by Patricia Cuyugan (Philippines) | Jun 14, 2012 | Motherhood, Philippines, World Interviews, World Moms Blog Writer Interview, World Motherhood
Where in the world do you live? And, are you from there?
I was born and raised in a wonderful, always summery island country called the Philippines. I live in a pretty little village in Alabang, in the city of Muntinlupa, which is just south of our capital city, Manila.
I’ve lived in the Philippines all my life and have actually only been out of country once, back when I was just nine years old, on a holiday visit to Hong Kong.
What language(s) do you speak?
I speak English and Filipino.
When did you first become a mother? (more…)
Patricia Cuyugan is a wife, mom, cat momma, and a hands-on homemaker from Manila, whose greatest achievement is her pork adobo. She has been writing about parenting for about as long as she’s been a parent, which is just a little over a decade. When she’s not writing, you can usually find her reading a book, binge-watching a K-drama series, or folding laundry. She really should be writing, though! Follow her homemaking adventures on Instagram at @patriciacuyugs.
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by Ewa Samples | Jun 13, 2012 | Breastfeeding, Family, Media, Motherhood, Parenting, Poland, Polish Mom Photographer, World Motherhood
A while ago, during a nice lunch in a restaurant, I had to feed my two-month-old daughter. The moment I put her to my breast (completely covered, by the way), a constant whispering and eyeballing from a table across us made me feel like I was doing something wrong. These were young people, among them a mother herself. (more…)
Ewa was born, and raised in Poland. She graduated University with a master's degree in Mass-Media Education. This daring mom hitchhiked from Berlin, Germany through Switzerland and France to Barcelona, Spain and back again!
She left Poland to become an Au Pair in California and looked after twins of gay parents for almost 2 years. There, she met her future husband through Couch Surfing, an international non-profit network that connects travelers with locals.
Today she enjoys her life one picture at a time. She runs a photography business in sunny California and document her daughters life one picture at a time.
You can find this artistic mom on her blog, Ewa Samples Photography, on Twitter @EwaSamples or on Facebook!
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by Mama Mzungu (Kenya) | Jun 12, 2012 | Culture, Kenya, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Multicultural, World Motherhood
Before moving to Kenya, along with updating our vaccines and strategically packing our belongings to fit our meager bag allowance, one of the things I prepared myself for was the possibility of having house help. Both my husband and I would be working and we’d be living in a rural area, so we’d need someone to help look after our son. And unless I wanted to spend 20 hours a week washing our clothes by hand, we’d need to hire some house help. I’m not exaggerating when I say I hated the idea.
I consider myself hardworking and self-reliant, so I hated the idea of someone doing something for me that I could do myself. I’m a private person, so I hated the idea of someone observing, maybe judging, the interior of our lives. I’m a natural people pleaser, so I hate the idea of being someone’s boss in my own home.
More than anything I hated the prospect of putting someone in, what I thought, was a subservient position and, if I’m being honest with myself, bringing someone in who would be a continual reminder of the uncomfortable inequities of the world. Someone who could see what we spent on things like groceries and petrol and compare that unfavorably with her monthly salary.
And coming from the US, there was probably something in the recesses of my subconscious that was reflexively uncomfortable with being a light skinned person hiring a darker skinned person to clean my unmentionables. It’s a relationship loaded with historic and cultural baggage. (more…)
Originally from Chicago, Kim has dabbled in world travel through her 20s and is finally realizing her dream of living and working in Western Kenya with her husband and two small boys, Caleb and Emmet. She writes about tension of looking at what the family left in the US and feeling like they live a relatively simple life, and then looking at their neighbors and feeling embarrassed by their riches. She writes about clumsily navigating the inevitable cultural differences and learning every day that we share more than we don’t. Come visit her at Mama Mzungu.
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by Dee Harlow (Laos) | Jun 11, 2012 | Culture, International, Motherhood, Travel, Twins, World Motherhood
Just because I am a list maker doesn’t mean I always have it all together. And just because I check things off the list, on-time, and double-check each list, doesn’t mean I’m able to feel calm and confident. Not when it comes to moving my whole life and family half way around the world it doesn’t. No. Last week, I satisfactorily ticked off items on my list for moving to Vientiane, Laos from Washington DC, USA. This week, I feel nervous and uncertain about every single aspect of our lives that will change.
It’s the things that you can’t tick off of lists, uncontrollable unpredictable things, that throw you out of your comfort zone and force you to surrender to new and different ways of going about the business of everyday life. It all works out in the end, sometimes even for the better. Yet you end up feeling off kilter having to tilt your head sideways to feel balanced while it’s happening. Eventually, life is normalized again and your posture corrects itself. But this takes time.
So what do I do to stay grounded during this period of high anxiety? I try to accomplish the things I CAN do, focus on the things that I have control over. Like my lists. Read on if you’d like to get a sense of my world at the moment, in all it’s wanderlust and jet-setting glamor. (more…)
One of Dee’s earliest memories was flying on a trans-Pacific flight from her birthplace in Bangkok, Thailand, to the United States when she was six years old. Ever since then, it has always felt natural for her to criss-cross the globe. So after growing up in the northeast of the US, her life, her work and her curiosity have taken her to over 32 countries. And it was in the 30th country while serving in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan that she met her husband. Together they embarked on a career in international humanitarian aid working in refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan, and the tsunami torn coast of Aceh, Indonesia.
Dee is now a full-time mother of three-year old twins and continues to criss-cross the globe every two years with her husband who is in the US Foreign Service. They currently live in Vientiane, Laos, and are loving it! You can read about their adventures at Wanderlustress.
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by World Moms Blog | Jun 10, 2012 | 2012, International, Motherhood, World Moms Blog Itinerary, World Motherhood
On Monday we will check in with Dee Harlow, who has her hands full as she prepares to move herself and her family all the way to Laos. She tells us how she copes with the stress of trying to get everything together.
On Tuesday, we head to Kenya, where Mama Mzungu talks about how she hired someone to help out in her home. Initially very uncomfortable with the cultural and historic connotations of hiring such a person, she has now mostly made peace with it.
On Wednesday, we will be in California with Polish Mom Photographer, who is baffled by all the fuss surrounding the topic of breastfeeding. Why are women put under so much pressure to breastfeed, and then told not to do it in public? These are some of the questions she ponders.
(more…)
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
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Where in the world do you live? And, are you from there?
