Kyran Pittman’s subtitle for her memoir Planting Dandelions is “Field Notes from a Semi-Domesticated Life.” I hope she’ll forgive me for repurposing it here to tell you why this is the mothering memoir you would be foolish to skip because you think they’re all the same.
you already know that she excels at weaving words into imagery and
painting every detail of a scene until you feel like you’re standing
right there with her, or maybe right inside her head. Even having read
her for years, I was unprepared for what lay waiting in Planting Dandelions.
read stories of women who always wanted to be mothers, and how those
journeys unfolded. I’ve read stories of women who never wanted to be
mothers, and how becoming one changed their lives. This is not a story
just about motherhood, although that’s an important component. This is a
story told in hindsight, with wonderment at the journey and its bounty,
and infused with both raw honesty and humor. This is Kyran’s story of
being lost, of finding herself, of acknowledgement of all the ways it
could’ve gone wrong, but didn’t. This is her story of finding her way
home.
I daresay that when you finish Planting Dandelions, you’ll feel like you’d visited and were treated like a dear, trusted friend. -Mir