by Kirsten Doyle (Canada) | Nov 2, 2015 | Canada, Family, International, Me-Time, Travel
In less than a week, I am going to travel to South Africa to see assorted friends and family members. I will escape the dreary November weather and get an extra month of summer in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. I will spend lazy days with my mom and my brother, hang out with the woman who has been my best friend since we were ten, and meet someone who, until now, has been my friend in the online world only.
It will be fantastic. I haven’t seen the folks “back home” for almost four years, and as small as the world has become thanks to the wonders of technology, there’s just nothing quite like being in the same room as a parent, a sibling, a friend. In any case, I am desperate for the break. Events of the summer have well and truly hammered me, and I am exhausted. I have worked myself into a state of near-collapse, and I am looking forward to just stopping.
There’s just one thing. I am not taking my husband or kids with me. I recognize that this month away will be good not only for me, but for the kids from a life-learning perspective. But the thought that I will kiss my family goodbye and then turn and walk away from them makes my heart twist.
I haven’t even started packing yet, and already I am tearing up as I think of them going to bed on the night of my departure without their goodnight kiss from Mommy.
The thing is, I am not used to going anywhere without my husband and kids. Although I have been to South Africa by myself twice since the kids were born, both trips were prompted by deaths in the family. This is the first time I am going away by myself for an extended period, for the sole purpose of having fun. No one has died. I do not have to attend a funeral or pick up ashes from a crematorium. I don’t have to visit a lawyer to hear a will read, or deal with the bizarre amount of admin generated by the death of a family member.
Like most moms, I have succeeded in turning the concept of guilt into an art form. I feel guilty when I sneak out of the house for a quick solo trip to the convenience store, never mind getting onto a plane to travel to the other side of the world. But for the sake of my own sanity, I have had to put a lid on the guilt – otherwise I wouldn’t even get as far as the boarding gate.
I have to constantly remind myself that the boys will be OK – and I know they will be. I have been preparing them for my departure without making too big a deal of it. I have promised them that I will bring them a really cool gift from Africa. I am making a countdown calendar for my autism boy. Teachers at both of their schools have promised to look out for them and make extra allowances for them. We have started planning fun activities to do together after I get back.
It is not lost on me that I am fortunate to have such a supportive husband. I don’t feel that I need his permission for this trip, but I do know that many moms wanting to undertake a similar venture would face resistance, or even downright refusal.
My husband wants me to go, and he wants me to have a good time. I suspect that he and the kids are looking forward to spending some “boy time” together.
There will be a tricky moment at the airport when I will have to fight the urge to cry in public. After my husband and children have said their goodbyes and left, I will have to duck into a stall in the washroom to let some tears flow. And then I will board the plane and fly to South Africa to spend time in the land of my birth, with loved ones I haven’t seen for a long time.
When I come back to my adopted country, the Canada I am so proud to be a citizen of, I will be refreshed and rested, ready to take on real life, and excited to be in the warm embrace of my husband and sons.
Would your family be supportive of you taking a long trip without them? What strategies have you used to help your kids, both before and during your travel?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Kirsten Doyle of Canada. Photo credit to the author.
Kirsten Doyle was born in South Africa. After completing university, she drifted for a while and finally washed up in Canada in 2000. She is Mom to two boys who have reached the stage of eating everything in sight (but still remaining skinny).
Kirsten was a computer programmer for a while before migrating into I.T. project management. Eventually she tossed in the corporate life entirely in order to be a self-employed writer and editor. She is now living her best life writing about mental health and addictions, and posting videos to two YouTube channels.
When Kirsten is not wrestling with her kids or writing up a storm, she can be seen on Toronto's streets putting many miles onto her running shoes. Every year, she runs a half-marathon to benefit children with autism, inspired by her older son who lives life on the autism spectrum.
Final piece of information: Kirsten is lucky enough to be married to the funniest guy in the world.
Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Be sure to check out her YouTube channels at My Gen X Life and Word Salad With Coffee!
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by Tina Marie Ernspiker | Oct 30, 2015 | 2015, Boys, Expat Life, Family, Health, Husband, Kids, Life Lesson, Living Abroad, Mexico, Motherhood, Parenting, World Motherhood, Younger Children
As a wife of one and a mom of four, it seems like I am always learning and discovering! I know I am not alone. It doesn’t matter where we live, let’s just admit it:
The world is a big place, life is a lesson, and children can be the best teachers.
