Shona Hendley
Shona Hendley writes for Mamamia with a focus on family life, health and psychology, often using her own experiences as a parent and former teacher to unpack issues that affect children and their carers. Her work sits at the intersection of everyday parenting, emotional wellbeing and practical advice, with a recurring interest in how small decisions and unnoticed signs shape family dynamics and child health.
Parenting under pressure and everyday family dilemmas
Hendley often starts from a specific flashpoint in family life and uses it to explore wider questions about parenting expectations and strain. In her piece thanking teachers for keeping “education afloat” during remote learning, she writes from the perspective of a parent watching teachers carry the load through lockdowns, highlighting the emotional labour on both sides of the classroom. She returns to the mental load of parenting in lighter but still revealing stories such as “So far my son has lost five teeth... and I've messed it up four times,” which turns the Tooth Fairy into a case study of parental guilt and logistical overwhelm. Her Christmas piece about every parent having an “I don't” list reframes seasonal consumption as a boundary-setting exercise, focusing on what parents choose not to do or buy rather than on must-have toys and trends.
Many of her parenting pieces centre on conflict at the edge of the family unit. In “My relatives don't like my kids being around. What should I do?” she examines the discomfort when extended family push back against children’s presence, treating it as both a practical problem and an emotional injury for parents and kids. She also writes about intimate relationship crossroads with a parental lens, as in the story headlined “‘My boyfriend of 2 years said he doesn't want to be with me forever...” which looks at the future of a partnership once long-term commitment is pulled off the table. Across these pieces she foregrounds the feelings and coping strategies of the person at the centre of the story, rather than policy or abstract debate.
Mental health, anxiety and friendship fractures
Mental health and emotional resilience run through Hendley’s work, especially where they affect how adults show up for children and each other. In “How a children's book helped me understand to cope with anxiety,” she uses a simple tool — a picture book explaining the amygdala — to demystify anxiety and describe a practical way to manage it in everyday life. She describes the book as “the best tool” she has encountered, using accessible language to translate neuroscience into something a general audience can use at home. That piece aligns with her broader pattern of extracting coping techniques from ordinary experiences rather than from clinical settings.
She applies a similar emotional lens to adult friendships. “My beloved best friend has become a self-obsessed stranger” follows a friendship as it shifts from mutual support to imbalance, tracing the grief of watching someone close become difficult to recognise. Hendley’s bio on this piece describes her as a freelance writer and ex-secondary school teacher with a strong interest in education, which underpins the way she narrates relational change and communication breakdowns. Her mental health and friendship articles tend to blend confessional storytelling with clear description of behaviours, giving readers concrete emotional scenarios rather than abstract advice.
Education, children’s development and expert-informed health
Hendley’s background in teaching informs a recurring emphasis on education and children’s development. She writes as a “freelance writer and ex-secondary school teacher” with a “strong interest in education,” a combination that shows up in the way she explains school pressures and learning environments for both children and parents. Her thank-you letter to teachers during remote learning acknowledges the complex role schools play in family stability and child wellbeing, not just in academic progress. She consistently links classroom realities with what is happening at home, framing education as a shared responsibility rather than a service.
Her health coverage is similarly grounded in children’s everyday experience, with an emphasis on early signs and prevention. In her piece on the sneaky signs of myopia an optometrist wants every parent to know, she channels specialist advice into a checklist of subtle behaviours that might point to vision problems — squinting, sitting too close to screens, or avoiding certain tasks — and spells out the consequences of ignoring them. She uses the same mix of expert input and lived context when she writes about tools for managing anxiety, translating professional concepts like the amygdala into plain language for non-specialists. Across these stories she positions health information within the realities of busy family life, emphasising what parents can notice and change without medical jargon.
Profiles, creative lives and the stories people tell
Hendley also writes features that centre on individual creators and the narratives behind their work. In her piece on crime writer Sarah Bailey, she explores Bailey’s books through the lens of writing process and how she built a career in fiction, focusing on discipline, routine and creative choices rather than literary criticism. She has covered other authors’ journeys in a similar way, treating creative work as both a personal and professional project. Even in these profiles, she keeps the frame on how people navigate competing demands and inner doubts, echoing the themes in her parenting and mental health reporting.
Across her work for Mamamia, Hendley functions less as a hard-news health reporter and more as a narrative-driven features writer whose subjects are parenting stress, emotional health and the small decisions that add up in family life. She brings the perspective of a former teacher with a sustained interest in education and child development, and she regularly draws on expert voices when the topic demands medical or psychological authority. Her pieces tend to be first-person or close-voice narratives that fold advice and explanation into stories, making health and relationship topics feel immediate and lived-in rather than theoretical.
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