by Ms. V. (South Korea) | Feb 11, 2014 | 2014, Korea, Moving, Pregnancy, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood, World Voice
After several very happy years here in Seoul, we are returning stateside. As I reflect on our time here and the coming transitions ahead I am feeling a bit anxious, a bit sad, and quite sentimental. I’m digging deep, hoping to find some excitement in there too, but so far no luck.
The day we left Seattle and moved to Asia we showed up at the airport with four large bags, three cats, and one golden retriever. I’m sure adding the 32-week pregnant weepy lady to the mix and the concerned husband trying to keep us all together, we were quite a sight to behold.
This time, we’ll be showing up with some more large bags, three cats, one toddler, and yet again, a weepy pregnant lady, this time 28 weeks pregnant.
Apparently I am destined to only move to the other side of the world while very pregnant.
Like everywhere else in the world, there is a lot to love about Korea as well as a lot of room for improvement, but it will always hold a special spot in my heart as it is where my husband and I first became parents. Being so far away from our families and friends as we made that huge transition was both challenging, and freeing. It was hard, but we had lots of space to make mistakes and figure out who we were, and who we wanted to be in those roles with no outside, though well-meaning, pressure or advice. That was and is priceless.
Seoul is an incredibly comfortable place to live. It’s a massive city with every amenity you could ever imagine and many that you couldn’t. (Cat café, anyone?) There is abundant, affordable, and efficient public transit, the streets are clean and safe, and you could never run out of things to do and see.
The things I will miss most:
Accommodation of and attitudes towards children. Probably partially due to the low birth rate and partially to the deeply emphasized culture of family, children are valued here in a way that I have never witnessed elsewhere. Thoughtful amenities for mothers and small children abound. There are public nursery spaces in department stores, train stations, bus stations, and elsewhere that offer clean and comfortable places to change a diaper, feed a hungry baby, or lay one down for a nap. Beyond this there is a general attitude of celebration and excitement surrounding babies, even if they are cranky and loud. I’ve never gotten anything other than sympathy and supportive offers of help when I’ve been out and about with a crying baby. Children have their own holiday here, Children’s Day, and it is a very big deal. The phrase “it takes a village” to raise a child is one that seems to be taken to heart here.
The greater good is more important than individual. This one can be a double-edged sword, obviously, but it is, in my humble opinion, the secret to the rapid economic growth and progress that Korea has seen in the last 50 years. Koreans take a great deal of pride in their “all for one and one for all” attitude and they have a lot to show for it: a 97% literacy rate; some of the highest test scores in the world in reading, math, and the sciences; a low unemployment rate; and national health insurance. This means Koreans have access to health care, quality education, and work at greater rates than many other developed countries. The value of this cannot be underestimated. Again, there are two sides to every coin, but for someone like me, coming from a country that focuses more on the rights of the individual this has been an interesting thing to observe. It reminds me of how my grandparents used to describe the American spirit during and immediately after WWII.
The food. Oh how I could go on and on about the food. Korean food is just amazing. It is simple, mostly healthful, colorful, and delicious. I will miss it terribly.
The things I’m looking forward to:
Friends and family. While it has been nice to have our space as we became parents, we’ve also deeply missed our loved ones. To have them closer, to be able to visit more frequently, will be a very welcome change. Especially with a new baby on the way! I have no idea what it’s like to have a new baby and have friends and family at the ready to offer help, food, shoulders to cry on, and ears for listening.
The food. Ok, so I love Korean food but I’m also going to love having easy access to all the old familiar and favorite ingredients. I’ve learned to do without in the years we’ve been here, but I’m pretty darn excited about easily getting my hands on pretty much anything I want.
Green, green, green. Speaking of double-edged swords, the rain in the Pacific Northwest may be a particular challenge to my constitution, but the luscious green it brings with it cannot be ignored. I love Seoul and I love big cities in general, but I am looking forward to that crisp mountain air, the beauty and peacefulness of Puget Sound, and all those evergreens.
As we slowly pack our things and make preparations for our departure, I feel so very grateful to have experienced this culture, which is so completely different to the one I was born into. The thing I have learned first and foremost is the abiding truth that humans are all much more alike than they are different.