Previously my series, Life Lessons with Mexico Mom, was hosted on Los Gringos Locos. Starting today, I will host it here on World Moms Blog. Look for it the last Friday of every month. I hope you will join us for our continuing adventures in Mexico and beyond. You won’t be disappointed 😉
Here are my most recent insights and experiences as a Mexico Mom: (more…)
by Carol (Canada) | Oct 22, 2015 | 2015, Babies, Being Thankful, Canada, Communication, Culture, Family, Feminism, Husband, Kids, Life Balance, Marriage, Me-Time, Mental Health, Motherhood, Parenting, Responsibility, World Motherhood, Younger Children
My husband doesn’t like babies. That’s a problem, because in Canada, men are expected to share parenting duties. Women expect help from their husband when a baby is born, and I wasn’t any different. (more…)
Carol from If By Yes has lived in four different Canadian provinces as well as the Caribbean. Now she lives in Vancouver, working a full time job at a vet clinic, training dogs on the side, and raising her son and daughter to be good citizens of the world.
Carol is known for wearing inside-out underwear, microwaving yoghurt, killing house plants, over-thinking the mundane, and pointing out grammatical errors in "Twilight". When not trying to wrestle her son down for a nap, Carol loves to read and write.
Carol can also be found on her blog, If By Yes, and on Twitter @IfByYesTweets
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by Marie Kléber | Oct 19, 2015 | Divorce, Family, France, Kids, Relationships
When you first separate, you are a big mess but you are full of hope that you’ll just manage everything well, mostly with the father of your children.
You have thought about this many times, when you have heard about friends or acquaintances getting a divorce and fighting like mad people over this or that, without a thought for their poor children, who are completely lost between Mum and Dad, not knowing where to go, what to believe, or how to feel about all of this.
You are good at reassuring yourself. You won’t go that way and you’ll do everything in your power to protect your kids in this painful situation. You are very good at telling yourself that what happened between you and your ex-husband has nothing to do with the father he is and the relationship he has or will have with his children. You think that it’ll be easy to make the distinction between the man and the dad. Until it’s not.
After our separation and all the tears I shed, all the pain I had to overcome, I was ready to let my boy’s father have a chance to know him and develop a harmonious relationship with him. It was tough at first, tough to put aside my feelings, every memory of what we went through as a couple. But I did it considering my child’s best interests.
And I opened a door, to give us all a chance to build a brighter future for our boy, knowing that this would be quite difficult for all of us, that we’d need to give it time and that we’d have to celebrate successes without taking failures too seriously.
After a while, after many ups and downs on the road, I realised that sometimes you can’t make it easier for your little ones. Sometime there is a deeper problem.
I still try my best not to say anything bad about my boy’s father in front of him. I try my best to keep my anger away from him. But I find it difficult to make the distinction between Dad and ex-husband – maybe because he is not much of a dad, because he does not make any effort to make things go smoothly. I still find it hard to talk to my boy about his dad with joy and happiness. And when I hear my precious one saying with his innocent voice, “I miss you, Dad”, it breaks my heart.
How do you manage shared time with the father of your kid? Did you stay in good terms? Do you find it hard to let father and kids have the space they deserve?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Marie Kleber of France. Photo credit to the author.
Marie is from France and is living near Paris, after spending 6 years in Irlande. She is a single mum of one, sharing her time between work, family life and writing, her passion. She already wrote 6 books in her native langage.
She loves reading, photography, meeting friends and sharing life experiences. She blogs about domestic abuse, parenting and poetry @https://mahshiandmarshmallow.wordpress.com
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by Mannahattamamma (UAE) | Oct 15, 2015 | Boys, Education, Family, Feminism, UAE, Women's Rights
“My grandmother told me that a woman is like the neck and the man is the head,” my student said. “Important but supportive.” The rest of the students in my class on “Global Women Writers” nodded their head in agreement. None of the students is from the same country—in fact, their nationalities pretty much span the globe—but apparently they’d all been given similar sorts of instructions. One girl had been told that she should plan on being an accountant because it would be easy to quit when she got married; another girl said that her mother worried that her brains were going to be threatening to her potential husband.
It’s been interesting to listen to these girls—young women, really—explore history and culture through our readings: we’ve spent time in ancient Japan with Lady Murasaki and Sei Shonagon, visited 17th century Spain with Sor Juana, bounced around the 19th century with Mary Shelley (and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft) and Charlotte Bronte; read Chimimanda Adichie’s TED Talk “We Should All Be Feminists,” and then traced Adichie’s ideas back to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own—and back again to Sor Juana.
