about pregnancy, that her takeaways were so cliché (one example: this year on the farm taught me the importance of family)?
There’s a lot to like here too though!
I enjoyed the research into lobsters and salmon - how they find their way back to where they’re from, just as people sometimes do (hence the title, Homing Instincts).
I liked the stories about her travels, her father, and her husband’s upbringing.
I appreciated her candid descriptions of feeling impatient with her baby’s crying, then feeling guilty (as if she were now two selves: restless traveler and beatific mother).
I really liked the questions she poses about presence vs. achievement (especially in the context of sitting through the boredom of breastfeeding vs. multitasking on her new iPhone), travel/adventure vs. putting down roots, the creative pursuits that call to her vs. earning money for her family somehow...
There’s a lot to like here too though!
I enjoyed the research into lobsters and salmon - how they find their way back to where they’re from, just as people sometimes do (hence the title, Homing Instincts).
I liked the stories about her travels, her father, and her husband’s upbringing.
I appreciated her candid descriptions of feeling impatient with her baby’s crying, then feeling guilty (as if she were now two selves: restless traveler and beatific mother).
I really liked the questions she poses about presence vs. achievement (especially in the context of sitting through the boredom of breastfeeding vs. multitasking on her new iPhone), travel/adventure vs. putting down roots, the creative pursuits that call to her vs. earning money for her family somehow...
June 21, 2023
Homing Instincts is another one of the books I got for $1 a few months ago at a used book sale. I read half of it within the first few days of opening it, and then took my sweet time in finishing it. I started it on my birthday, which I think contributed to my appreciation of it at first - I was feeling the birthday nostalgia, thinking about having moved back home 2 years ago, and Menkedick's writing on the draw she felt to her home and the area where she grew up after becoming pregnant felt relatable. But then I fell off the book for a while; I might have enjoyed it more if it was a bit shorter; once I left my one-year older nostalgia mindset the book didn't speak to me as much. But there were some great reflections on homecoming and learning to appreciate the physical land and area that you most likely took for granted as a child. I will give Mrs. Menkedick credit because she made me feel like I want to go to Ohio for the first time in my life!
Some of my favorite lines:
"We are feeling the tug toward the familiar: the places we've been raised, the families we've left behind. Within this is a perplexing ambiguity about whether returning home signifies growing up or giving up or both - and if it's both, what exactly we want to give up in exchange for what."
"For the first time in my life, I understand the concept of home. Home is not only a refuge, a locus of warmth and routine and familiarity,...but a sense of peace with contradiction. It is a giving in, an acceptance, the place where I finally strip life of all its decor of aspiration and regret and let it be what it is, where it is, and nothing more. It is the space in which I forgo both anticipation and nostalgia, the space to which I let myself belong. It is a space whose defining chronological units are not days or weeks or months but the moment and the broad sweep: the first acutely felt in its passing, the other almost annihilating in its breadth."
And this Annie Dillard quote: "When everything else has gone from my brain - the President's name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family - when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that."
Some of my favorite lines:
"We are feeling the tug toward the familiar: the places we've been raised, the families we've left behind. Within this is a perplexing ambiguity about whether returning home signifies growing up or giving up or both - and if it's both, what exactly we want to give up in exchange for what."
"For the first time in my life, I understand the concept of home. Home is not only a refuge, a locus of warmth and routine and familiarity,...but a sense of peace with contradiction. It is a giving in, an acceptance, the place where I finally strip life of all its decor of aspiration and regret and let it be what it is, where it is, and nothing more. It is the space in which I forgo both anticipation and nostalgia, the space to which I let myself belong. It is a space whose defining chronological units are not days or weeks or months but the moment and the broad sweep: the first acutely felt in its passing, the other almost annihilating in its breadth."
And this Annie Dillard quote: "When everything else has gone from my brain - the President's name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family - when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that."
May 12, 2017
This morning I read an essay from Homing Instincts: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm, a newly released book by Sarah Menkedick. It's a collection of essays about her transition from free spirited wanderer to motherhood as she takes up life with her husband in a cabin on her father's farm before and after the arrival of their daughter. The essay called “The Lake” is a musing about her dad's lifelong love, kindness and encouragement toward her. She recalls the ungrudging sacrifices he chose in his life that opened the possibility for her's. Only now as she reflects on her own thoughts and actions as a mother does she crack open the door of understanding about the instincts that guided her father's drive to both shelter her spirit and send it soaring. Along the way she awakens to the preciousness of life's small moments which mean both everything and nothing, explores her changing relationship to writing, and finds an unfolding sense of place.
