Against all odds, just barely one month after Jessica Buchanan had been rescued by SEAL Team Six by order of President Obama, she found out she was pregnant. After spending ninety-three days at the hands of Somali pirates who had demanded a 45-million-dollar ransom in exchange for her freedom, Jessica could not imagine a reality in which her traumatized mind and malnourished body could grow, birth, and nurture this new life. But he grew, and as a result, so did she; in her capacity to trust her heart, her therapist, and the wise plan of the Universe.

Deserts to Mountaintops: The Pilgrimage of Motherhood was born out of the most challenging moments of Jessica’s motherhood journey. As she worked on healing from her kidnapping trauma, navigating the emotions that came with new parenthood, and balancing her grief with the loss of her mother and her home, it became clear that this little boy had been sent to save her. And save her, he did. There are few journeys in life as sacred as the one that leads us to, through or away from motherhood. The low lows and the high highs of caring for children with special needs or watching identities evaporate from caretaking, or being given the enormous task of loving the world, rather than just one or two, are experienced by so many women, but rarely talked about, which is why Jessica invited twenty-one women to share their own deserts to mountaintop experiences in motherhood.

Throughout this book, courageous women do not look away from their own pain but instead do the hard work of mining the meaning of their desert moments, modeling the simple truth that is often forgotten in the pursuit of surviving the trip to the top of the mother of all mountains: all we really need to be is love.