All My Wild Mothers
On sale
2nd February 2023
Price: £12.99
‘A beautifully written and wisely laid out memoir . . . a treasure map back to ‘living’, for those who have been away too long‘ Donna Ashworth, author of Wild Hope
‘Lyrical and beautiful… the book we all need to read right now‘
Catherine Simpson, author of One Body
An intimate memoir of motherhood, herbal folklore ALL MY WILD MOTHERS is more than just a memoir. It’s a handbook on survival, and a testimony to radical hope.
At seven months pregnant, Victoria Bennett learns her sister has died in a canoeing accident. In that moment, her life changes.
Five years later, and struggling with the demands of motherhood, grief and full-time care, Victoria and her family move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria. Here, in the rubble of a former industrial site, she and her young son begin to grow a wild apothecary garden: daisy, for resilience; dandelion, for strength against adversity; sow thistle, to lift melancholy; and borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times.
Stone by stone, seed by seed, they discover that sometimes life grows, not in spite what is broken, but because of it.
All My Wild Mothers is a profound exploration of grief, identity, and rediscovery; a testament that life and love persists, even when we think all is lost.
‘Spellbinding… the most moving portrait of a mother and child I’ve ever read‘
Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure For Sleep
***
‘An impossibly moving memoir of gardens, herbalism, and the rigours and rewards of care… It heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in nature writing‘ Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment
‘A stunning meditation on the joy of nurturing (and of getting your hands dirty). It is a love letter to mothering and nature and mother nature, which bursts with wisdom, humility and hope. The writing is lyrical and beautiful… exactly the book we all need to read right now… What a wonderful book’ Catherine Simpson, author of When I Had A Little Sister
‘Exquisitely written… the most moving portrait of a mother and child I’ve ever read… This is a book of passionate resistance to everything in modern life that wants us to stay neat and small and fearful’ Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure for Sleep
‘Beautiful and life-affirming experience. A memoir written with tremendous care for the reader’ Jini Riddy, author of Wanderland
‘Prismatically beautiful in its honesty and telling… a wonderful book. An apothecary of love‘ Nicola Chester, author of On Gallows Down
‘Lyrical and beautiful… the book we all need to read right now‘
Catherine Simpson, author of One Body
An intimate memoir of motherhood, herbal folklore ALL MY WILD MOTHERS is more than just a memoir. It’s a handbook on survival, and a testimony to radical hope.
At seven months pregnant, Victoria Bennett learns her sister has died in a canoeing accident. In that moment, her life changes.
Five years later, and struggling with the demands of motherhood, grief and full-time care, Victoria and her family move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria. Here, in the rubble of a former industrial site, she and her young son begin to grow a wild apothecary garden: daisy, for resilience; dandelion, for strength against adversity; sow thistle, to lift melancholy; and borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times.
Stone by stone, seed by seed, they discover that sometimes life grows, not in spite what is broken, but because of it.
All My Wild Mothers is a profound exploration of grief, identity, and rediscovery; a testament that life and love persists, even when we think all is lost.
‘Spellbinding… the most moving portrait of a mother and child I’ve ever read‘
Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure For Sleep
***
‘An impossibly moving memoir of gardens, herbalism, and the rigours and rewards of care… It heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in nature writing‘ Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment
‘A stunning meditation on the joy of nurturing (and of getting your hands dirty). It is a love letter to mothering and nature and mother nature, which bursts with wisdom, humility and hope. The writing is lyrical and beautiful… exactly the book we all need to read right now… What a wonderful book’ Catherine Simpson, author of When I Had A Little Sister
‘Exquisitely written… the most moving portrait of a mother and child I’ve ever read… This is a book of passionate resistance to everything in modern life that wants us to stay neat and small and fearful’ Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure for Sleep
‘Beautiful and life-affirming experience. A memoir written with tremendous care for the reader’ Jini Riddy, author of Wanderland
‘Prismatically beautiful in its honesty and telling… a wonderful book. An apothecary of love‘ Nicola Chester, author of On Gallows Down
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Reviews
All My Wild Mothers is an impossibly moving memoir of gardens, herbalism, and the rigours and rewards of care. It asks what we might be willing to sacrifice for an artistic life, and what we lose of our selves when we attend to the needs of others before our own. It heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in nature writing.