Sarah's description of her relationship with her dad is tender and flows from a deeply rooted bond. The strength of his acceptance is a lifelong haven for her. His optimism she occasionally finds untethered to reality yet it has served him well, as has his acquiescence to the mystery of life. He is an accomplished man. In one poignant passage he holds his fussy granddaughter as Sarah whips up a squash blossom quesadilla and then feeds it to him with her fingers. In that instant she flashes on a shift in roles, seeing him in his approaching old age. She becomes the parent, he the child.
Sarah writes with a brilliance born of reflection and intelligence, and is capable of creating images that spring to life in the reader's imagination. Her prose often dances on the margins of poetry.
Sarah's description of her relationship with her dad is tender and flows from a deeply rooted bond. The strength of his acceptance is a lifelong haven for her. His optimism she occasionally finds untethered to reality yet it has served him well, as has his acquiescence to the mystery of life. He is an accomplished man. In one poignant passage he holds his fussy granddaughter as Sarah whips up a squash blossom quesadilla and then feeds it to him with her fingers. In that instant she flashes on a shift in roles, seeing him in his approaching old age. She becomes the parent, he the child.
Sarah writes with a brilliance born of reflection and intelligence, and is capable of creating images that spring to life in the reader's imagination. Her prose often dances on the margins of poetry.
July 25, 2017
A moving and incredibly honest view into pregnancy and family bonds
I can't easily put into words just how much I loved reading Homing Instincts. Especially so soon after finishing the book, with Menkedick's incredible prose and vivid imagery, I feel so self-conscious about the way I write.
This is an incredible book, and do not be mislead by the title into thinking Homing Instincts are not for you. I have never had an interest in reading about pregnancy before and am not planning on having children myself, but reading the book made me appreciate all the process of pregnancy and early motherhood, all the sacrifice and all the gains at the same time. In some way, reading Homing Instincts made it clearer to me that having a baby is not for me, but I have also formed a new-found respect for child-bearing.
This book is also about so much more than pregnancy and motherhood. It's hard to describe it, but I'd say it's also about human nature and what it feels to truly appreciate life and its everyday moments.
One of my favorite parts of the book was the closing chapter, which is about Menkedick's father and how he raised her, and the strength of their bond.
I hope you'll decide to read this book. It was an amazing experience!
I can't easily put into words just how much I loved reading Homing Instincts. Especially so soon after finishing the book, with Menkedick's incredible prose and vivid imagery, I feel so self-conscious about the way I write.
This is an incredible book, and do not be mislead by the title into thinking Homing Instincts are not for you. I have never had an interest in reading about pregnancy before and am not planning on having children myself, but reading the book made me appreciate all the process of pregnancy and early motherhood, all the sacrifice and all the gains at the same time. In some way, reading Homing Instincts made it clearer to me that having a baby is not for me, but I have also formed a new-found respect for child-bearing.
This book is also about so much more than pregnancy and motherhood. It's hard to describe it, but I'd say it's also about human nature and what it feels to truly appreciate life and its everyday moments.
One of my favorite parts of the book was the closing chapter, which is about Menkedick's father and how he raised her, and the strength of their bond.
I hope you'll decide to read this book. It was an amazing experience!
March 20, 2023
Homing Instincts is a deeply meditative and beautifully written reflection on motherhood, but even more so, a reflection on the self, documenting compelling lessons about identity and purpose. She gives a voice to many of the deep concerns we have as ambitious yet finite human beings.
As motherhood forces her to slow down, Sarah begins to see truths: the joy and beauty of the quotidian; the liberty experienced when you stop trying to make your life a ‘story’; the power of paying close attention; the futility of restless ambitions; the intense physicality of living; the impossibility of complete knowing. These are the kinds of deeply moving lessons I learn from being a Christian, too. When we take a step back, we can see that these are the patterns of the world.
Her writing style is gorgeous. It’s wandering, genuine, and forces you to be patient.
I found this book in the library of a cruise, where every book was either not in English or just really unappealing. I’m glad I waved away my hesitance to read something about motherhood, which I assumed might be unrelatable.
As motherhood forces her to slow down, Sarah begins to see truths: the joy and beauty of the quotidian; the liberty experienced when you stop trying to make your life a ‘story’; the power of paying close attention; the futility of restless ambitions; the intense physicality of living; the impossibility of complete knowing. These are the kinds of deeply moving lessons I learn from being a Christian, too. When we take a step back, we can see that these are the patterns of the world.
Her writing style is gorgeous. It’s wandering, genuine, and forces you to be patient.
