My Story

Hi! I’m Betsy Henry. I’m a mom, wife, aunt, daughter and a teacher. I grew up in the Chicago area with two amazing parents and three wonderful siblings. I was always writing as a child and was told all the time I should be a writer. I knew that the writing would come when it was time.

The idea for my first book, How To Be A Zen Mama was conceived on a trip to Boulder, Colorado. My husband and I had just finished a challenging year with our children; grades had fallen and limits were being tested. The teenage years are not easy, as anyone with even one teenage child will tell you. Being a positive and optimistic person I tried to find the lessons in all of our experiences and understand where we had made mistakes. I couldn’t continue to be the person I’d become over the summer and the new school year. I was a frantic, nagging mother worried about my kids in this modern world with text messaging and Facebook and our demanding culture that wants them to be volunteers, super athletes and ivy league students. Yet at my job as a preschool teacher I felt more Zen-like, giving out pearls of wisdom to those overly concerned parents of my 3-5 old year kids. I decided at that point that I had my own life to live and I needed to let my children live their life. If I let go, maybe we’d all be happier. I decided to combine the two, the frantic mother and the Zen like teacher and become one, become a “Zen Mama”.

Hopefully this website and the books will be a teacher for you. None of us brings a child into this world with a degree in parenting. I have at times been thankful of my teaching degree, having studied and practiced teaching before having children. But I’ve also been at a loss more times than I can think! I’ve worried so much. I’ve been angry. I’ve been disappointed. Emotions like worry, anger and disappointment are habits, and like other bad habits, these can be broken.

Oh, and by the way, you can apply these lessons to other parts of your life: Zen Wife, Zen Daughter, Zen Sister Zen Friend, Zen Co-worker…you get the picture!