by Kirsten Doyle (Canada) | Aug 23, 2013 | Being Thankful, Brothers, Death and Dying, Family, Kids, Life Lesson, Loss of Child, Motherhood, Parenting, World Motherhood, Younger Children
This morning, I received news that a friend’s little boy had died. During the weekend, he was wading in a river with his dad and brother, and he got pulled underwater by a current. He was immediately taken to hospital, and the doctors and nurses tried oh-so-hard to pull him through while we – friends and family members – held vigil at our computers, anxiously awaiting updates.
Luke was just seven years old. He was a vibrant kid with his whole life ahead of him. When he woke up one morning, he was excited about a day of fun with his dad and brother. Two days later, his parents are having to talk about funeral arrangements and child-sized caskets. There is no possible way for me to imagine what it’s like.
But when I look at my younger son, who is just a few months older than Luke was, my heart gives an almighty twist. I am hit hard with the realization that this is the kind of accident that could happen to anyone, that life is so incredibly fragile, that nothing should ever be taken for granted. (more…)
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 Martine de Luna (Philippines) | Aug 22, 2013 | 2013, Philippines, Weather, World Events, World Motherhood
In the last five days, the Philippines has been under a slew of storms, heavy rains and flooding brought about by the tropical storm Trami. It has claimed lives, displaced thousands, and left much of the northern part of Luzon (the Philippines’ northern region) in drenched shambles.
A tragedy? Yes. But quite normal in our country, unfortunately. We go through this every year, every monsoon season. Imbalanced infrastructure, compounded with the problems of informal settlers, i.e. squatters and poorly managed drainage systems: these are all “part and parcel” of what our nation has gotten used to when the rainy season strikes around this time of year. Add that to the current corruption scandals involving pork barrel abuses in our country, and you have quite a mess, served “Pinoy” style (or, as we like to say, halo-halo, i.e. “mix-mixed”.)
Poverty. Politics. Calamity. These are words flooding my social media news feeds lately. Some are angry at the state of the nation — and rightly so.
But, despite the negatives, the “Filipino spirit” holds up. I’d say it does so every year, especially in times like these when unmerciful monsoon rains strike our nation’s morale down to all-time lows. Inasmuch as there are angry tweets shaking virtual fists and fingers at corruption in the government, there are hashtags of hope tweeting updates about relief efforts, blasting out encouragement in the face of calamity. (more…)
Martine is a work-at-home Mom and passionate blogger. A former expat kid, she has a soft spot for international efforts, like WMB. While she's not blogging, she's busy making words awesome for her clients, who avail of her marketing writing, website writing, and blog consulting services. Martine now resides in busy, sunny Manila, the Philippines, with her husband, Ton, and toddler son, Vito Sebastian. You can find her blogging at DaintyMom.com.
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by Nihad | Aug 21, 2013 | 2013, Childhood, Egypt, Life Lesson, Older Children, Parenting, Siblings, World Motherhood, Younger Children
I mentioned in previous posts how I am madly in love with my children and how I take care to express my love to my children. I even wrote about different love languages to express our love to our kids. I was always crazy about children, especially babies and toddlers. However, a little while ago, I had a wrong belief that once they go to school they are not that tender and young, and this belief was the cause of depriving me of enjoying many beautiful years of my elder son’s childhood.
My elder son was six years old when I gave birth to his younger brother. Of course, all my attention was shifted to the newborn baby, and as he was rarely sleeping at night, I was extremely exhausted, impatient and nervous. It took me a whole month to realize that my elder son had became such a low priority in my life. Taking care of the newborn baby, the house works and all these details brought my elder son to the background of my life. All I was taking care of was sending him to school and lettin him do the homework, and I totally neglected his emotional needs as a child. (more…)
Nihad is an Egyptian woman, who was born and has lived her whole life in Alexandria, Egypt. She says, “People who visited this city know how charming and beautiful this city is. Although I love every city in Egypt, Alexandria is the one I love the most.”
She is a software engineer and has worked in the field for more than twenty years. But recently she quit her job, got a coaching certificate and she is now a self employed life and career coach. She says, “I believe that women in this era face big challenges and they are taking huge responsibilities. That's why I have chosen my niche -- women looking for happiness and satisfaction. I help and support them in making whatever change (career change, life change, behavior change, belief change…) they want to bring more satisfaction and happiness in their lives.”
Nihad is a mother of two lovely boys, 15 and 9 years old. She states, “They are the most precious gifts I have ever had. I madly love them, and I consider them the main source of happiness in my life.”
Our inspiring mother in Egypt can also be found at Aurora Beams Life Coaching.
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by Jennifer Burden | Aug 20, 2013 | World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
We Did It Again!
This just in! World Moms Blog is listed for a 2nd year in a row by Forbes Woman in their “100 Best Websites for Women 2013“! The news came to us through a Facebook Fan, and we are literally OVER THE MOON across the continents abuzz with the great news!
Forbes says, “We couldn’t be happier to present the fourth annual list of FORBES 100 Best Websites for Women than we are today—for this year more than any other this has been true collaborative effort by dedicated staffers, contributors and ForbesWoman readers. For that reason it just might be—dare we say it—the best list ever.”
What does Forbes Woman look for in choosing their top 100? They say, ” Informative and compelling content, sure, but also smart design, engaged communities and a voice that speaks to and for the female reader.” And also, “these 100 websites look to educate, inform and entertain you in ways you won’t find in the mainstream.”
And what Forbes said uniquely about us, “For a truly global perspective on motherhood, World Moms brings together writers from the US and Canada to Australia, China, India and Japan to discuss parenting across cultures.” Here we are in pictures on the Forbes site, too.
Saying we’re honored is an understatement.
Congratulations to all of our amazing editing and contributing staff; you, our dedicated readers; our life-saving web designer and tech support; and the organizations that have acknowledged our work such as BlogHer, Forbes Woman and the NY Times Motherlode; and also those organizations that have supported our campaigns for social good such as the UN Foundation & Shot@Life, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ONE.org, GAVI Alliance and more!
The support of this award motivates our mothers to keep doing the work that we do according to our mission statement:
- Connecting mothers around the world through their stories.
- Promoting understanding and tolerance of other cultures, religions and nationalities.
- Encouraging discussion of important motherhood, parenting, cultural and human rights topics.
- Creating a support system for mothers via the web site.
- Helping to promote our writers.
- To strive to create opportunities for social good to make the lives of mothers and children better around the planet.
I wish I could hop a plane around the world and hug each and every one of our World Moms today! I really, really mean that! Well done, ladies.
Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we work toward new goals and becoming even better with this honor, “Forbes Best 100 Websites for Women 2013” as our motivation. We’re not stopping. Let’s do it, ladies!
— Jennifer Burden, Founder, WorldMomsBlog.com
Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India.
She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls.
Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.
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by Olga Mecking | Aug 19, 2013 | Family, Netherlands, World Motherhood
I am always amazed by how many similarities there are between my husband’s family and my own. Our mothers have the same name (even though the spelling and pronunciation are slightly different). Our parents are teachers, his at school, mine are University professors. Both families share a love and admiration of the French culture and good food. Just recently, however, there is one more thing that we now share: we have both lost our grandmothers.
This is, however, where the similarities end. My husband lost a beloved grandmother, a crucial member of his family. Me? Due to a family misunderstanding, I haven’t seen my grandmother for 20 years. The other grandparents had died when I was little, so I don’t really remember much about them.
However, I never felt that I missed anything. I liked having a small family consisting of my parents and my brother. I enjoyed the privacy and the alone time at home. I could never understand my friends when they told me how much they loved their grandparents. Neither could I understand fellow expat parents when they worried that their children wouldn’t see their grandparents much.
Maybe to you, the title seems rather obvious. You may say: “Of course, they’re important!” But to me, it wasn’t always that way.
I felt my mom was important to my children because she is my mom, and I did struggle with the concept of my mother-in-law being close to my children.
It didn’t help that while my own mom has been simply amazing, I felt that anything my MIL translated into: “You’re doing this wrong, and I can do it better”.
But now it doesn’t matter. While I was raised without grandparents, I can understand my husband’s pain of losing a beloved, close member of his family and my MIL’s pain of losing her mother. I decided to give my mother-in-law a break. One of the reasons is that I realized that while I felt she was being critical, I was being critical as well, which, let’s be frank, is not a good base for communication. But there is a more important reason.
Because children love their grandmas. Both of them. My eldest always asks me when we will visit grandma in Germany to sing songs and grandma in Poland to make uszka (pronounced “ooshka”, it means little ears. They’re tiny dumplings filled with wild mushrooms, eaten with borsht for Christmas). We Skype a lot with both grandparents. They read books and sing to the children. In fact, they’re doing a great job of staying connected to their grandchildren.
If you ask me, I’d tell you I still believe in my right to parent my children the way I see fit. I don’t believe in “sucking it up” for the sake of the children. I do also believe in picking my fights. I believe that both my in-laws and my parents make fantastic grandparents, and this is what matters.
If you ask me, I’d tell you that grandparents aren’t a necessity. I know from my own experience that a child can be raised without grandparents and thrive.
But I’d also tell you that grandparents are a luxury — one that I am gladly letting my children indulge in. Because grandmothers are important, and while I am sad it took losing my own to realize this, I am happy that my children have two wonderful, caring sets of grandparents.
How have grandparents influenced your life? How do your own parents influence the lives of your kids?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from Olga in the Netherlands.
The image used in this post is credited to the author.
Olga is a Polish woman living in the Netherlands with her German husband. She is a multilingual expat mom to three trilingual children (even though, theoretically, only one is trilingual since she's old enough to speak). She loves being an expat, exploring new cultures, learning languages, cooking and raising her children. Occasionally, Olga gives trainings in intercultural communication and works as a translator. Otherwise, you can find her sharing her experiences on her blog, The European Mama. Also take a while to visit her Facebook page .
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by Angela Y (USA) | Aug 16, 2013 | Being Thankful, Communication, Domesticity, Family, Grandparent, Home, Humor, Husband, Kids, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Parenting, World Motherhood, Younger Children
My dad is famous for his quotes. Some of them are wise words that we all repeated as children, like “When the sun comes up, it’s time to get up. When the sun goes down, it’s time to lie down.”
Some are spin-offs of known quotes; for example, “The early bird gets the pizza.” (Instead of “The early bird gets the worm.”) In this case he is referring to the leftover pizza in the fridge; it does make a great breakfast the next day, especially with a fried egg on top!
But the saying that my dad is most famous for, that is, amongst our family and friends, is what we have dubbed, “The Rule of Doing.”
The “Rule of Doing” is simple: “The one doing the doing, gets to do it his or her own way.” Simple? Very. Highly logical? Yes. Easy to break. All the time! (more…)
Angela Y. is in her mid-thirties and attempting to raise her two daughters (big girl, R, 3 years; little girl, M, 1 year) with her husband in San Francisco, CA. After spending ten years climbing the corporate ladder, she traded it all in to be a stay-at-home mom! Her perspective of raising a child in the city is definitely different from those who have been city dwellers all their lives, as she grew up in rural Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA) surrounded by her extended family.
Angela Y. and her husband are on their own on the west coast of the United States — the only family help they receive is when someone comes for a visit. But, the lifestyle in San Francisco is like no other for them, so there, they stay! This exercise conscious mom is easily recognized, especially when she is riding around her husband-built bike with two seats on the back. And, when she’s not hanging out with the girls, you can find Angela Y. in the kitchen. She loves to cook for her family, especially dessert, and then eats some herself when no one is looking! Sneaky, mom!
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This morning, I received news that a friend’s little boy had died. During the weekend, he was wading in a river with his dad and brother, and he got pulled underwater by a current. He was immediately taken to hospital, and the doctors and nurses tried oh-so-hard to pull him through while we – friends and family members – held vigil at our computers, anxiously awaiting updates.