I found this book in the library of a cruise, where every book was either not in English or just really unappealing. I’m glad I waved away my hesitance to read something about motherhood, which I assumed might be unrelatable.
August 23, 2017
More than a book about early motherhood, Homing Instincts is about big questions like: How do we make meaning of our lives? How do we teach ourselves to be patient? How do we learn to inhabit the moment, fully and mindfully? How to begin to enjoy stillness, of mind and body? How do we embrace all the activity in our bodies and minds and in nature without trying, constantly, to BE something and DO something ambitious and competitive and snapshot-worthy?
What's beautiful about this book is that it allows us to follow a brilliant mind at work. When the LA Times Review called Homing Instincts "a pregnant Walden," it wasn't far off the mark. Thoreau challenged readers to think differently, to start from scratch and leave no assumptions unexamined, and Menkedick does the same.
For me, though, it's always the writing itself that interests me even more than the content, and it's here that Menkedick dazzles. Her work has a lyrical, poetic quality that's hypnotic.
Here's an example, chosen almost at random (because there are lovely, lovely passages on every page):
"I sit on the rooftop terrace eating persimmons. They have the taut flesh of plums but the strangest most decadent interior of any fruit I've ever tasted. They seem as though they were crafted in an elaborate hipster San Francisco kitchen: a touch of Madagascar vanilla, a dash of Saigon cinnamon, and the plushness of a rum-drenched cake. We've never seen them in Oaxaca before, and we buy them in twos and threes at the market in spite of their exorbitant price. They appear only in my pregnancy; when we return over a year later we cannot find them anywhere."
Even if you're not pregnant and never will be, you'll savor the exquisite descriptions and insights of this gorgeous book.
What's beautiful about this book is that it allows us to follow a brilliant mind at work. When the LA Times Review called Homing Instincts "a pregnant Walden," it wasn't far off the mark. Thoreau challenged readers to think differently, to start from scratch and leave no assumptions unexamined, and Menkedick does the same.
For me, though, it's always the writing itself that interests me even more than the content, and it's here that Menkedick dazzles. Her work has a lyrical, poetic quality that's hypnotic.
Here's an example, chosen almost at random (because there are lovely, lovely passages on every page):
"I sit on the rooftop terrace eating persimmons. They have the taut flesh of plums but the strangest most decadent interior of any fruit I've ever tasted. They seem as though they were crafted in an elaborate hipster San Francisco kitchen: a touch of Madagascar vanilla, a dash of Saigon cinnamon, and the plushness of a rum-drenched cake. We've never seen them in Oaxaca before, and we buy them in twos and threes at the market in spite of their exorbitant price. They appear only in my pregnancy; when we return over a year later we cannot find them anywhere."
Even if you're not pregnant and never will be, you'll savor the exquisite descriptions and insights of this gorgeous book.
February 19, 2018
Perfect! Such a gorgeous deep-dive into so many aspects of early motherhood: ambivalence about parenting, feminine aspiration, bodily transformation, domestic intelligence, and above all, the spiritual inquiries of the self: what it is, what it means. It's a book that's hard to encapsulate, and even Menkedick writes in the last few pages, "I have shred the pressing need for purpose. I don't need to be able to define a book's themes, its goals, its message." There is far more essaying here than narrative or plot, and given Menkedick's conclusions, the form makes perfect sense. Still, a plot builds from essay to essay, hinging on Sarah Menkedick's own transformation as a mother, from external adventure-seeker to internal resider, a person who has learned to see the world up-close. It's a beautiful book.
July 22, 2019
Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs Darcy recently described some of her summer reads as “contemplative works that prompt me to slow down, both as a reader and as a person” and that perfectly describes Homing Instincts. I read this during a week away during the stillness and peace of the African bush. Being away with quiet time to think was ideal time to pick up this lovely book. It’s a very personal account of her moving to her family’s farm after years of adventure, followed by her pregnancy and new motherhood. However, at the same time, her observations and thoughtful look at identity makes it relevant to the reader. I savored the beautiful, descriptive writing and particularly her look at the “power and beauty of the quotidian”. Although I’m at a different stage of mothering, with children at school, this book gave me so much food for thought regarding daily life as a woman and a mother.
April 10, 2019
I took my time with this book, not wanting the words or the story or the connection to end. Sarah spoke on a panel at the Ohioana book festival and I bought this book immediately after. There’s so much here that I connect with, and so much I long for. She writes beautifully, almost whispering sometimes - begging you to slow down, breathe, and find ease and space.
