by Ecoziva (Brazil) | Jan 20, 2014 | 2014, Being Thankful, Brazil, Childhood, Education, Family, Inspirational, Kids, Life Lesson, Maternal Health, Motherhood, Parenting, Relationships, Womanhood, Working Mother, World Motherhood
You know how someone can tell you something that you already knew but in just such a way that finally something “clicks” inside you?
That is what I felt when I read Argentinean psychotherapist, Laura Gutman’s, work recently. Laura Gutman’s books are best-sellers in several Spanish speaking nations, where she is known for promoting conscious mothering.
Three of her books have been translated into Portuguese, of which one has also been published in English. I had heard so many good reviews of this particular one (Maternity, coming to face with our own shadow) that I bought it as a Christmas gift for a friend, who is planning on getting pregnant soon. For another friend, I bought a second one, whose title seemed interesting – it could be roughly translated as The power of maternal discourse.
I confess that – after three kids (including a baby), having read tons of parenting books and with restricted time for reading anything unrelated to work – I didn’t plan on tackling either anytime soon. I didn’t really think there would be anything new. However, when I picked up The power of maternal discourse I couldn’t stop. And immediately after I finished I read Maternity...
Yes, a lot of it was not new to me and some parts I did not fully agree with. Yet, overall the way she said it (and all of the case studies she used as examples) made such a difference that it produced somewhat of a revolution in my life, especially in three areas: my relationship with my mother, my relationship with myself and my relationship with my children. In this part I would like to talk about how it affected my relationship with my mother.
For starters, my relationship with my mother wasn’t exactly affected in a positive way, at least not in practice. In fact, we had a huge fight right after I read the book which ended up in us not spending Christmas together. Yet, although unpleasant, it was necessary as we both said things that had been kept inside for years.
One of the main arguments of The power… is that our own personal story is mostly constructed by what the dominant adult in our childhood (usually our mother) said, which is not necessarily accurate or entirely true. Thus, Gutman states, the unsaid truths are often what hold us back, producing our so-called “shadow”.
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of shadow, it would be our unfaced “dark side”, a side we try to suppress or deny, often at high cost. Additionally, as other authors have argued, we must try to understand, accept and learn from our shadow, and one way to do that would be by trying to reconstruct and examine our true life story.
The power… is not an optimistic book. In fact, from her decades as a therapist, the author believes most people’s lives have been tainted by some sort of childhood abuse. Of course her definition of abuse is ample, yet the examples she brings are quite distressing.
I guess what resonated most with me were her writings on “childish mothers”. More specifically, how many mothers – despite providing adequate physical care for their children and apparently being present – are often emotionally absent and overly self-involved, which results in the child carrying out the mother’s role in many situations. Then, when this child becomes a mother (or a father) the unresolved child within them will make them act childish and emotionally unavailable with their own child(ren) and so on.
Although her ideas were not exactly new, as I said, for some reason many things finally clicked. When adults we all know are parents are flawed and we might even understand and forgive these flaws, yet in practice these flaws may still be hard to deal with. Although we may rationally believe that our mother/father did the best they could to raise us, with the tools and knowledge they had at that moment in their lives – the hurt child in us might still dominate our emotions in practice.
In my case, many things I carried around as being my “fault” were really my mother’s responsibility, and that was surprisingly hard to admit and accept.
On the other hand, Gutman encourages us to step into the adult we are now and make our own choices by understanding and accepting the truth about our past. And hopefully engaging in a better relationship with ourselves and with our own children, which is what I am trying to do now!
And you? How have you dealt with issues related to your own parents? How has resolving (or not) these issues helped you in your relationship with your children?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer in Brazil and mother of three, EcoZiva.
The image used in this post is credited to photographer martinak15. It holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Eco, from the greek oikos means home; Ziva has many meanings and roots, including Hebrew (brilliance, light), Slovenian (goddess of life) and Sanskrit (blessing). In Brazil, where EcoZiva has lived for most of her life, giving birth is often termed “giving the light”; thus, she thought, a mother is “home to light” during the nine months of pregnancy, and so the penname EcoZiva came to be for World Moms Blog.
Born in the USA in a multi-ethnic extended family, EcoZiva is married and the mother of two boys (aged 12 and three) and a five-year-old girl and a three yearboy. She is trained as a biologist and presently an university researcher/professor, but also a volunteer at the local environmental movement.
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by Carol (Canada) | Jan 17, 2014 | Canada, Communication, Death and Dying, Home, Husband, Marriage, Miscarriage, Relationships, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Of all of the illnesses that can descend upon a happy family, I consider depression to be among the worst.
