by Martine de Luna (Philippines) | Feb 15, 2013 | International, Motherhood, Philippines, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
The “class” at the WAHMderful Life Workshop. (Photo courtesy of Manila Workshops)
In the last few months, I’ve seen just how powerful connections are between like-minded moms. That may sound funny, coming from a person who works alone, at home, with no one but husband, kid and kitchen as her constant companions! It’s the reality, of course, of many women like me, who are what I lovingly call “WAHMderful” women.
Being a work at home mom is challenging because you are often isolated, on your own. I felt this way, and I yearned for some form of community to fill in this void. As a mom, I needed to connect with other women who knew what I was going through as a mom who worked from home. I was hungry for the companionship of fellow moms who understood my dreams, my goals, my intentions as a parent.
And so, I made a bold intention, which I broadcast to the universe (and the people who read my blog): I wanted to create an event by work at home women, for work at home women. This event would connect, inspire and empower the work-at-home community in Manila to be the best mothers and homemakers they could be.
In short: It happened. Twice, in fact! 
We recently held our second “WAHMderful Life” workshop here in Manila. It was a meeting of the minds, as around 70 women (and two dads!) got together for a day of learning, support and empowerment. Our topic? Well, working from home, naturally! Aside from that, we had specific streams about actual work-at-home jobs for moms. It was all pretty informative! In fact, it was so successful (just like the first event, last October 2012), that we are re-running this workshop again this year. Best of all, I got to see one of my life list goals come to fruition.
And you know what? Seeing the fruit just motivates me to pursue more of my goals for the WAHM community. (more…)
Martine is a work-at-home Mom and passionate blogger. A former expat kid, she has a soft spot for international efforts, like WMB. While she's not blogging, she's busy making words awesome for her clients, who avail of her marketing writing, website writing, and blog consulting services. Martine now resides in busy, sunny Manila, the Philippines, with her husband, Ton, and toddler son, Vito Sebastian. You can find her blogging at DaintyMom.com.
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by World Moms Blog | Feb 9, 2013 | Communication, Cooking, Food, Japan, Language, Saturday Sidebar, World Moms Blog
This week’s Saturday Sidebar Question comes from Alison Lee of Writing, Wishing. She asked our writers,
“How can you tell someone you love them without using words?”
Check out what some of our World Moms had to say…
Ms. V of South Korea writes:
“By listening and being present, being willing to sit with their joy and their pain without trying to fix things.” (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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by Ana Gaby | Feb 6, 2013 | Indonesia, Motherhood, Parenting, Siblings, World Motherhood, Younger Children
I have been blessed with two sons. My oldest is almost three years old and my baby just turned one. My pregnancies went as expected, bloating, swelling, nausea and horrible morning sickness, you know, the usual. However, the first breaths of life of each of my boys have been completely different.
Evan, my oldest came out of the womb kicking and screaming. Two nurses had to hold him down in order to be able to aspirate his nose. He was loud and restless from the first second, and he still is.
Joshua, my baby, came out with the calmest demeanor and the wisest look I’ve seen on a baby’s face. From his first minutes of life he seemed to be taking everything in and seemed at peace with his new environment.
When Josh was born, I thought to myself, “I’ve made it.” I already have a toddler and I know exactly what to do. I thought that all the things that worked with Evan would immediately work with Josh and that the things Evan enjoyed, Josh would, too.
Boy, was I wrong. (more…)
Ana Gaby is a Mexican by birth and soul, American by heart and passport and Indonesian by Residence Permit. After living, studying and working overseas, she met the love of her life and endeavored in the adventure of a lifetime: country-hopping every three years for her husband’s job. When she's not chasing her two little boys around she volunteers at several associations doing charity work in Indonesia and documents their adventures and misadventures in South East Asia at Stumble Abroad.
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by Maureen | Feb 1, 2013 | Education, Family, Indonesia, Kids, Life Balance, Motherhood, Parenting, Scoops of Joy, Single Mother, Working Mother, World Motherhood, Younger Children
“Come here, baby…”
He snuggled closer to me, allowing me to inhale a faint smell of his shampoo on his thick, getting-too-long hair.
For a boy who is no longer a baby who can be dead stubborn about his ways sometimes, I am lucky he still wants to snuggle close to his mother.
His working mother that is.
Yes, I returned to the corporate world last December after being a work-from-home mom for almost a year.
While I enjoyed returning to my old job, excited that my previous employer offered it to me, and happy to see my old friends again, there’s part of me that feels guilty – again.
Same old cycle of guilt…the working mom’s guilt. (more…)
by Melanie Oda (Japan) | Jan 23, 2013 | Japan, Motherhood, World Motherhood
Teru-teru Bozu
As I write, the kids (and my husband) are glued to the TV, watching the weather, trying to determine when and where Typhoon #17 will make landfall, carefully calculating whether or not they will have to go to school (and work).
I’ve spent the morning doing laundry while I can (having no dryer puts the laundry at the mercy of the heavens), doing the grocery shopping while I can, and bringing inside anything that might be blown away or blown into a window. Been there, done that, paid 5000 yen.
The winds have picked up a bit, and the air has turned heavy and humid. The children have to periodically brush away the curtains that keep being blown into their faces as they play by the open window on the floor.
They will go to bed tonight, excited and anxious, like American kids waiting for a snow day. Except of course there will be no playing outside in a typhoon! They’re looking forward to staying home, watching daytime TV, building a metropolis out of legos, and (I’ll be honest) fighting with each other. (more…)
If you ask Melanie Oda where she is from, she will answer "Georgia." (Unless you ask her in Japanese. Then she will say "America.") It sounds nice, and it's a one-word answer, which is what most people expect. The truth is more complex. She moved around several small towns in the south growing up. Such is life when your father is a Southern Baptist preacher of the hellfire and brimstone variety.
She came to Japan in 2000 as an assistant language teacher, and has never managed to leave. She currently resides in Yokohama, on the outskirts of Tokyo (but please don't tell anyone she described it that way! Citizens of Yokohama have a lot of pride). No one is more surprised to find her here, married to a Japanese man and with two bilingual children (aged four and seven), than herself. And possibly her mother.
You can read more about her misadventures in Asia on her blog, HamakkoMommy.
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by Elizabeth Atalay | Jan 22, 2013 | Childhood, Cultural Differences, Health, India, Motherhood, Shot@Life, Vaccines, World Events, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood, Younger Children
The Author’s Mother
She had one leg shorter than the other. Not in such a glaringly obvious way that one would immediately notice, but you could tell if you studied her walk or she pointed it out to you, like she did to me when I was little.
I couldn’t fully understand the story as a child, but my mother had contracted Polio when she was around three years old, and almost died. I remember that part because she had two names. Mildred was the name she was given at birth, and Goldie was the name she was re-named after she had recovered, as is customary in the case of near death experiences in the Jewish religion.
By the time I was born, the Polio vaccine had been developed and was administered widely to children in the United States. Polio was nearly eradicated in this country by then, and so the story of my mother’s near death from Polio became to me a long-ago folk tale from her childhood.
Sadly, that has not been the case for the rest of the world. Sure the numbers have dropped 99% since 1988 when there were 350,000 known cases around the world, to the 218 reported cases in 2012. Still, the fact is, that as long as Polio remains in even one child, children the world over are at risk of contracting the disease. The victims of the highly infectious Poliomyelitis virus that attacks the nervous system are usually children younger than five years old.
(more…)
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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