I’m a bit biased, as an Ohioan, but the location is a character of its own and adds so much to the narrative.
I wanted to lend it to a friend, another writer and a new mama, but I couldn’t let go of my copy and sent her a 2nd copy. I’ll read this again, and possibly a few more times after that too.
I’m a bit biased, as an Ohioan, but the location is a character of its own and adds so much to the narrative.
I wanted to lend it to a friend, another writer and a new mama, but I couldn’t let go of my copy and sent her a 2nd copy. I’ll read this again, and possibly a few more times after that too.
March 14, 2018
I'm giving this memoir a 3.5 because it's not bad but I don't particularly like Menkedick's writing style.
This is a memoir of Sarah Menkedick's journey to motherhood on a rural farm in Ohio. Each chapter begins as a straightforward description of her life and proceeds to weave back and forth from past to present and to the past again. It's more stream-of-consciousness than I prefer. If you are interested in the topic or want to know what happens to Menkedick, peruse this short book.
Look for a different review in the Ohioana Library Quarterly http://www.ohioana.org
This is a memoir of Sarah Menkedick's journey to motherhood on a rural farm in Ohio. Each chapter begins as a straightforward description of her life and proceeds to weave back and forth from past to present and to the past again. It's more stream-of-consciousness than I prefer. If you are interested in the topic or want to know what happens to Menkedick, peruse this short book.
Look for a different review in the Ohioana Library Quarterly http://www.ohioana.org
April 2, 2020
What a perfectly woven blanket covering allllll of pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, motherhood, womanhood, writerhood, and much more. The author brings up so many things I have felt in early motherhood that I could never put to paper. A quote of note : "This is one of a series of paradoxes I have wandered into in the confines of pregnancy, Ohio, this enigmatic homing: how to stop seeking meaning to find meaning, how to let go of myself to rediscover myself, how not to know in order to come into a different kind of knowing."
February 1, 2020
This, to me, was extraordinary. Such a well-wrought, intelligent, and razor sharp meditation on motherhood and its effects on everything from time and the ego to drive, ambition, and the murky process of our own becoming. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt a book so deeply or related to an author’s words so much. I just love this book, simple as that, and know I will be revisiting it sooner than later. Highly recommend.
December 18, 2019
I wanted to love this book. It started off promising- I was hoping to hear more about the different types of “homing instincts”. One hundred pages later and two maybe three paragraphs of substance I gave myself permission to quit this book. It was the superfluous use of the word “superfluous” that did me in. It needs a lot less prose and a lot more substance. Maybe the next book will be better.
March 25, 2022
A really beautiful book. Menkedick teases out thoughts that I mistook as my private experience of pregnancy, postpartum, and young motherhood and expands them into big themes of story, identity and how those two relate. I just loved it.
(My guess is that this memoir would be boring af if you aren’t a mother. Just saying.)
(My guess is that this memoir would be boring af if you aren’t a mother. Just saying.)
February 16, 2017
A meditation on a year of mothering and motherhood-to-be, beautifully written essays that examine one woman's experience--utterly unique in some ways, amazingly universal in others.
If you're going through a period of change, pregnancy or otherwise, you'll appreciate Sarah's journey.
If you're going through a period of change, pregnancy or otherwise, you'll appreciate Sarah's journey.
May 9, 2017
I just finished reading this collection of essays over a weekend. Sarah Menkedick shares her journey through her pregnancy and early motherhood. Her story of transformation of self and purpose is both incredibly personal and universal.
May 12, 2017
Menkedick is a fantastic writer - the vivid descriptions of her life feel as if I'm right there with her. However, I guess I'm not one for essay/prose type books. I felt it was harder to follow compared to a regular nonfiction. But this is just my personal preference.
July 20, 2017
Excellent essay collection from a talented writer. Even though my life before kids was completely different than the author's, many of the themes and concepts she explores are highly relatable. Plus, it was nice to get a look at parenting from a perspective different than my own.
May 9, 2017
Loved this book! Loved the description of the farm; the author's struggle with moving into motherhood; the depth of her experience. Highly Recommend it!
June 5, 2017
I liked her stuff on travel, how she traveled to tell people she'd traveled, etc.
February 12, 2018
Beautifully written memoir - a bit long at times, but the language is excellent.
June 28, 2018
This book was beautifully written, and I savored it slowly. As one for whom the initiation into motherhood was intense, I really enjoyed her reflections on her transition into this new role.
March 17, 2019
A beautiful book of essays, I'll be reading this one for years to come. An excellent book that I'll continue to gift to friends who are becoming mothers, and those in that stage of look back.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews