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The Mama Sutra: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Path of Motherhood
A “beautifully written and self-revealing” memoir of motherhood—in all its messy glory—as a spiritual practice, by a longtime yoga and dharma teacher (Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance) Sutra is the Sanskrit name for a short spiritual teaching, and it comes from the same root as the English word suture, or stitch. This story of motherhood as a path to awakening is, says yoga and meditation teacher Anne Cushman, “an homage to the long threads that run through all human lives, stitching up what’s shredded in our hearts.” The Mama Sutra spans an eighteen-year journey through motherhood as a spiritual practice, chronicling Cushman’s first pregnancy, her daughter's tragic stillbirth, the joyful birth of her son, the “home retreat” of early motherhood, the challenges of parenthood, the diagnosis and gifts of her son’s developmental differences, the meltdown of her nuclear family and its reconfiguration into a new and joyful form, and more. This is a powerful story of the rawness and beauty of life.
238 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 16, 2019
23 people are currently reading
818 people want to read
About the author
Anne Cushman
14 books29 followers As a writer and teacher of yoga and Buddhist meditation, Anne Cushman explores the poignant intersection between the inspirational ideals of spiritual practice and the gritty, comical, chaotic, and heartbreaking details of ordinary life.
Anne has been investigating the relationship between Eastern spiritual traditions and contemporary Western life for more than 25 years. She graduated from Princeton University with a BA in comparative religion in 1984, and her work includes the NEH-funded documentary Zen Center: Portrait of an American Zen Community (1986); the nonfiction “spiritual India” guidebook From Here to Nirvana (1998); and the novel Enlightenment for Idiots (2008), which was named by Booklist as one of the “Top Ten First Novels” of the year. Her book Moving Into Meditation: A 12-Week Mindfulness Program for Yoga Practitioners will be published by Shambhala in 2014.
Anne is a longtime contributor and former editor at both Yoga Journal and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Her personal essays have also appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, O: The Oprah Magazine, Salon.com, New Woman, and the Shambhala Sun. Her work has been anthologized in Best Buddhist Writing 2004 and 2006; Best Women’s Spiritual Travel Writing; Traveling Souls: Contemporary Pilgrimage Tales; and other books.
Anne’s yoga and meditation background includes extensive training across multiple schools of yoga since 1985, including Iyengar, Ashtanga, Kripalu, Insight Yoga, and many other styles. She has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1983 in both the Zen and vipassana traditions, and is the co-director of the Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, where she is also a graduate of the Community Dharma Leader program.
Anne teaches yoga as a support for and an expression of embodied meditative presence. Through sensitive, flowing practice, she invites her students to relax and enliven their bodies, open their hearts, and unwind the physical and energetic obstacles that prevent them from touching their true nature—in the midst of their ordinary and miraculous human lives.
She lives in Fairfax, California, with her twelve-year-old son, Skye Hawthorne.
Anne has been investigating the relationship between Eastern spiritual traditions and contemporary Western life for more than 25 years. She graduated from Princeton University with a BA in comparative religion in 1984, and her work includes the NEH-funded documentary Zen Center: Portrait of an American Zen Community (1986); the nonfiction “spiritual India” guidebook From Here to Nirvana (1998); and the novel Enlightenment for Idiots (2008), which was named by Booklist as one of the “Top Ten First Novels” of the year. Her book Moving Into Meditation: A 12-Week Mindfulness Program for Yoga Practitioners will be published by Shambhala in 2014.
Anne is a longtime contributor and former editor at both Yoga Journal and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Her personal essays have also appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, O: The Oprah Magazine, Salon.com, New Woman, and the Shambhala Sun. Her work has been anthologized in Best Buddhist Writing 2004 and 2006; Best Women’s Spiritual Travel Writing; Traveling Souls: Contemporary Pilgrimage Tales; and other books.
Anne’s yoga and meditation background includes extensive training across multiple schools of yoga since 1985, including Iyengar, Ashtanga, Kripalu, Insight Yoga, and many other styles. She has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1983 in both the Zen and vipassana traditions, and is the co-director of the Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, where she is also a graduate of the Community Dharma Leader program.
Anne teaches yoga as a support for and an expression of embodied meditative presence. Through sensitive, flowing practice, she invites her students to relax and enliven their bodies, open their hearts, and unwind the physical and energetic obstacles that prevent them from touching their true nature—in the midst of their ordinary and miraculous human lives.
She lives in Fairfax, California, with her twelve-year-old son, Skye Hawthorne.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 9, 2019
Another painfully and beautifully honest book by Anne Cushman about life and how to take it all in. My favorite line "The only protection we have for death is that our love is large enough to hold even death in its arms."
September 19, 2020
I wrestled with whether I was annoyed by this author's voice because she was out of touch, or because she lives sort of a woo-woo life but was normal and relatable enough that it brought out my own insecurities. I suppose it was both. For sure, there times that feel over saturated with yoga and Buddhism references that feel gratuitous and boastful, but there are plenty of moments that I think any current, prospective, hopeful, reluctant, jaded moms could relate to. Worth the read, for free, from the library.
June 22, 2021
Beautifully written and moving, I loved this book and would read it AGAIN and I hardly ever re-read these days
February 18, 2021
Do you know what’s worse than mansplaining? Buddhist boasting. I get it: suffering. I put it down before I got to the end. I almost never do that.
May 11, 2023
I loved this book. There are so many moments between a mother and child gorgeously rendered in vivid and rich language. The book is also about messy mothering, a broken heart, relationships, dating, modern life, and and how hard it is to teach Buddhism pretending to be more together than one actually is. But I found the mothering passages to be the best, describing the truth of how a baby cuddles and needs and depends. “He needs me desperately and knows it .. the relief when I immediately appear again and take him in my arms," how when her baby wakes and she is there he sighs and sinks back into sleep. Every loving parent knows these moments.
Spoiler alert: The book starts out with a gentle, harrowing description of the late term loss of a baby despite beautiful preparation and the mother’s good health. It is a tragedy, and she beautifully describes how she deals with the grief. But it is NOT advisable to read that beginning section while pregnant or while wanting to get pregnant sometime soon. Too sad.
Later in the book, the author describes another child growing older and how he dances towards the diagnosis of being on the spectrum, and how she dances him away from that label, how she finds ways to teach him with other adults who care for him and how he grows out of the diagnosis. I found that inspiring. The middle of the book is a bit heavy on Buddhist detail. But I found it interesting. She also writes about singing her mother to sleep with her six brothers and sisters. “I wanted to hold my mother’s death as a sacred ritual, as a sacrament, as a kind of yoga – with calm, dignity, depth and presence. But as with everything else, the sacred and the mundane seem to be inseparable. Death is a holy transition from one world to another. It is also a grimy passage that demands rubber sheets, disinfectant wipes, latex gloves and Vaseline. It insists on plane reservations and babysitters. It is inseparable from the human messy details that make it … well, life.”
Mama Sutra is a lovely book.
Spoiler alert: The book starts out with a gentle, harrowing description of the late term loss of a baby despite beautiful preparation and the mother’s good health. It is a tragedy, and she beautifully describes how she deals with the grief. But it is NOT advisable to read that beginning section while pregnant or while wanting to get pregnant sometime soon. Too sad.
Later in the book, the author describes another child growing older and how he dances towards the diagnosis of being on the spectrum, and how she dances him away from that label, how she finds ways to teach him with other adults who care for him and how he grows out of the diagnosis. I found that inspiring. The middle of the book is a bit heavy on Buddhist detail. But I found it interesting. She also writes about singing her mother to sleep with her six brothers and sisters. “I wanted to hold my mother’s death as a sacred ritual, as a sacrament, as a kind of yoga – with calm, dignity, depth and presence. But as with everything else, the sacred and the mundane seem to be inseparable. Death is a holy transition from one world to another. It is also a grimy passage that demands rubber sheets, disinfectant wipes, latex gloves and Vaseline. It insists on plane reservations and babysitters. It is inseparable from the human messy details that make it … well, life.”