Korean culture is valuable on it’s own, of course, but seen more generally in contrast to Western culture, it has given me an opportunity to observe a very different way of approaching society and the world in general. The way societies choose to organize themselves offers deep insights into what they value most. As with everything, these values are constantly changing and I look forward to being a keen observer of both Eastern and Western values as I age. Both have much to learn from each other and a balance between the two seems to me to be ideal. I’d like to see a deep and abiding commitment to the family structure without preset ideas of who and what makes a valid family; an emphasis on the common good that also allows for free expression and individuality; a high value placed on education and literacy that does not put undue pressure on students to seek perfection. I could go on but I will end here by saying that I look forward to incorporating the best of both cultures into my life and family, as a start.
I’ll be writing again from our new home in Washington State, once we get settled. In the meantime, be well!
This is an original post to World Moms Blog.
Have you ever lived abroad? What are the things you miss about where you were or home?
Ms. V returned from a 3-year stint in Seoul, South Korea and is now living in the US in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her partner, their two kids, three ferocious felines, and a dog named Avon Barksdale. She grew up all over the US, mostly along the east coast, but lived in New York City longer than anywhere else, so considers NYC “home.” Her love of travel has taken her all over the world and to all but four of the 50 states.
Ms. V is contemplative and sacred activist, exploring the intersection of yoga, new monasticism, feminism and social change. She is the co-director and co-founder of Samdhana-Karana Yoga: A Healing Arts Center, a non-profit yoga studio and the spiritual director for Hab Community. While not marveling at her beautiful children, she enjoys reading, cooking, and has dreams of one day sleeping again.
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by Tinne from Tantrums and Tomatoes | Jan 27, 2014 | 2014, Being Thankful, Belgium, Communication, Health, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Relationships, Stress, Tantrum and Tomatoes, Women's Rights, Working Mother, World Motherhood
If you Google bullying, there is a whole plethora of websites to choose from. Most of them deal with how to prevent your kid from bullying, how to react when your kid is bullied/being a bully, how to talk to your child about bullying.
But what if it is you—a fully grown adult—who are being bullied and there is really nothing you can do about it because the bully is also an adult…and your boss? And you cannot afford to lose your job.
Here is the situation: years ago I worked for a small, family owned business (You will understand why I do not name any names). I can best describe my boss as the Belgian cousin of Miranda Priestly, the Devil-boss who wore Prada. Believe me she had her down pat. From the sneering “that’s all,” the calls outside work hours, the berating because I could not divine her thoughts and causing her to suffer the indignity of having to actually tell me what was expected, the pout…
Oh yeah, they were related all right.
After little more than a six months, I was actively looking for another job. And then, a week before I planned to resign and tell her to go do something to herself, I found out I was pregnant. And the game and the world as a whole changed completely.
We had just started building our house, there was no way my husband’s salary would cover all the bills and finding a job while you are pregnant is not easy.
So I stayed on. But it was obvious right from the start that they did not like the idea of having a young mother as employee.
Since I was competent at my job they had no reason to fire me outright and because Belgian legislation is rather protective towards pregnant women in the workplace, it became almost impossible to fire me when I handed over the medical bill announcing my pregnancy.
And so the bullying started.
Little things at first. Saddling me with a huge amount of work half an hour before I was due to clock out. Making a mess of the client contact database, insisting it was my fault, even though there was actual proof that it wasn’t.
But when they noticed that I was relatively unaffected things got BAD. In capitals.
While the company was closed for the summer holidays I got a letter detailing every little thing that I had done wrong after I announced I was pregnant. And I really mean everything, like putting one (1!) sheet of paper for an invoice the wrong way up in the printer causing them the loss of a whole eurocent in paper because I had to reprint the page. After that it got even worse than you can imagine. Belittling me in front of clients, calls at all hours, at all times, screaming, yelling, throwing. One day I came into the office to find that my boss had emptied my trashcan all over my desk. Fun times… I can tell you.
You must wonder how I dealt with the situation. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I did not deal with it.
No, that is wrong. I did deal with it, but not in the way you might imagine. I did nothing.
I showed up for work, I let them scream, I let them yell, I let them belittle me, when they called at 6am on a Sunday I answered the phone and made no complaint. Nothing. When I arrived at the office I did my job. Business as usual.
This was my defense strategy. I did my job and because I continued to do it well, they never had an excuse for firing me.
Yes, I could have filed a complaint for harassment and started a legal procedure. I even started collecting evidence in case I should one day be forced to do so. Chances are very good I would have won, since the evidence was pretty rock solid. Yet, this was never really my intention. I was 29 at the time and legal procedures in Belgium can take a looooooooooooooooooong time. Dragging my employer to court would take ages, it would cost a lot of money and it is the kind of thing which haunts you forever. I still had my way to make in the world, my career was just beginning. A court case was likely to follow me around for my whole life and I did not wish to bring this kind of baggage with me.
