Words by Elif Shafak

“Motherhood has taught me the gift of love, the joy of learning and the humble acceptance that we are, no matter what our age, essentially students of life,” says the internationally bestselling Turkish author Elif Shafak. Here, as part of AllBright’s special Mother’s Day series ahead of Mother’s Day on March 14, we publish a letter which Elif wrote to her children Zelda and Zahir, for the book GRACE MOTHERS, written by Georgie Abay, Julie Adams and Claire Brayford.

Elif Shafak was raised by two women, her single mother – a secular diplomat – and her traditional grandmother, who nurtured her love of storytelling. She has written 17 books, including The Bastard of Istanbul and Black Milk, an intimate memoir exploring motherhood, creativity, writing and her own struggle with postnatal depression.

“I love connecting with lives beyond my own little, limited life – reaching out to minds and hearts,” she says. “That feeling of timelessness, placelessness, as though words were the magic carpets carrying us to lands afar. You write for weeks and months and years on your own, hunched at your desk, not knowing who will read this story and whether it will mean anything to anyone. You keep the faith and carry on and then, one day, long after, a reader sends a letter or comes to a book signing, dragging along their friends and whole family, and says, ‘You know I read your book and you have no idea what it meant to me.’” Her letter is one of love, wisdom and courage and is bound to inspire all. 

Elif Shafak

Dear Zelda and Zahir,

At the ages of one and three, you have both moved from Istanbul to London with me. You have learnt quickly about airports, train stations, national borders, passport controls... And as time went by, you also learnt that, thankfully, there are many things in life that can travel across borders in need of no visas: ideas, stories, music, food, love, laughter. These belong to all humanity equally, regardless of race, gender, nationality.

Zahir, when you were at nursery school, your teacher asked the children what mothers did. Many mentioned things like, “They bake cakes, they make nice food, they walk in the park, they take the dog to the vet, they work in the office, they invite guests over…’’ You shook your head. Your answer was, “Mothers listen to loud heavy-metal music – boom, boom, boom – while they write books.”!

Zelda, when you were in primary school, a student said that people in Africa and the Middle East were backward. You got very upset. “They are not backward,” you said. 

“You just haven’t heard their stories yet.”

There is no ‘us’ and there is no ‘them’. There are people whose stories we are familiar with and people whose stories we have not heard yet. This I learnt from you both. It is amazing to see how much motherhood has taught and how deeply it has changed and moulded me; softened my corners, turned me into a different and, hopefully, better person. I was scared, at first, that I might find it all hard to juggle, and there were moments when it felt it was. But out of the challenges came beauty and balance. Until you were born, Zelda, I had lived the life of a nomad. Here is my background: Born in Strasbourg, France, I was raised in Ankara, Turkey, by a single working mother and a spiritual grandmother. After my parents got divorced, my mum brought me to my grandma’s house. Mum was only 19 years old when she got married – imagine. She had dropped out of school, despite her mother’s objections, and followed my father to France, deeply in love. 

When the marriage collapsed and my mother returned to Turkey, she therefore had no diploma, no money, nowhere else to go. The neighbours instantly began looking for a suitable husband for my mother, in part because a young divorcee was regarded as a danger to the whole community. It was my grandma who stopped them. She said, “My daughter should graduate, have a career; she should have choices in life. She can always get married again, if she wants to.”

Grandma raised me while my mother went back to university, graduating with flying colours and becoming first a teacher, then a successful diplomat. The solidarity between my uneducated, Eastern grandmother and well-educated, Westernised mother left a big impact on me, showing me how crucial it was for women to have networks of support and sisterhood. It also made me more aware of gender bias and gender discrimination, having grown up observing the hardships that my mother had to go through in a patriarchal culture such as Turkey was back then – and still is today.

Until I started college, I had seen my father only twice, brief encounters where he didn’t say or ask much.  I met my half-brothers only in my mid-20s. Coming from a dysfunctional family affected me and my writing in many ways. Feeling like an ‘insider-outsider’ in my motherland, I have always felt close to the ‘other’. 

I’ve lived in many places over time – Madrid, Amman, Cologne, Boston, Michigan, Arizona – and in-between, always, always Istanbul, the city I have loved passionately and whose stories I continue to tell. Then, London, with its precious diversity – the city of traditions old and dreams new. So, life has always been peripatetic.  When asked where home is, my first inclination has always been to ask a question back: “Homes, if you will. Can we not have multiple homes?”

Writing is not a job; it is not a career. Nor is it a hobby. It is how you breathe, who you are, your skin and flesh and soul. When you devote your life to books and stories, writing becomes your life. And the world of a writer is a self-centred one, based on solitude. Novelists are lonely creatures, often with inflated egos. I was worried I might not be able to balance the introverted energy of writing with the selfless giving of motherhood. I had all these concerns and more. How utterly silly I was, back then.

 Of course, motherhood changed me, and it changed me completely, radically, and in so many wonderful and unexpected ways that I have only gratitude in my heart. It has not been an easy journey, sometimes. There were bumps and struggles along the way, and that’s very normal. We need to understand that, like everything else in life, motherhood has its ups and downs. We need to allow women and children to talk about those, too. 

The over-romanticised, over-polished myth of motherhood is not helping anyone. We need honest conversations about what it means to be a mother, a parent, a daughter or a son, and how similar we are across the world; how fragile and how strong, how complex and simply human. 

And you two, with your distinct personalities, have taught me that love grows bigger the more you share, and that generosity of spirit is contagious – we learn it from each other. For the path you have opened to this clumsy traveller, I am immensely grateful to you both, my children.

Your Mother