Lisa Ray Instagram – I’m struggling. There’s days when the effort of balancing the multiplicity of roles demanded of me is too much. I begin to work on my book or an idea for a novel and it slides through my fingers when the calls from my children and parenthood overpowers all else. Grocery shopping, cleaning and administering discipline takes precedence over solitude, the walks, the conversations and research it takes to create stories. Many of my online interviews have been interrupted by a toddler plopping down in my lap mid-conversation. For a woman who dodged domesticity for decades and thrived in solitude, well, these moments make me feel I’ve been lifted out of myself and dropped into someone else’s story. So I’m turning to literature for solace. ‘Black Milk’ by beloved Turkish novelist @shafakelif is an ode to motherhood and writing. It is hard to describe how much I relate to Shafak. A natural nomad Shafak was convinced that she was not interested in having children. However, as fate would have it, she marries and becomes pregnant. Through this memoir, we follow her journey of facing the tensions between various sides of herself. ‘After the birth of my first child I experienced a strong depression that separated me from the one passion in life that until then I had held above everything: writing fiction. It was an emotional tremor for me. When I ran out of the building of the self I had carefully constructed all those years, there in the darkness, scared and shaken, I encountered a group of thumbelinas- six tiny finger women, each of whom looked like a different version of me- sitting side by side. I understood that if it weren’t for the extraordinary situation of my postpartum depression, I would have never seen them in a new light…perhaps all women live with a mini harem inside…this book is the story of how I faced my inner diversity and then learned to be One.’ Shafak gets it. The parenthood vs career struggle, how to defy the notion of motherhood as sacrifice. Her fear of the obligations motherhood requires. Her passion for seeking, even when it comes at the price of facing herself. Black Milk is also an entertaining, expansive read. @shafakelif