Depression kills.
Suicide is one of the top ten causes of death in Canada. In my age group, it is the #2 killer, after accidental death. I am more likely to die by suicide than from cancer. I am four times more likely to be killed by myself than by a murderer.
My husband is even higher risk. He has a 20% chance of dying by suicide… that’s a 1/5 chance, worse than a toss of a die.
Shortly after my miscarriage, my husband, who has always been prone to depression, became suicidal. He was committed, he went on short term disability, he got put on a bunch of medications, none of which seemed to help.
For months I spent all day at work worried that I would find a corpse when I came home, and wondering how I would explain his death to our three year old son.
Now he seems to have leveled out a bit, and while he still has suicidal thoughts, the chance of him acting on them is much less. But he’s still unable to work, unable to do much of anything. He’s not himself.
I miss him.
Depression affects the mind and body. Not only is the sufferer often physically unable to function, but they also suffer personality changes. That makes life extremely hard for the spouse, because even though I KNOW it is a disease, even though I KNOW my husband is in pain, even though I KNOW it is out of his control…
I sometimes have to work hard not to get frustrated or angry.
Because, quite honestly… a depressed spouse closely resembles a jackass.
For the past 6 months, I have essentially been acting as a single parent, while my husband lay on the couch.
If I was on the outside of this relationship looking in, and I didn’t know about the depression, I would think my husband was a major ass.
But depression is NOT the same as being an ass, and if you are married to a depressed spouse, there are little things you can look for to assure yourself that, yes, they are, in fact, sick and not actually jackasses or jerks.
How To Tell A Depressed Spouse From A Jackass
- A jackass sleeps in every morning, while you get up with the kids…. But a depressed spouse physically cannot be woken up at times, and may sleep for 24 hours straight.
- A jackass doesn’t help around the house… But a depressed spouse knows that your workload is too heavy and is grateful for any housework you manage to do.
- A jackass leaves you to do the majority of the childcare… But a depressed spouse still exerts special effort to stay involved every now and then. He will physically collapse after attempting this.
- A jackass never wants to do your favourite things with you… But a depressed spouse never wants to do his own favourite things any more, either.
- A jackass snaps at you out of the blue all of the time… But a depressed spouse sometimes cries out of the blue, too.
- A jackass wants to live… But a depressed spouse may not.
All you can do is be as kind as understanding as you can. I like to ask myself, “Would it be okay for me to expect this of him if he had cancer?” or “What would I say if he had cancer, instead of depression?” and then I do that. Because he has a deadly disease, and I need to remember that.
The best thing to remember when trying to get through life with a depressed spouse is to constantly remind yourself of this:
- A jackass will always be a jackass… But a depressed spouse used to help with the housework, used to contribute equally to childcare, used to do fun things with you… and will again some day, when he recovers.
Do any of you have loved ones with depression? How do you cope?
This is an original post for World Moms Blog by Carol. She can be found blogging at If By Yes and on Twitter @IfByYesTweets.
Photo credit to Paranoid Monk. This photo has a creative commons attribute license.
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 Tara Bergman (USA) | Jan 10, 2014 | 2013, 2014, Body Image, Health, Life Lesson, Maternal Health, New Year's Resolutions, Stress, Tara B., World Motherhood
I don’t make resolutions for the new year. December is so full of celebrations and commitments, and I find the idea of sitting down to think through the ways I need to improve myself and make the world a better place overwhelming. I’m a change-as-it-strikes-me-anytime-during-the-year kind of gal. When I can help someone or donate my time and resources somewhere, I do it. As for my personal development, I take stock often. So as I am writing this, with 2013 coming to a close, I’m not focusing on who I will be in 2014. Instead, I’m celebrating on a few key changes I made this past year. (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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by Kristyn Zalota | Jan 7, 2014 | 2014, Babies, Birthing, Clean Birth Kits, Health, Humanitarian, Laos, Maternal Health, Social Good, World Moms Blog, World Voice
As many of you know, my organization CleanBirth.org works to make birth safer in Laos, which has among the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the world.
Due to the generous support of so many of you in 2013, with our local Lao partner Our Village Association, CleanBirth.org provided 2,000 AYZH Clean Birth Kits, served 150 villages, trained 15 nurses and 20 Village Volunteers.
The training of the last group, Village Volunteers, is particularly exciting. The nurses we train about Clean Birth Kits and safe birthing practices, have begun passing their knowledge to women from each remote village.
