by Susie Newday (Israel) | Jun 30, 2014 | 2014, Death and Dying, Israel, Loss of Child, Susie Newday, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
I’m writing this with tears streaming down my face. What everyone in Israel has been hoping never to hear, has happened. The three teenage boys who were kidnapped 18 days ago on their way home from school were found dead, buried together.
18 days of heartbreak, of feeling helpless, of hope and of unity. 18 days that have ended with the tragedy that we have all feared. During the past 18 days we saw so many glimpses of goodness and unity and support. 18 agonizing days and it’s so ironic because in Judaism, 18 is synonymous with life. In this case, it’s three lives that were brutally ended.
Tears are pouring freely. There is almost nothing on my Facebook wall this moment except an outpouring of grief and sadness. The whole country is in a state of mourning. From little children who have been following the news and saying psalms daily, to teens, to the elderly. We all have broken hearts and can’t even begin to fathom how Eyal, Gil-Ad and Naftali’s parents’ and families are breathing, let alone coping.
I wonder why there is evil in the world. I wonder how we can live in a world so full of evil and hate. I wonder why it is that so often we don’t see or appreciate all the goodness until something evil or awful happens. Do we need the evil in our world in order to appreciate the goodness? I hope not.
My heart is breaking and I am begging each and every one of you to make this world a better place. Be kind, do good and don’t turn a blind eye to evil.
May the memories of Eyal Yifrach, Gil-Ad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel be of blessed memory. May they rest in peace and guide us in our quest to make this world a better place.
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by our contributor, Susie Newday in Israel. You can find her on her blog New Day New Lesson.
Photo courtesy of #BringBackOurBoys
Susie Newday is a happily-married American-born Israeli mother of five. She is an oncology nurse, blogger and avid amateur photographer.
Most importantly, Susie is a happily married mother of five amazing kids from age 8-24 and soon to be a mother in law. (Which also makes her a chef, maid, tutor, chauffeur, launderer...) Susie's blog, New Day, New Lesson, is her attempt to help others and herself view the lessons life hands all of us in a positive light. She will also be the first to admit that blogging is great free therapy as well. Susie's hope for the world? Increasing kindness, tolerance and love.
You can also follow her Facebook page New Day, New Lesson where she posts her unique photos with quotes as well as gift ideas.
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by Meredith (USA) | Jun 27, 2014 | 2014, Childhood, Family, Home, Kids, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Parenting, Siblings, Toys, USA, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Summer break is upon us once again. With summer, comes sleeping in, summer vacations, and eating sweet watermelon every day. However, there is something else that sneaks its evil little way into summer as well…. (more…)
Meredith finds it difficult to tell anyone where she is from exactly! She grew up in several states, but mainly Illinois. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana which is also where she met her husband. She taught kindergarten for seven years before she adopted her son from Guatemala and then gave birth to her daughter two years leter. She moved to Lagos, Nigeria with her husband and two children in July 2009 for her husband's work. She and her family moved back to the U.S.this summer(August 2012) and are adjusting to life back in the U.S. You can read more about her life in Lagos and her adjustment to being back on her blog: We Found Happiness.
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by Susan Koh | Jun 26, 2014 | 2014, Life Balance, Me-Time, Motherhood, Singapore, Susan Koh, Working Mother, World Motherhood
Keeping The Joy
I may be a working mom balancing between family and work, but I’m certainly no super mom. In Singapore, where the population is not reproducing fast enough, our government has gone to great lengths to encourage couples to get married and start a family. And after the ladies have given birth, they are encouraged to return to the work force, as human capital is pretty much our only “resource” in the nation. So like a huge majority of women, I took on a role as a full-time working mom and promptly returned to work after my maternity leave ended after four months.
Unlike most parents who leave their child in the care of their parents or in-laws, my daughter, Sophie, went to infant care at merely four months old. This was after weighing our options very carefully then, as we didn’t live with or near our parents, and we didn’t want to have a live-in helper or nanny. It wasn’t easy initially, and I can’t even remember how many sleepless nights I had when I questioned if I made the right decision to return to work, especially when Sophie fell ill or when I saw her cry when I dropped her off at the childcare center. But today, when I see how Sophie has blossomed to an independent, sociable and sensible pre-schooler, it makes me feel happy that she’s turned out better than what we prayed for and expected.
Being a working mom certainly has its challenges and the one that tops the list for me is not having enough time in a day. So here are some tips on how I manage it without losing my joy.
You Can Do Anything
Be fully present
Once I am back from work, I’m 100% devoted to being a mom. I’m thankful that I have supportive bosses and colleagues who understand this, so they never make demands that I have to put in extra hours unless it’s crunch time in the office.
You know what they say about quality time being more important than quantity time? And for working moms it’s so true because, otherwise, we’ll always be beating ourselves up about the lack of time spent with our kids. Screen time is kept to a minimum, so that we spend good quality time together.
