Momma Zen by Karen Maezen Miller

Momma Zen by Karen Maezen Miller

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 listeners 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.

Karen Maezen Miller is a Zen teacher (dharma holder) in the tradition of the great Zen master Taizan Maezumi Roshi. She is a mother, wife, writer, and Zen teacher (dharma holder) in the lineage of the legendary Zen master Taizan Maezumi Roshi. The author, a former journalist, had a twenty-year career as the proprietor of a marketing and public relations firm. She now works as a business communications consultant, speechwriter, speech trainer, web copywriter, and ghostwriter on a freelance basis.