by Purnima Ramakrishnan | Sep 11, 2012 | Family, Human Rights, India, Inspirational, International, Parenting, Purnima, Religion, Social Good, Spirituality, The Alchemist, United Nations, World Voice
I came to Sahaj Marg before I was born. Well, as confusing as that statement may seem like, it is not. It has been the most startling revelation I have had over the past few years since I became a mother. When did I know my son? Of course, before he was born; when he was within me, a tiny cell; and I dare say, even before that, when conception was yet to take place.I always knew I would be a mother some day and be as loving and sacrificial and benevolent as my mother is. I knew my baby back then, I just had not met him. Similarly, I have not yet met God, but I am coming closer to doing so every day. Sahaj Marg, or “the natural path,” says God is within you; seek him there. And the only way you can do that is in silence. So, sit in silence, call it meditation if you want, feel that Godliness within you, hug it as close as possible and revel in it. It is very simple.
All wonderful things in life are very simple. I will not say if they are difficult or easy. Motherhood is simple and natural, though someone like me cannot claim it to be ‘easy’. But I am forever learning and rejoicing in my new found experiences and motherhood milestones. (more…)
by World Moms Blog | Sep 8, 2012 | Canada, Eva Fannon, France, Grandparent, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Purnima, Saturday Sidebar, Scoops of Joy, Singapore, South Africa, Tara B., The Alchemist, USA, World Moms Blog
This week’s Saturday Sidebar Question comes from World Moms Blog writer Karyn Van Der Zwet.
In honor of grandparents’ day celebrated in some parts of the world this weekend, Karyn asked our writers,
“What do your children call their grandparents?”
Check out what some of our World Moms had to say…
Alison Lee of Malaysia writes:
“My son calls his paternal grandparents ‘Ji-Doh’ (grandfather) and ‘Nona’ (grandmother).”
Carol @ If By Yes of British Columbia, Canada writes:
“My mother in law is Grandma, because all her grandchildren call her that. My father in law is grandpa for the same reason. My mother is Nana, and my father was going to be Grampy, but Owl seems to have labeled him Ba Ba. A lot of the boys on my dad’s side of the family say “Bramy” for grandfathers.”
Eva Fannon of Washington State, USA writes:
“My kids call my parents Abuelo and Abuelita (Spanish for grandfather and an affectionate way of saying grandmother). They call my husband’s parents Pop and Grannie.” (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 Ewa Samples | Sep 4, 2012 | Body Image, Childhood, Family, Motherhood, Poland, Polish Mom Photographer, World Motherhood
A few months ago, my parents had their 45th wedding anniversary. Our gift to them was a photo book. In this one book, my sister (as she was responsible for putting it all together) was able to squeeze almost their entire life and the most important events from their kids lives: our baptisms, our 1st communion rites, our marriages, the births of their grandchildren, and a few family gatherings.
Growing up, I remember a black sack that my parents kept almost all our pictures in, including pictures of my grandparents. (There was just a single photo of my paternal mother, but none of her husband). Apart from that, we had one small photo album. It wasn’t until my adolescent years that we got our first small film camera. Since then, the amount of photo albums started to expand.
After she’d received the anniversary album, my mom Skyped me and showed it to me, even though I was already aware of it it. And yet, during that Skype session, I realized just how few moments from their lives had been captured for us. Compared to what they had accumulated of us in photos, the images that captured their own lives was much less. (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 Elizabeth Atalay | Aug 30, 2012 | 2012, Family, Motherhood, Parenting, World Motherhood
Where in the world do you live? And, are you from there?
I live in Rhode Island, U.S.A, and though I have lived in New York & Maryland, and traveled the world in between, I ended up settling down only an hour from where I grew up in Massachusetts.
What language(s) do you speak?
English, and Spanish at about the level of a five year old.
When did you first become a mother?
I had my first baby when I was 32, which is young compared to my own mother who had her first child at 43.
Are you a stay-at-home mom or do you work outside the home?
I am a stay at home mother, which I had always wanted to be. Having grown up a latch key kid with a working mother, I had always idealized my neighbor who stayed home with her kids, baked cookies and sewed clothes for them. (not that I can sew) (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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by Natalia Rankine-Galloway (Morocco) | Aug 24, 2012 | Being Thankful, Culture, Family Travel, Husband, International, Language, Life Lesson, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Moving, Multicultural, Tunisia, World Motherhood, Younger Children
As anyone who has executed an international move knows, the process is as much excitement as pure terror. In addition to the myriad concerns flying through your head about never seeing your cherished belongings again, there is the fear of the unknown. Where will I buy milk? Will I find a circle of friends? Will I be able to learn the language? What on earth have we signed ourselves up for?