And maybe because Sophie is a girl, we enjoy spending time before bedtime sharing how our day went, reading books or even playing games when we feel up to it. But I’ll be totally honest and also say that we do use the TV and iPad as a nanny at times, especially when we have chores to do or when we ourselves just want a mental break on exhausting days.
Train your kids to be independent
With no help at home, Sophie is naturally trained to pick up after herself. When she was younger, we’ll give her little rewards like stickers as an incentive when she keeps her toys, folds the laundry and takes her dishes to the kitchen.
As she gets older, she’s learned that she has a responsibility to help around the house. Of course, I’ll still reward her with praises and appreciation, and she’s come to learn that she needs to do so without expecting anything in return. And these days, she’s on auto pilot-mode and will chip in around the house.
Manage your expectations
I used to strive to do everything perfectly as a mom and had a problem letting go. But when you only have that many hours in a day, I’ve learnt that I need to let go if I want to keep my sanity and my joy. So that means, closing an eye to the unfolded laundry, the times when I can’t cook dinner for the family, the mess at home, and yes, even the dirt at home.
I could get hung up about all these things and stay up late into the night to finish the chores and start the whole routine again the next day, but I know I’ll also feel very miserable and start to loathe it all. So my mantra is simply to do what’s necessary and be happy. After all, as moms, we can do anything but not everything.
Besides, when I get stressed over all the chores, my husband hears no end of complaining and which husband appreciates that? So for him, his mantra is, a happy wife, a happy life.
Schedule me-time
I know it’s crazy to even think that working moms even have any me-time. But it is absolutely crucial to find time for myself to recharge. My me-time can be anything from going for a jog, to having a nice haircut, or even a catch up session with my girlfriends. This year, I’ve started a new hobby, Project Life, and it’s so therapeutic to look back at my life in photos and pen down the memories behind them. Plus, it’s a way of recording life so that nothing slips by and a reminder for me to cherish every moment.
So there you have it – some of my sanity tips for working moms on how to keep your joy. It’s not easy being a working mom, and I know that the person who makes it possible is my dearest hubby who is ever supportive of my decision. He’s every bit the modern husband and daddy in the 21st century who is not afraid to roll up his sleeves to do his part in parenting but also to chip in around the house. And while, he shakes his head when I tell him I still have hopes to be a domestic goddess, I know he’s glad that I’m working to bring in the dough for the family so that we can enjoy our family holidays and have my own shopping money and savings.
Are you a working mom too? If so, what are your top tips to keeping your joy as a working mom?
This is an original post by Susan Koh for World Moms Blog. She’s loves to travel and blogs passionately about parenting, marriage and relationship and leading a healthy life at www.ajugglingmom.com.
Photo credit to the author.
Susan is from Singapore. As a full-time working mom, she's still learning to perfect the art of juggling between career and family while leading a happy and fulfilled life. She can't get by a day without coffee and swears she's no bimbo even though she likes pink and Hello Kitty. She's loves to travel and blogs passionately about parenting, marriage and relationship and leading a healthy life at A Juggling Mom.
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by Susie Newday (Israel) | Jun 25, 2014 | 2014, Israel, Life Balance, Motherhood, Parenting, Relationships, Susie Newday, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
I feel like a tightrope artist struggling to walk the fine line of life.
Not just a lone tightrope artist finding her balance without an audience but one who is trying to navigate in between a myriad of other tightrope artists, each of us attempting not to fall down. Life really is a balancing act, and not just because of all the daily tasks we each have loaded on our plates.
Life is a gentle precarious balance between right and wrong, love and hate, acceptable and unacceptable, pleasure and pain, righteousness and irreverence, wants and needs.
Every single thing we say and do has the potential to hurt someone or to make them feel happy. The potential to be viewed as right or wrong. The potential to be hailed and brilliant or to be regarded as dumb. The tricky part is that you can perceive something or mean something one way and it can be perceived in a totally opposite way.
And when then happens you get blindsided and knocked down, yet somehow you have to find the strength to get back up on that fine line of life and regain your composure and balance. It’s not an easy feat since it can happen quite often and each time you fall or get pushed over, you are left with invisible scars that leave you more afraid and more vulnerable.
I think of all the times I have caused others pain and all the times I have been hurt. I worry about the scars I’m inadvertently inflicting on my children because I’m not skilled enough to stay balanced on that fine line and because I stray from that fine line time and time again. But I’m human and need to learn to forgive myself.
Walking that fine line is scary.
How often do you fall down?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by our contributor, Susie Newday in Israel. You can find her on her blog New Day New Lesson.
Photo Credit: Tauno Tõhk / 陶诺 ? Flickr Creative Commons
Susie Newday is a happily-married American-born Israeli mother of five. She is an oncology nurse, blogger and avid amateur photographer.
Most importantly, Susie is a happily married mother of five amazing kids from age 8-24 and soon to be a mother in law. (Which also makes her a chef, maid, tutor, chauffeur, launderer...) Susie's blog, New Day, New Lesson, is her attempt to help others and herself view the lessons life hands all of us in a positive light. She will also be the first to admit that blogging is great free therapy as well. Susie's hope for the world? Increasing kindness, tolerance and love.
You can also follow her Facebook page New Day, New Lesson where she posts her unique photos with quotes as well as gift ideas.
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Follow Me:
by Elizabeth Atalay | Jun 24, 2014 | 2014, Africa, Awareness, Babies, Birthing, Ethiopia, Health, Humanitarian, Maternal Health, Millennium Development Goals, Motherhood, Newborn Health, Pregnancy, Save The Children, Social Good, Third Eye Mom, Travel, World Moms Blog, World Voice
We had just spent the night at the source of the Blue Nile River. Lake Tana sits in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, and as our caravan of Land Cruisers wove through the countryside from Bahir Dar to Mosebo I took in deep gulping breaths of sweet fresh Ethiopian air. The lush colors of our surroundings looked to me like they had been enhanced in Photoshop in the way that everything seemed to pop. How could I feel this emotional connection to place that was never mine? A place I had never been?
Though this is my first time in Ethiopia, the verdant landscape brought me back to other rural parts of Africa I’d traveled through in my youth, similar topographies that had stayed with me ever since. This time I’d returned to the continent as a new media fellow with the International Reporting Project to report on newborn health. World Moms Blog Editor Nicole Melancon of ThirdEyeMom is a fellow on the trip as well, and last week wrote about our initial overview of maternal and newborn health in Ethiopia. Now we were heading to one of the villages housing a Health Post, which serves the local and surrounding population of approximately 3,500 people.
Mosebo Village is part of Save The Children’s Saving Newborn Lives program, and as such is looked to as a model village in the Ethiopian Government’s plan to reduce maternal and newborn mortality. Mosebo is a rural agrarian community that produces wheat, teff and corn. There I met seven-year-old Zina whose mother, Mebrate was about to give birth. Through our translator Mebrate estimated her age to be around 26, and told us that Zina was her first child. For economic reasons she and her husband had waited to have a second. When she had Zina, Mebrate had gone to her parent’s home to give birth, as women in Ethiopia often do. It is estimated that 80% of Ethiopian mothers will give birth in their home, often without a trained health care attendant. Towards the end of Mebrate’s first pregnancy she went to live with her parents as her family instructed, until after the baby was born. In that way her mother could help her deliver, could care for her and the baby, and feed her the traditional porridge after birth. Although there were no complications during her delivery, sadly, many young mothers giving birth at home are not as fortunate. The time period during and around birth are the most vulnerable for the lives of both the mothers and babies. The Saving Newborn Lives Program aims to reduce maternal and newborn mortality beginning with awareness programs and antenatal care on the local level at Health Posts like the one we visited in Mosebo.
The Mosebo Health Post and Health Extension Workers
We had met Tirgno and Fasika, the two Health Extension Workers at the Mosebo Health Post earlier that day as they showed us the two room interior, and explained their role in improving maternal and newborn health. They work to raise awareness in the community about the importance of antenatal care, and the potential dangers of giving birth at home for both mother and child. Newborn health is interdependent with maternal health, and the most prevalent causes of newborn mortality, infection, Asphyxiation, pre-maturity or low birth weight, and diarrhea can often be avoided with proper care. These days in Mosebo after receiving antenatal care at the Health Post women are then referred to the regional Health Center for deliveries.
Zina shyly smiled when we ask her how she felt about having a new sibling, she stood straight and tall listening intently as we asked her mother about the babies’ arrival. When Mebrate goes into labor this time, with her second child, she will embark on the walk along rural dirt roads for around an hour to the nearest Health Center to give birth.
Elizabeth Atalay is reporting from Ethiopia as a fellow with the International Reporting Project (IRP). This is an original post written for World Moms Blog.
You can follow all IRP reports by World Moms Elizabeth Atalay & Nicole Melancon at #EthiopiaNewborns
Elizabeth Atalay is a Digital Media Producer, Managing Editor at World Moms Network, and a Social Media Manager. She was a 2015 United Nations Foundation Social Good Fellow, and traveled to Ethiopia as an International Reporting Project New Media Fellow to report on newborn health in 2014. On her personal blog, Documama.org, she uses digital media as a new medium for her background as a documentarian. After having worked on Feature Films and Television series for FOX, NBC, MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Castle Rock Pictures, she studied documentary filmmaking and anthropology earning a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York. Since becoming a Digital Media Producer she has worked on social media campaigns for non-profits such as Save The Children, WaterAid, ONE.org, UNICEF, United Nations Foundation, Edesia, World Pulse, American Heart Association, and The Gates Foundation. Her writing has also been featured on ONE.org, Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, EnoughProject.org, GaviAlliance.org, and Worldmomsnetwork.com. Elizabeth has traveled to 70 countries around the world, most recently to Haiti with Artisan Business Network to visit artisans in partnership with Macy’s Heart of Haiti line, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans. Elizabeth lives in New England with her husband and four children.
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