Title: Momma Zen Walking The Crooked Path of Motherhood
Author: Karen Maezen Miller
Publication Year: 2007
Description from Amazon.com:
Combining humor, honesty, and plainspoken advice, Momma Zen distills the doubts and frustrations of parenting into vignettes of Zen wisdom.
Drawing on her experience as a first-time mother, and on her years of Zen meditation and study, Miller explores how the daily challenges of parenthood can become the most profound spiritual journey of our lives.
This compelling and wise memoir follows the timeline of early motherhood from pregnancy through toddlerhood. Momma Zen takes readers on a transformative journey, charting a mother’s growth beyond naive expectations and disorientation to finding fulfillment in ordinary tasks, developing greater self-awareness and acceptance—to the gradual discovery of “maternal bliss,” a state of abiding happiness and ease that is available to us all.
In her gentle and reassuring voice, Karen Miller convinces us that ancient and authentic spiritual lessons can be as familiar as a lullaby, as ordinary as pureed peas, and as frequent as a sleepless night. She offers encouragement for the hard days, consolation for the long haul, and the lightheartedness every new mom needs to face the crooked path of motherhood straight on.
I Gave It: 5 Stars
Each time I held Karen’s book in my hands, it was like holding up a mirror that reflected my own journey. At times I wanted to hide the mirror, cover it up with a cloth, and not let the words get too deep – there was that much truth in it. There was no such luck. Karen’s honesty, humour and poetic writing kept me riveted. At the closing of the last chapter I felt lucky, grateful and humbled in my ego’s chipped away state. Karen’s gift to her readers is the ability to enjoy all of the moments of motherhood – from the sleep deprivation to the tantrums to the great deterioration in maternal personal hygiene. I can now find Zen in my son’s need to be held way past his bedtime when I had planned on relaxing on the couch with the TV and my husband. Impossible? Read for yourself. You will want to read it on repeat. I highly recommend this book to you and every mother.
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