As I make the final preparations and move onto my final five fingers to count the days until we move to Tunis, I have found a way to categorize, if not altogether deal with my fears. I’m a compulsive organizer…what can I say! If I can’t solve a problem, it is at least sitting in the right pile.
As a wife, I fear for the demands that this move will place on my husband’s time. This fear is mitigated by the fact that since we found out about this move, he has been as giddy as a school boy… more excited by his chosen profession than he has been in a long while.
As a mother, I fear for my 18 month old’s fragile understanding of his little world and how we are about to shatter it. He won’t be waking up in the same room, his little friends will all change, and people will be speaking to him in strange tongues, just as he was getting the hang of this English nonsense. But I take comfort in the fact that, although he may not remember this year, it will permanently lodge itself in his psyche, and that I will love discovering this new world through his eyes.
As an entrepreneur, I fear that I won’t be able to accomplish all that I have set out for myself in this upcoming year. While this move is offering me numerous opportunities, I doubt my ability to seize them and to properly maintain my control over the business I have so carefully built over the past year. But as with all things in business, the reward is in the risk….and if nothing else, I will blog my little heart out!
As a woman, I fear the changing political climate in Tunisia. As the country struggles to find its footing after the Jasmine Revolution and the ouster of long-time dictator Ben Ali, a long repressed undercurrent of conservative Islamism is attempting to take hold. What implication this holds for the women of Tunisia, no one can yet say. The nation seems, to this outside observer, to be
so fiercely proud of its moderate stance on women’s rights that a curtailing of their ability to work outside the home or a mandatory enforcement of the hijab seems unlikely. But I am excited to be able to come to know these women and experience first hand how they will play a role in determining their country’s future.
As a traveler, and especially as a traveler with a small child in tow, I fear the baggage, and the train schedules, and the changing of diapers in public restrooms. But I am also happy to infuse my tourist dollars into the many
Tunisian communities desperately missing their visitors since they launched the Arab spring and to discover the vast historical, cultural and culinary treasures my new home has to offer. I can’t wait to introduce you all to my new home as I get to know it thoroughly.
Have you endured the stresses an thrills of an international move? What coping measures have you used to get through it?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by our new writer and newly exported “Tunisian,” Natalia Rankine-Galloway of Culture Baby.
The image used in this post is credited to ReeccaLeeP. It holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Natalia was born a stone's throw from the Queen's racetrack in Ascot, UK and has been trying to get a ticket to the races and a fabulous hat to go with it ever since. She was born to a Peruvian mother and an Irish father who kept her on her toes, moving her to Spain, Ireland and back to the UK before settling her in New York for the length of middle and high school. She is still uncertain of what she did to deserve that.
She fled to Boston for college and then Washington, D.C. to marry her wonderful husband, who she met in her freshman year at college. As a military man, he was able to keep her in the migratory lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. Within 5 months of marriage, they were off to Japan where they stayed for a wonderful 2 and one half years before coming home to roost. Baby Xavier was born in New York in 2011 and has not slept since.
A joy and an inspiration, it was Xavier who moved Natalia to entrepreneurship and the launch of CultureBaby. She has loved forging her own path and is excited for the next step for her family and CultureBaby.
Natalia believes in the potential for peace that all children carry within them and the importance of raising them as global citizens. She loves language, history, art and culture as well as Vietnamese Pho, Argentinian Malbec, English winters, Spanish summers and Japanese department stores...and she still hopes one day to catch the number 9 race with Queen Liz.
You can find her personal blog, The Culture Mum Chronicles.
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by Karyn Wills | Aug 15, 2012 | Family, Motherhood, New Zealand, Parenting, Sports, World Motherhood
Having spent seven years reading about how the human brain works, I am very passionate about restricting our boys’ out of school formal activities. Our ten year-old is only in his second year of playing field hockey and his second year of learning to play the piano. He also chose to learn the Double Bass this year, although I suspect that won’t top his list of things-to-do next year. We haven’t rushed our boys into learning to read (although storytelling and listening to stories are fundamental parts of our day) and we love that they go to a school where homework is limited.
But there is one out of school activity I insist our children participate in for 10 years or more: swimming lessons. (more…)
Karyn is a teacher, writer and solo mother to three sons. She lives in the sunny wine region of Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand in the city of Napier.
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