All My Wild Mothers is a stunning meditation on the joy of nurturing (and of getting your hands dirty). It is a love letter to mothering and nature and mother nature, which bursts with wisdom, humility and hope. The writing is lyrical and beautiful and feels like a haven in a cynical world - exactly the book we all need to read right now. Victoria Bennett's writing is challenging and thought-provoking yet comforting and reassuring. What a wonderful book. Do read it.
Exquisitely written, this spellbinding book is rich in traditional plant wisdom and the author's lived experience. The garden Victoria Bennett creates with her young son becomes the setting for the most moving portrait of a mother and child I've ever read: how tenacious of life and beauty they both are, even as officials keep appearing to forbid their every attempt at making things grow. This is a book of passionate resistance to everything in modern life that wants us to stay neat and small and fearful.
Witnessing a mother nurture her son and her garden so tenderly while grappling with grief and the responsibilities of a carer was an unexpectedly beautiful and life-affirming experience. A memoir written with tremendous care for the reader too.
A fascinating, tangled read on gardening as resistance and using ancient ways to heal in the modern world.
All My Wild Mothers is a beautiful bruise of a book. Full of technicolour pain and joy -- a bruise which you cannot help but press on and a compelling story that grabs at your heart. Victoria Bennett offers us a picked-to-the-bone honesty with the rare skill of capturing important truths we have always known but never realised until we read her words.
All My Wild Mothers wrests nature writing from the 'lone enraptured male' and shows how our care for the natural world is inseparable from our care for each other. Family, community, soil and plants are nurtured together in this tender and moving memoir. Clear-eyed yet lyrical, Bennett shows us how grief and love, worry and delight, health and fragility move through each of our lives as inevitably as nature's seasons of loss and renewal.
Prismatically beautiful in its honesty and telling, this book is a radical act of quiet rebellion. Staking a claim of belonging, loving and nurturing on unsure, uncertain ground - whether that's a life, home or land - and making a bewitching alchemy of it.
Celebrating the strength, wisdom and resolve of women that carry the cradle of care, wounds and joy, this is a work about the precarity of rural living, and the wild magic of knowledge earned in the face of that. It is a wonderful book. An apothecary of love.
A beautiful, raw, meditative book on grief, mothering, and the wild both within and without. On what it means to tend a garden and a family alike, and how we find our way back to the beginning, to all that we have always known.
Intimate and immense, it's wrapping tendrils around my heart.
Victoria Bennett stuns in this beautiful memoir of motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden. Intimately weaving memoir and herbal folklore together, this is a beautiful story of rewilding wastelands, and the transformation that can happen when we do.
Warm, questing and beautifully written
A spell-binding, richly written work which is both a memoir and a retelling of lost herbal folklore. One of this year's most captivating finds, unexpectedly unearthed from beneath the rubble of intimate loss
All My Wild Mothers is a unique memoir and more than a memoir: the whole book is an apothecary. Even the feel of the book in one's hand is healing - so soft, so pliable and comforting, so silent, even in the turning of pages.
What a brave, and graceful, honest and wild piece of writing. Such an important and beautiful book.
A beautiful, raw, meditative book on grief, mothering, and the wild both within and without. On what it means to tend a garden and a family alike, and on how we find our way back to the beginning, to all that we have always known.
The honesty, bravery and openness of Victoria's writing was a privilege to read.
I am convinced this book planted its knowing within me as I read. It will pull at every heart-string you have but it may just bring you closer to the land we are so daily more removed from too. It will very likely call ancestors into your space as you rediscover the earth's ancient recipes we have forgotten along the way. One woman's grief, adversity and disruption could become your safe place as you take this journey with her. A beautifully written and wisely laid out memoir, or perhaps a treasure map back to 'living', for those who have been away too long.