The list of readings is longer than what I have listed here—we will go to India, New Zealand, Egypt, Nigeria, and the UAE before the term is over—but the students have already noticed a pattern. No matter where we are in time and space, we find variations on the same theme: lack of access. Lack of access to money, education, safety, autonomy—the particulars may change, but always the obstacles seem rooted in the material reality of being female, and how the category of “woman” has been valued (or devalued) through the course of human history.
Sor Juana joined a convent so that she could pursue her studies instead of being forced into marriage and motherhood; Jane Eyre famously declared that women “feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint … precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings…”
“I love Jane,” exclaimed one student when we read that passage in the novel. “It’s like she’s speaking to me!” When students respond to ideas in the course, I am always delighted, but in this instance, I had to pause.
What does it mean that the struggles of an early 19th century heroine still resonate with a 21st century reader? I know, of course, that men struggle with feeling limited in their choices—as I remind my students, “gender” is something everyone has (although I’ve noticed that when students talk about “gender roles” they mostly talk about women). All the same, however, wouldn’t you have thought that by 2015, we would laugh at the attitudes Jane complains about because they seem so old-fashioned? Instead we experience a flash of recognition that in Jane’s world, as in our own, society insists on placing boundaries around women’s lives.
When I proposed teaching this course, a colleague asked why I had to specify “women.” She wondered why I didn’t just teach a course called “The Global Novel” or something like that. It’s a reasonable question, I suppose, but I think the answer connects, in a way, to why the United Nations decided, two years ago, to declare 11 October the International Day of the Girl: “Empowerment of and investment in girls are key in breaking the cycle of discrimination and violence and in promoting and protecting the full and effective enjoyment of their human rights.” (Click here to see how World Moms Blog celebrated this day.)
Don’t get me wrong – I am the mother of two boys (and no daughters) and while I know that my sons face gender-related struggles, I also know (because I was once a girl, and am now verging on “crone”) that men have not been as systematically pushed to the margins of history. It’s why we have “Secretary Day,” in the U.S., rather than “CEO Day.” We create formal occasions to notice those who would otherwise be silenced, overlooked.
I teach “Global Women’s Writing” because we live in a world where “woman” gets all too easily pushed out of the picture. Ironically, I teach the course in hopes that one day I won’t need to. Perhaps my students–our children–will inherit a world where we don’t need “International Day of the Girl” or a course in “women” writers. Do you think we’ll ever get there?
This post is original to the World Moms’ Blog. Deborah Quinn occasionally blogs at mannahattamamma.com and writes a regular column for The National, the English-language paper of the UAE. Her most recent column can be found here.
Photo credit to the author.
After twenty-plus years in Manhattan, Deborah Quinn and her family moved to Abu Dhabi (in the United Arab Emirates), where she spends a great deal of time driving her sons back and forth to soccer practice. She writes about travel, politics, feminism, education, and the absurdities of living in a place where temperatures regularly go above 110F.
Deborah can also be found on her blog, Mannahattamamma.
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by Tara Bergman (USA) | Oct 9, 2015 | 2015, Boys, Celebrations, Childhood, Communication, Family, Gifts, Helping, Kids, Milestones, Parenting, Tara B., Traditions, USA, World Motherhood, Younger Children
My son turns 10 years old this fall. At the start of the summer, I told my husband that before school reconvened, I intended to have the talk with my son about Santa. While my son has never pushed for answers regarding holiday magic, he is in a multi-age program at school with older, brainy kids. My gut has been telling me that this is the year that Santa’s cover would be blown. I also know my son well enough to know I wanted to control the conversation and not have a big talking fifth grader accidentally ruin Christmas at the last minute. I wanted to work through this far enough away from the holiday so we could all get used to the idea. I knew if I framed things the right way, my son would still be able to welcome the upcoming holiday season. I was resigned to move ahead. (more…)
Tara is a native Pennsylvanian who moved to the Seattle area in 1998 (sight unseen) with her husband to start their grand life adventure together. Despite the difficult fact that their family is a plane ride away, the couple fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and have put down roots. They have 2 super charged little boys and recently moved out of the Seattle suburbs further east into the country, trading in a Starbucks on every corner for coyotes in the backyard. Tara loves the outdoors (hiking, biking, camping). And, when her family isn't out in nature, they are hunkered down at home with friends, sharing a meal, playing games, and generally having fun. She loves being a stay-at-home mom and sharing her experiences on World Moms Network!
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In less than a week, I am going to travel to South Africa to see assorted friends and family members. I will escape the dreary November weather and get an extra month of summer in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. I will spend lazy days with my mom and my brother, hang out with the woman who has been my best friend since we were ten, and meet someone who, until now, has been my friend in the online world only.
