Synopsis:

The desire to walk is something that defines us as human beings, bringing joy and connection and freedom. But what happens to all this when we become mothers?

 In the wake of the complete metamorphosis of becoming a mother, Kerri Andrews determines to undertake a series of journeys on foot to understand what has happened to her. 

Alongside a backpack full of supplies, Kerri carries with her the shadow of post-natal depression and the idea that maybe the hills are no longer for those, like her, who bear the mental and physical scars of childbearing and childrearing. Yet, what she soon discovers are tales of mother-walkers that have long been neglected or hidden away. From Mary Wollstonecraft and Ellen Weeton to Kate Chopin, here are women whose post-partum stories are urgently pertinent as they show us how to step into new ways of living with motherhood.

As Kerri traverses urban, rural and increasingly mountainous landscapes in the North West and Scotland, she is joined by women who have also experienced the profound and sometimes devastating changes that having children can bring to bodies and minds. Together, they explore the complicated ground of motherhood today – balancing enormous responsibility and upheaval with ambition, rage and hope – creating new paths as they go.

Melding history, landscape writing and memoir, Pathfinding is a deeply personal, brave and urgent exploration of what it truly means to rediscover ourselves through the land we walk and the people we walk alongside. Here are our fore-mothers who have pursued power and pleasure through their feet; here is an invitation to mothers today to set out and claim that same power and freedom.

Review:

“The desire to walk is something that defines us, bringing joy, connection and freedom. But what happens to all this when we become mothers?”
This is a beautifully written memoir that follows the author on a series of walks in Scotland after having children.

I am not a mother, but I have a lot of mothers in my life through family and friends. In the first parts of the book, the emotions of new motherhood are starkly laid out – hope, guilt, anger and love. The raw, honest way she detailed her struggles gave me a new appreciation for what all mothers go through.

We follow Andrews back onto the trails, where she asks whether these paths still belong to her now that she is a mother. It is a quest to answer this question through rediscovering herself and nature. I may not be a mother, but I am a walker, and I know how healing it can be. I found myself connecting to the author most through this part of her journey, seeing how the act of walking helped her regain her sense of self.

Other mothers join her, and their conversations are unflinchingly honest. Motherhood is not an easy path, and it is only with other mothers that the struggles and joys can be understood.

Mothers from the past also appear in the pages. Through stories of mothers both real and fictional, a history of walking mothers is revealed. Their struggles are the same, no matter how long ago they were – the quest for personal freedom alongside the duty of motherhood. Through these mothers, and the ones physically walking beside Andrews, this book becomes something of a collective story of mothers, not just that of the author, and I think that is the biggest strength.

This was a wonderful book, and one that I think can be appreciated by anyone, not just mothers. It is vulnerable, bold and left me with the need to lace up my walking boots and stomp a path of my own.
Thank you so much Elliott & Thompson for sending this lovely book my way.