I collected—and still keep—the evidence just in case.
In retrospect, I should have gone to my doctor, explained the situation and asked him to declare me unfit for work. But I did not do that. As soon as it was legally possible I resigned and the happy dance I did on my last day of work might have come straight out of a Broadway musical. I never looked back.
Has this situation ever happened to you? What did/would you do?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer in Belium, Tinne of Tantrum and Tomatoes.
The image used in this post is credited to Elizabeth Atalay.
Born in Belgium on the fourth of July in a time before the invention of the smart phone Tinne is a working mother of two adorably mischievous little girls, the wife of her high school sweetheart and the owner of a black cat called Atilla.
Since she likes to cook her blog is mainly devoted to food and because she is Belgian she has an absurd sense of humour and is frequently snarky. When she is not devoting all her attention to the internet, she likes to read, write and eat chocolate. Her greatest nemesis is laundry.
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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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by Tinne from Tantrums and Tomatoes | Sep 30, 2013 | Babies, Belgium, Family, Kids, Life Balance, Milestones, Parenting, Pregnancy, Relationships, Siblings, Tantrum and Tomatoes, Womanhood, World Mom Feature, World Motherhood, Younger Children
I suppose it is inevitable. After all, people are what they are, they can’t change themselves. And although curiosity was apparently the mastermind behind the murder of someone’s cat, there are many curious people out there.
And curious people ask questions.
Sometimes stupid questions, sometimes profound questions, sometime questions which aren’t really questions but more a judgement on one of your actions and/or beliefs.
And sometimes people ask questions on matters which are none of their damn business.
One of those questions is the oft asked : “When are you having another?” or – since I have two girls: “When are you going to have a boy?”.
The answer usually runs along the lines of : “Oh not just yet! I have enough on my plate with just these two!” or “A boy? With these two… (at which I point at my girls doing whatever they are doing) the poor thing would just get traumatized.”
But I rarely tell the truth: No, never. No we are not trying for another baby. No we are not planning to “gift” our girls with a baby brother.
Perhaps it is due to the fact that I had my two girls in such a short space of time (When n°2 was born n°1 was a mere 16 months old) but I am most definitely done having children.
There are many reasons, finances being but one of them. No, we are not in financial trouble, but face it: raising a child is wickedly expensive. For the past three years we’ve spent a small fortune on day care and let’s not even talk about the price of diapers shall we… Had I been better informed I might seriously have considered buying stock options in Pampers or Huggies. With both kids in school we get a bit of financial breathing space, we can afford to finish our home.
But the main reason is balance.
When you are a mother, whether you have a job or are a stay at home mom, life is nothing less than a big balancing act on a loose rope above a pit filled with hungry tigers and fire.
Our balance is OK, right now. We are not in immediate danger of falling off the rope. Both kids attend school full-time, they are too young to have ‘real’ hobbies yet so no rush, rush, rush on Saturday morning – as yet (Please note: I do not count running after each other screaming bloody murder as a hobby).
Because of their relative closeness in age their feeding schedules (if I may be so blunt) are relatively in sync, meaning I don’t have to provide three or four individual breakfasts, lunches and dinners anymore each day. Lately they’ve started playing proper games together, in which each is an equal player and which do not require constant parental interference, just distant supervision.
We can start going on proper outings without dragging half the nursery and a whole plethora of baby food along, just a change of clothes, some cookies and a water bottle will get us through.
So in short: after four years of clutching desperately at that rope we’ve arrived at a spot where we can breathe freely, where we can relax for just a second, where there is time to be “us” and “just me” again.
The realization that we were as we should be came when we gave away the double stroller without an inch of pain or regret. Just happiness that there would finally be some more room in the garage.
Our family has found its balance and it feels wonderful.
When did you realize your family was as it should be?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer in Belgium and mother of just two…Tinne from Tantrums and Tomatoes.
Born in Belgium on the fourth of July in a time before the invention of the smart phone Tinne is a working mother of two adorably mischievous little girls, the wife of her high school sweetheart and the owner of a black cat called Atilla.
Since she likes to cook her blog is mainly devoted to food and because she is Belgian she has an absurd sense of humour and is frequently snarky. When she is not devoting all her attention to the internet, she likes to read, write and eat chocolate. Her greatest nemesis is laundry.
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