A review by emilyinherhead
Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences by Jedidiah Jenkins

emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

5.0

I finished this book and immediately wanted to hug it.

It’s about a road trip adventure that Jedidiah Jenkins embarks upon with his mother, retracing the path she and Jedidiah’s father walked back in the late 1970s, from New Orleans to the Pacific coast of Oregon.

It’s also about how it feels to realize your parents are aging and will one day die. About understanding that they were once young people who had dreams and aspirations and adventures long before you came along. 

A thought I’m trying to jam into my understanding: a mother is just a person. A teenage girl who got older. A human who got pregnant and raised kids the best she could.

It’s about wanting to learn everything you can about your parents and make meaningful connection with them while you still can. About finding unexpected points of commonality, like true crime podcasts or tiny old thrift stores. About wanting desperately to feel like they’re proud of you and approve of the life you’re building, and, most important, about figuring out how to be okay if you don’t ever get the acknowledgment and blessing that you seek.

This may be one of the most fundamental concerns of my generation, or any: How do I stay in a relationship with family when differences push us apart? What do I do when our disagreements feel so fundamental, so consequential?

If you have a complicated relationship with one or both of your parents, if you’ve evolved away from the religion of your upbringing, or you identify as queer and your family isn’t completely okay with it, if you find yourself compartmentalizing your existence to protect your own and/or your parents’ feelings… this book might be perfect for you. It was for me.

She is smiling and walking slowly, gazing up and down the beach. She looks beautiful, as if her thirty-one-year-old self has risen to the surface of her face. Last time she was here, she was pregnant with my older sister. Now that sister has an eight-year-old daughter. This beach remained, the waves pounding the sand every minute of every month of every year in between.

Jedidiah Jenkins’ writing is beautiful. He’s thoughtful and funny and honest and kind. His words are a balm, and I already can’t wait to read more from him.

Also, do recommend checking out Jedidiah’s ‘BarbAcrossUSA’ story highlight on Instagram as a companion to this book. It was so fun to put a visual with a lot of what he describes on the page.

(Thank you to NetGalley and Convergent Books for my advance copy!)