The nurses explain how to use and distribute the Clean Birth Kits, as well as how to track their use with a picture data sheet. They cover topics like safe pregnancy, the importance of having a partner during delivery (many women birth alone) and the importance of exclusive breastfeeding.
Photo provided by CleanBirth.org
A government representative who attended the Village Volunteer training in December 2013 was impressed and said, “We need more of these trainings throughout the Province.” That kind of validation from the government is essential to scaling up the project.
In another positive development that will enable us to expand training for nurses and Village Volunteers, CleanBirth.org has formed an alliance with the Yale University School of Nursing.
In July 2014, Yale Midwifery students will teach 30 local nurses the World Health Organization’s Essentials of Newborn Care. The Essentials are: clean birth, newborn resuscitation, skin to skin newborn care, basic newborn care and breastfeeding. This information will then be incorporated into the Village Volunteers training.
By providing access to the midwives from Yale, our Lao partners, the local nurses and Village Volunteers will have more tools to improve care for mothers and infants. This promotes our mission to make birth safer by empowering those on the ground with the training and resources they need.
We want to maximize the Yale Midwifery visit in July 2014 by raising $8,250 to fund the training of 30 nurses. To that end, CleanBirth.org is launching a crowdfunding campaign from February 4 – March 4.
Photo provided by CleanBirth.org
We are so lucky that World Moms Blog has signed on to support us again this year. During last year’s crowdfunding campaign WMB raised $685 and tons of awareness.
Please join us February 6 from 12-1 EST and 9-10 EST for a World Moms Blog & CleanBirth.org Twitter Party to talk about making birth safe worldwide. It is easy to join in by going to tweetchat and entering #CleanBirth.
Thank you!
Kristyn
This is an original World Moms Blog post by Kristyn Zalota. Kristyn is the founder of CleanBirth.org, a non-profit working to improve maternal and infant health in Laos. She holds MA from Yale, is a DONA doula and Lamaze educator. She lives in New Haven, CT with her husband and two children. Click here to watch Kristyn talking about her project. Email her are kzalota@cleanbirth.org. To find out more check out:
Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/CleanBirth
Twitter:https://twitter.com/CleanBirth
Tumblr:http://cleanbirth.tumblr.com/
Pinterest:https://pinterest.com/cleanbirth/
What do you think is in a Clean Birth kit? Click here to find out!
Kristyn brings her years of experience as an entrepreneur and serial volunteer to CleanBirth.org. She holds a MA, has run small businesses in Russia and the US, and has volunteered in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Uganda on projects related to women’s empowerment.
After having children, Kristyn became an advocate for mothers in the US, as a doula and Lamaze educator, and abroad, as the Founder of CleanBirth.org. She is honored to provide nurses in Laos with the supplies, funding and training they need to lower maternal and infant mortality rates in their villages.
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by Elizabeth Atalay | Dec 17, 2013 | 2013, Babies, Birthing, Clean Birth Kits, Girls, Health, Hospital, Humanitarian, Maternal Health, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Social Good, World Moms Blog, World Voice
In 2000, 189 nations made a promise to free people from extreme poverty and multiple deprivations. This pledge turned into the eight Millennium Development Goals, and was written as the Millennium Goal Declaration .- United Nations Development Programme
MDG #5 is to Improve Maternal Health and we are excited to continue our #Moms4MDG campaign this month by joining forces with Every Mother Counts.
Every Mother Counts is an organization founded by Christy Turlington Burns after her own frightening experience during childbirth. Christy became aware that her scenario could have been fatal, as it is for many women globally, without access to the quality healthcare she had been provided. Every year hundreds of thousands of women die during or due to childbirth, mostly from preventable causes. Every Mother Counts works to reach the goal that no mother should have to give her life while giving birth to another. Tomorrow, in conjunction with our Twitter Parties, World Moms Blog contributor Dee Harlow in Laos features a post on the Every Mother Counts Blog about Maternal Health.
We hope you will also join us tomorrow , December 18th, for our #Moms4MDGs Twitter party to discuss Maternal Health with @everymomcounts at 1:00 EST, and at 9:00 pm EST. See you there!
P.S. Never been to a twitter party before? Go to www.tweetchat.com and put in the hashtag: “#Moms4MDGs during the party times. From there you can retweet and tweet and the hashtag will automatically be added to your tweets. And, from there you can also view all of the party tweets!
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by World Voice Editor, Elizabeth Atalay of Documama in Rhode Island, USA.
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 Fiona Biedermann (Australia) | Dec 16, 2013 | 2013, Being Thankful, Childhood, Domesticity, Grandparent, Kids, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Me-Time, Oceania, Older Children, Parenting, Pregnancy, Siblings, Sleep, Sleep and Children, Womanhood, Working Mother, World Motherhood
Twenty five years ago today I became a mother for the first time. In some ways it feels like a lifetime ago and in some ways it feels like only yesterday that I was gazing at the face of my oldest son, in both awestruck wonder and sheer terror.
I was seventeen years old and I thought I knew it all, as only a teenager can believe. How wrong I was.
Motherhood is the biggest learning curve any woman can embark on and there is no right or wrong. If you love your child, can keep him safe from any major harm and bring him up to be a halfway decent human being, than I think you’re doing alright.
Then again, sometimes all the right parental steps in the world can’t prevent what life throws at us or what our children become.
The thing is, in my case, if I were to do the motherhood thing over again, I’m not sure that there’s a whole lot I would do differently. Although given a chance, I probably wouldn’t be quite so hard on myself and I’d probably take a little bit more time out for me.
As a young mother I felt like I was constantly having to prove myself, I had to try just a little bit harder, put in a just a little bit more effort, complain a little bit less – basically just suck it up and get on with the job of being a mum to prove everyone wrong.
I was my own toughest critic and at times I could beat myself up better than anyone else about how I was failing as a mother.
The truth is, I wasn’t failing as a mother, and I never did. One of my son’s girlfriends once told me how terrified she was that she wouldn’t be a good mum. I told her the very fact that she was worried that she wouldn’t be meant that she would be fine.
As a mother, you do the best you can with what you have.
I believe that no-one can say what is right or wrong about motherhood. Breast fed baby or bottle fed baby, working mum versus stay-at-home-mum. How we raise our children is our choice and that is what contributes to a world full of people with different personalities, who have a multitude of experiences and knowledge to add to the great big melting pot of people.
Yes I’m feeling slightly nostalgic as we celebrate my oldest baby’s birthday today. I consider many of my friends who now have young children and I wonder whether it would have been wiser (like them) to wait until we were better off financially and more established in our careers and life experience.
When our friends were marching up the career ladder, partying hard and taking overseas holidays; hubby and I were having sleepless nights and staying at home making our own fun and eating home cooked meals.
Then I consider the fact that my children didn’t want for the important things, they had food in their bellies, a roof over their heads and a wealth of love and good times. Yes we struggled financially and stress kept me awake on many long nights. My kids might not have had expensive toys and name brand clothes, but they grew up loving the outdoors and learning to make their own fun.
The best things in life definitely were free – money can’t buy things like imagination, sunshine, nature and water.
Now at the age of 42, I’m ready to start living my life. In the last few years I’ve had to sprint up the career ladder to catch up with others my age and that’s had its own set of challenges as well. The good thing is, my youngest baby is now 16 and I’m still youthful enough to enjoy my life and all the challenges which lie ahead.
Besides when I get nostalgic for babies, I now have my grandchildren to love and adore and the energy to still enjoy them – not to mention the added benefit of being able to hand them back.
The reality is, if I had my time to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.
What about you, are there things even now, which you know you would do differently?
This is an original World Moms Blog post by Inspiration to Dream of Adelaide, South Australia. Fiona is the writer of Inspiration to Dream and can be found writing or reading in every spare moment that isn’t filled up with work and her three boys, and of course with a bit of spare time thrown in for hubby as well.
Image credit to Cliparto This image has been used within the terms of use from Cliparto
Fiona at Inspiration to Dream is a married mother of three amazing and talented MM’s (mere males, as she lovingly calls them) aged 13, 16 and 22, and she became a nana in 2011!
She believes she’s more daunted by becoming a nana than she was about becoming a mother! This Aussie mother figures she will also be a relatively young nana and she’s not sure that she’s really ready for it yet, but then she asks, are we ever really ready for it? Motherhood or Nanahood. (Not really sure that’s a word, but she says it works for her.)
Fiona likes to think of herself as honest and forthright and is generally not afraid to speak her mind, which she says sometimes gets her into trouble, but hey, it makes life interesting. She’s hoping to share with you her trials of being a working mother to three adventurous boys, the wife of a Mr Fix-it who is definitely a man’s man and not one of the ‘sensitive new age guy’ generation, as well as, providing her thoughts and views on making her way in the world.
Since discovering that she’s the first blogger joining the team from Australia, she also plans to provide a little insight into the ‘Aussie’ life, as well. Additionally, Fiona can be found on her personal blog at Inspiration to Dream.
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