Inspiration
Stories and heartfelt advice for mothers, parents and the people who love them.
25 stories
Latest · Sewing
The blanket I sewed for Mehmet Emde’s first winter was two layers of fabric, four corners and one evening. Measurements, seam allowance, hand-finishing — and, first of all, where a blanket belongs and where it never does.
· 4 min read
Customs & Traditions
Sugared almonds in tulle pouches, a tray of lokum, rose sherbet and a name on the nursery door. How my mother and Hamza Bera’s grandmother prepared his mevlit, who tied two hundred ribbons, and what I would tell a mother hosting one for the first time.
· 4 min read
Customs & Traditions
What did Turkish families do with a child’s first fallen milk tooth before the tooth fairy arrived — and what do they do now? The rooftop rhyme, the buried wish, and a small named box: what I learned from Süleyman Taha’s first tooth.
· 4 min read
Candles
By mid-October it is dark at five, and a house with a newborn slips into long early evenings. What do you carry to that house? From the jar candle my mother brought to Konya to the first candles I poured myself: why the oldest gift for a loğusa — a woman in her first forty days after birth — has always been light.
· 4 min read
Stone Painting
In October the park paths fill with leaves and gravel; children crouch to collect stones, mothers empty their pockets. A few of those stones come home, get washed, and a name is painted on them. From autumn afternoons with four boys: why a name written on stone outlives one written on paper.
· 3 min read
Woodwork
Hanging a baby’s name on their bedroom door is a small thing; but for everyone who opens that door, the room becomes someone’s in that instant. From the scrap of wood my father nailed above our door in Zonguldak to four boys and four doors: why wood is still the material that belongs on a door.
· 3 min read
Plaster & Clay
When a baby arrives, everything turns towards them; the belly that carried them for nine months survives only in photographs. A plaster belly cast keeps that shape in three dimensions — an old craft mothers have rediscovered. The story of the cast we made in an İstanbul kitchen one Saturday morning while I was expecting Hamza Bera.
· 4 min read
Mother & Baby
Zehra Topaç has taught English for many years. She recalls the moment her nine-year-old son fell into an excited conversation about Harry Potter with a guest from Greece — and why teaching a child a new language means opening a door onto the world.
· 2 min read
Knitting & Crochet
As October nears the knitting baskets come out, and the first thing anyone knits is always the same: a pair of bootees. They are small, they are done in an evening, and they open the door to a baby’s first winter. The bootees my mother and I knitted for Mehmet Emde’s first winter taught me how much one small pair can hold.
· 3 min read
Mother & Baby
For years, a nurse explained to mothers why a baby might cry. Then she held her own son, Mete, and learned that knowing something is not the same as living it. Damla Nur Bozkaya on healing after a caesarean, the question “Is it enough?”, and learning to look at herself kindly.
· 5 min read
Mother & Baby
Between a new country and a baby to look after, Kristina Çelik refused to leave herself for “later” — and fell under the spell of perfume. She shares the warm notes she loves for autumn: spiced vanilla and amber, sandalwood and cardamom, coffee and chocolate.
· 2 min read
Customs & Traditions
In Anatolia a baby’s first tooth is celebrated with boiled wheat: neighbours are called, wheat is sprinkled over the baby’s head, and a row of objects is set out for them to reach for. At Muammer Esat’s diş buğdayı I found myself wondering where the custom comes from and what it still says to a mother today.
· 4 min read
Mother & Baby
When September ends the days shorten, dusk comes early and the nights in a newborn’s home grow longer. Three things I learned in Hamza Bera’s first autumn: dim the light, do the same things in the same order, and make the room his room.
· 4 min read
Mother & Baby
A day that starts with four children’s voices, continues in a white coat and comes home again to four small hearts. Meliha Özyalvaç, a specialist physician and mother of four, on the hardest part of working motherhood — and the thing without a name that rises through all the tiredness.
· 3 min read
Sewing
Every September the same scene plays out in Turkish kitchens: four school smocks on the table, a reel of thread, a needle, and a name sewn into each collar so nothing gets lost. As the mother of four boys, I learned that the little label holds far more than lost cardigans.
· 3 min read
Embroidery
After the hospital wristband, most Turkish homes write a baby’s name in one place first: the corner of the blanket. Why there? My mother with an embroidery hoop, a needle that refuses to hurry, and a single lopsided letter found in a cupboard years later.
· 4 min read
Sewing
Sewing classes in Dublin sell out months ahead, New York declares sewing “cool again”, and across Türkiye the old Singers are coming down from the attic. What’s behind the quiet comeback — and where does a new mother find room for it?
· 6 min read
Mother & Baby
Süleyman Taha, Muammer Esat, Hamza Bera, Mehmet Emde. We chose a name for four boys and learnt the same lesson each time: a name isn’t found on a list, it’s found by calling it out loud. On the quiet side of naming a baby — with a note on why Turkish children so often carry two names.
· 4 min read
Stone Painting
Five sisters growing up in Zonguldak always had pockets full of pebbles. Years later we paint those pebbles in İstanbul with four boys. Why stone painting has become so loved, how a stone the size of your palm turns into a keepsake, and how to begin at the kitchen table.
· 3 min read
Woodwork
The best smell of my childhood was the sawdust drifting out of the carpenter’s shop at the top of our street. Years later I found it again at our kitchen table in İstanbul, in the hands of four boys holding sandpaper for the first time. Why wood is the most patient craft of all.
· 3 min read
Plaster & Clay
When my third son was a week old we pressed his palm into a handful of plaster. That hand is bigger than mine now — but the print is still a week old. Why plaster and clay make such tender keepsakes, and how to start at home.
· 3 min read
Candles
Our first winter in İstanbul, with the boxes still unpacked, I lit a candle and the flat felt like ours for the first time. Why candle-making has moved into everyone’s kitchen, and what one small flame does to an evening.
· 3 min read
Customs & Traditions
A red ribbon on the door handle, a crimson sherbet for visitors, forty pebbles counted into a basin of water. In Anatolia a baby’s first forty days have always run on their own calendar. Where these customs come from, why families still keep them, and what a new mother — from here or elsewhere — can take from them.
· 4 min read
Knitting & Crochet
In hospital waiting rooms, on bus seats, in front of the evening news — women in Türkiye were always knitting something. Now the needles are back in young hands, and doctors are saying what grandmothers already knew: knitting calms you down.
· 4 min read
Embroidery
Every cloth in my grandmother’s dowry chest had two letters stitched into the corner, and they can still be read today. Why embroidery is back in twenty-somethings’ handbags, and why a baby’s name written with a needle lands so differently from one typed on a screen.
· 4 min read