Mama Sutra is a lovely book.
April 22, 2019
Book received for free through NetGalley
I absolutely loved this book. I enjoyed the stories to help you know that you're not alone and to follow along with the author. The points on mindfulness really hit me and I love her points about meditation. Life can seem repetitive and exhausting and I loved the reminder to focus on the little things. I can see this book as being a book you'd want to buy to have on hand. Every once and a while picking it up to remind yourself to live in the moment, that life can be fleeting, and enjoy the little things.
I've practiced a bit of yoga for exercise only. I liked how the author brought as through the yogi locales and moments within the practice to get a better understanding.
I absolutely loved this book. I enjoyed the stories to help you know that you're not alone and to follow along with the author. The points on mindfulness really hit me and I love her points about meditation. Life can seem repetitive and exhausting and I loved the reminder to focus on the little things. I can see this book as being a book you'd want to buy to have on hand. Every once and a while picking it up to remind yourself to live in the moment, that life can be fleeting, and enjoy the little things.
I've practiced a bit of yoga for exercise only. I liked how the author brought as through the yogi locales and moments within the practice to get a better understanding.
August 15, 2020
This is such a poignant read for any Mama, especially one on the Buddhist path. Anne shares so vulnerably how the motherhood journey is full of contrasts, ups and downs (even in a single moment), triumphs and tragedies -- it's all there -- often in a single moment in our internal thoughts. I also love how she points out all the patriarchy within Buddhism (which I hadn't thought about). She does so less in a critical way, and more of a "What if we'd heard from the Buddha's mother?" I LOVED THIS BOOK and cannot say enough good things about it!
March 24, 2020
OMG I cried, I cried, I cried. Cushman shares her story of unexpectedly becoming a mama, the joy it brought during pregnancy, but how everything fell apart when her daughter was stillborn. She shares the tale of spiritual and personal growth through that experience, and through the experience of getting pregnant and giving birth and raising her son. Heartache...beautiful. I related a lot to some of the motherhood struggles. Just gorgeous.
July 5, 2020
As a mother who suffered loss with her first child I felt instant connection to this book although Anne’s story is so much more. Her spiritual and physical practices all come together on the journey from those first moments of motherhood to saying goodbye to her own mother and in there also coming to terms with her inability to raise her first born child.
May 6, 2019
This was so emotional, empowering and encouraging! As a mom of three kids, this book was just what I needed. Its so important to share our journey with other moms, to learn and grow together as we raise the next generation.
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September 12, 2019I won a copy of this book during a Goodreads giveaway. I am under no obligation to leave a review or rating and do so voluntarily. So that others may also enjoy this book, I am paying it forward by donating it to my local library.
April 13, 2019
Excellent book!!!!
May 4, 2019
I loved this
June 9, 2019
Totally recommend to read this book, managed to finish it in a day!
June 13, 2019
I enjoyed this book!
July 30, 2019
Very interesting and thought provoking content. Made me think about the many shades of loss and how to manage impermenance.
March 23, 2020
This book was AMAZING! I loved it from beginning to end. I would add this as a must read for mamas.
March 28, 2020
Too predictable for me
May 14, 2019
Beautifully written. Open, honest, humorous, thoughtful
Couldn’t put it down.
Couldn’t put it down.
November 25, 2019
This book was beautifully written, honest and relatable. This is the first Anne Cushman book I have read, and I am now going to explore her other works. I found the stories to be sometimes painful but often humorous. The points on mindfulness within everyday life were interesting and thought-provoking.
September 22, 2019
Amazing. I will read this book again. Anne is an amazing writer and teacher.
August 7, 2025
I was hoping to expand my horizons with this book, but I’m DEFINITELY not the intended audience. Even looking past this, I couldn’t get past the author’s voice throughout the entire book. Incredibly boastful, and it felt too out-of-touch. This was a struggle for me to finish (seeing it took over a month to read).
March 14, 2020
3.5 stars.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews