by Wall Street Mama (USA) | Jan 12, 2013 | Education, Health, Life Balance, Maternal Health, Pregnancy, Saturday Sidebar, Vacationing, Wedding, World Moms Blog, Younger Children
This week’s Saturday Sidebar Question comes from World Moms Blog writer Alison Lee. She asked our writers,
“What are your wishes for the new year?”
Check out what some of our World Moms had to say…
The Alchemist of India writes:
“I intend to, hope to, take inspiration from Ruth Wong and complete my novel. The publisher is ready, but I am still working with the plot!
As for World Moms Blog, I am hoping to do some work in Social Good.
Maybe if I can get this novel published in 2013, I will consider my wish granted!” (more…)
Wall Street Mama was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago and moved to NJ when she was a teenager. She fell in love with New York City and set her mind to one thing after college – working on Wall Street. She has spent the last 16 years working on the trading floor at three major banks. As an Institutional Salesperson, she is responsible for helping large corporations and money funds invest their short term cash in the fixed income part of the market. She lives in the suburbs of central NJ with her husband of 11 years, their amazing 21 month old boy and their first baby – a very spoiled Maltese. She has baby #2 on the way and is expecting a little girl in June 2012. She is a full time working mother and struggles with “having it all” while wondering if that is even possible.
Wall Street Mama was married at the age of 25 but waited to have children because she felt she was too focused on her career which required a lot of traveling and entertaining. When she was finally ready, she thought she could plan the exact month she was ready to have a child, like everything else she planned in her life. She was shocked and frustrated when things did not go according to her plan. Fast forward four years later, after a miscarriage and several rounds of failed fertility injections, her little miracle was conceived naturally. She never thought in a million years, that she and her husband would be in their late 30’s by the time they had their first child.
Since the financial crisis of 2008, she has endured some of the most difficult years of her life. The stress of trying to conceive was combined with some of life’s biggest challenges. She and her husband, who is a trader, both lost their jobs on Wall Street the exact same month. Her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and she ended up passing away while she was 6 months pregnant. At times it didn’t seem like things would ever get better, but she has learned that life is cyclical and what comes down must again go up.
Leaving her baby boy with a wonderful nanny each day is difficult, but at times it is easier than she would have expected. She still enjoys the seemingly addictive draw of working on Wall Street. The past few years have been dramatically different from the “good days” but she is focused on trying to achieve what she once had before. She is currently working on launching her own blog, Wall Street Mama, in an attempt to guide others who are focused on continuing their career, yet struggle with leaving their little ones at home. She is weathering the ups and downs of the market and motherhood, one day at a time.
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by Sophie Walker (UK) | Jan 11, 2013 | Autism, Babies, Being Thankful, Childhood, Discipline, Domesticity, Education, Family, France, Girls, Hobby, Holiday, Home, Humor, Inspirational, Kids, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Me-Time, Motherhood, Parenting, Running, Sophie Walker, Special Needs, Spirituality, Working Mother, World Motherhood, Younger Children
My mum used to say to me: “Don’t wish your life away.”
Nowadays I sometimes feel as though that’s all I do. To be more specific, I’m organizing my life away.
With four kids, my job, my husband’s job, and the diaries of both our ex-partners to co-ordinate, there are often times when I look up from the calendar and realise I’ve scheduled myself right out of the current school term and into the next-but-one.
This can be particularly painful when I have to re-adapt to not being in warm late summer and that campsite in France but instead in bleak mid-winter suburbia. January is a bad month for making wishes and looking away from the here and now. “I want to be thinner/fitter/better employed/better loved by X month,” we tell ourselves, shading our eyes as we scan the horizon for that magical time when everything will be perfect.
The temptation to hurry past moments of disappointment or frustration is immense, and only human. I feel this keenly as the mother of a child with autism. School is a big issue for us, and the day-to-day of persuading my child to go and, once there, to participate, is exhausting. (more…)
Writer, mother, runner: Sophie works for an international news agency and has written about economics, politics, trade, war, diplomacy and finance from datelines as diverse as Paris, Washington, Hong Kong, Kabul, Baghdad and Islamabad. She now lives in London with her husband, two daughters and two step-sons.
Sophie's elder daughter Grace was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome several years ago. Grace is a bright, artistic girl who nonetheless struggles to fit into a world she often finds hard to understand. Sophie and Grace have come across great kindness but more often been shocked by how little people know and understand about autism and by how difficult it is to get Grace the help she needs.
Sophie writes about Grace’s daily challenges, and those of the grueling training regimes she sets herself to run long-distance events in order to raise awareness and funds for Britain’s National Autistic Society so that Grace and children like her can blossom. Her book "Grace Under Pressure: Going The Distance as an Asperger's Mum" was published by Little, Brown (Piatkus) in 2012. Her blog is called Grace Under Pressure.
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by Meredith (USA) | Dec 21, 2012 | Education, Family, Health, International, Kids, Life Lesson, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Nigeria, Parenting, USA, World Motherhood
Lagos, Nigeria
I am forever changed by a place I never dreamed I would go, let alone live. A piece of my heart will always remain in Nigeria, and the images I saw there will forever be etched in my mind.
Each time I flip on my light switch, I remember how fortunate I am to have reliable power and not have to worry about how much fuel we have left in our generator because the power system is so unreliable.
Each time I can run clean water to drink, or for my children to bathe in, I remember how blessed I am to have a clean water supply. There were so many times my daughter’s school did not have water to flush the toilets because the water tank had run out and the water delivery trucks had broken down en route to deliver water from a bore hole.
Each time I make a call on my phone, I remember how lucky I am to have reliable phone service. There were so many times the cell phone towers were down or the internet wasn’t working. (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 Margie Webb (USA) | Dec 20, 2012 | Motherhood, School, Uncategorized, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
In six months, I will celebrate my 40th birthday and as I grow older, there are things that I begin to know for certain. At the top of my list is the fact that it’s never too late to further your education. As you, dear reader, peruse this blog post, I will be graduating in the Fall Commencement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. A journey that I started on four years ago will finally be reaching its destination.
As I have written about in previous blog posts, my life has been a rollercoaster journey of bad decisions. I trudged through my teens and early 20s in a fog of low self-esteem and insecurity. There was always a running monologue in my mind of why I just wasn’t good enough. Despite being a single mother to two children, I bounced from one low paying job to the next and was never sure of exactly where I would end up.
But then, five years ago, something miraculous occurred: my life completely and utterly fell apart and I was forced to rebuild from almost scratch. I can attest that hitting the utter rockiest of bottoms can be a lifesaving event. Somewhere in that process, I began to make valuable changes to how I thought of myself. (more…)
Margie Webb is a forty-something, divorced mom of three biracial sons: Isaiah (25), Caleb (20), and Elijah (6/8/1997 - 7/2/1997) and two bonus sons: Malcolm (5/10/1992 - 10/9/2015) and Marcus (25). She lives in Lafayette,
Louisiana by way of Little Rock, Arkansas, and enjoys traveling, attending the theater, cooking calling the Hogs during Arkansas Razorback football season, spending time with family and friends, and is a crazy cat lady.
In addition to obtaining her Bachelors and Masters degree, she also has a Graduate Certificate in Online Writing Instruction and a National HR Certification through SHRM. She excels in her career as a Human Resources Management professional. Additionally, she has represented World Moms Network as a Digital Reporter at various conferences, including the United Nations Social Good Summit.
Her life has been one big adventure in twists, turns ,extreme lows, and highs. After recently embracing her new lease on life and her identity in the LGBTQ community, she is excited about what is yet to come. She can be found on Twitter@TheHunnyB
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by Melanie Oda (Japan) | Dec 17, 2012 | Childhood, Cultural Differences, Education, Eye on Culture, Family, Holiday, International, Japan, Living Abroad, Religion, Traditions, World Events, Younger Children
Christians are a minority in Japan, comprising only 1% of the population. Well, actually I’d say anyone who is “serious” about their religion is a minority here.
The Japanese, in general, have a very laid back approach to it, adding and subtracting as they see fit, often participating in a mish-mash of rites from various beliefs that can be quite surprising to the outsider.
It is often said that Japanese are born Shinto, marry as Christians, and die as Buddhists. This is referring to the popularity of the “100 Day Ceremony” held at the Shinto shrine when a baby has attained that landmark, the Christian-esque chapel weddings that are popular with young couples, and the Buddhist funerals most families choose to have.
I guess you could say they like to cover their bases in Japan.
As a result, Japan often seems to have trouble understanding why the rest of the world gets so worked up about Christmas. I wouldn’t consider myself devout, by any means, but I have found myself in an uncomfortable position many times when it is expected that I should just be okay with praying at a Shinto shrine or throwing money into the collection box at a temple. Usually, I just stand respectfully by and draw as little attention to my non-praying heathen outsiderness as possible.
The kids, though, are often forced to participate. (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 Purnima Ramakrishnan | Dec 7, 2012 | Childhood, Competition, Culture, Education, Eye on Culture, Family, India, International, Kids, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Purnima, School, The Alchemist, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Purnima’s son dressed up as a ‘Rockstar’ for the Fancy Dress Competition.
Here in India there are a lot of competitions conducted for children in a healthy way. Our son recently took part in a competition in early November. You see, it is Children’s Day on the 14th of November and the kids who win are awarded on that day.
It was a fancy dress competition. He was all dressed up. He had reached the final round after clearing two intermediate rounds. He dressed up as a ‘Rockstar’ for the first round and then as ‘The Earth’ for the second round. For the finals, the topic was a bit tricky. We had to dress up depicting any opposite. So I was thinking of good and evil and hot and cold and such things. But he came with Indoor and Outdoor games. Maybe they are not really opposites, so I got a confirmation from the teacher-in-charge and then dressed him up to depict Indoor and Outdoor games.
And just when we were waiting for his chance to get on stage and perform, there was a mother, whose child’s only competition was my son. She came up to us, and tried to discourage my son and demotivate him. I tried to shield him away from her and her stinging words. She joked about it so that I wouldn’t take offense and complain…but tried to do the damage nevertheless.
(more…)
