Category Archives: Inspiring Women

Oct17

My Interview With Jennifer Garner

Posted on October 17, 2014 by documama

Artist Ambassador Jennifer Garner met Glenda, and her daughter Marissa, at a book exchange program in Orange
Cove, CA. Photo Credit: Cameron Schiller

Somehow in the past two weeks between her appearances on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and Ellen, the release of her new movie Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (which the kids and I LOVED), and another movie, Men, Women & Children that came out this week, Jennifer Garner squeezed an interview with ME into her busy schedule! She did all that during and after dealing with sick kids at home, which makes her way more kick ass to me now, with all she does, than her character Sydney ever was on Alias! She has three little kids, and as a mom to my own four kids, I can fully appreciates the challenges of the incredible juggling act that must be.

First I’ll answer the first thing everyone has asked me when they found out I interviewed Jennifer Garner, I know you are itching to know too, YES, I found her every bit as great as you would expect. And YES I want her to be my friend, and I think you would too if you had the chance to speak with her. Read the rest of this entry →

May22

ORIGIN Magazine & The SOULSHINE Tour With Michael Franti

Posted on May 22, 2014 by documama

ORIGIN Magazine & The SOULSHINE Tour With Michael Franti

When I met the publisher of ORIGIN Magazine, Maranda Pleasant, at the Social Good Conference in New york City last October I never imagine that seven months later I’d be IN one of the issues of ORIGIN! OK, so this is my Mike Wizowski moment, and I’m merely a thumbnail on page 74, but I’m just so excited to be in the same magazine as Giselle (and not as a fashion don’t)!!

Yoga. Art. Music. Conscious Lifestyle. Humanitarianism. Sustainability. One Platform.

The new issue just hit newsstands nationwide , and highlights the SOULSHINE Tour with Michael Franti launching in June. The tour will be coming to a city near you, and it is going to be incredible. SOULSHINE brings music and yoga together like never before, and I’m thrilled to be the Rhode Island Ambassador for it! When I found out I needed to submit a photo I immediately asked my talented friend Rebecca Stearns of Rebecca Stearns Photography to take it for me. Maranda asked each ambassador to answer the question;

What Makes Your Soul Shine?

If you have ever experienced ORIGIN Magazine then you already know what a pleasure this high quality publication full of amazing content for mind, soul, and body is to dive into. Maranda Pleasant, pours her seemingly boundless passion and energy into every issue with features on all of the things I love to read about. Topics such as social good, the environment, yoga, music, global issues, mind/body health, and art, are explored through interviews and stories with celebrities, and leading experts in their field. To me ORIGIN magazine is the evolution of what magazines should be, a vehicle for inspiration and positive impact in our lives and our world.

*All photos courtesy of ORIGIN Magazine

May11

#GlobalMoms at Moms+SocialGood in NYC

Posted on May 11, 2014 by documama

#GlobalMoms at Moms+SocialGood in NYC

For the second year in a row I told my husband in advance what I wanted for Mother’s Day, it was the same thing I requested last year. My wish was not for a thing, but an impactful experience. My Mother’s Day gift was to help me coordinate, wrangle, and cover the needs of our four kids while I took two days away from home to attend what I consider the ultimate celebration of mothers. Organizing my four kids crazy schedules for two days without me is a generous gift I assure you, as some of you other moms might understand. It is no small task. That said, to be present at the Save The Children’s launch event of the State of The Worlds Mothers Report at the UN on one day, attend the second annual Moms+SocialGood conference the next, while spending quality time with my dear childhood friend in between, was the type of gift that fed my soul.

Posing with fellow Global Team of 200 member Harriet Shugarman Executive Director of ClimateMama

The Moms+SocialGood event celebrates the power we all have as mothers to change the world, and highlights the amazing actions extraordinary mothers are taking every day to do so. It is the culminating event of the Global Mom Relay that has run for the past two months, passing the baton between stories and causes shared daily through social media. Johnson & Johnson generously donated $1 per shared post to support the United Nations’ Every Woman Every Child Initiative. These donations will be used to help improve global maternal and child health, and welfare through the Girl Up initiative, Shot@Life campaign or MAMA (Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action).

New mom Olivia Wilde, Photo Credit: Stuart Ramson | United Nations Foundation

Held at the Paley Center for Media in New York City the Moms+SocialGood event was hosted by the United Nations Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, BabyCenterTM, The Huffington Post and the 92Y. The day was filled with celebrities turned activists, like Padma Lakshmi, and new mother Olivia Wilde, and every day women turned heroes like Elizabeth Smart and Hlengiwe Lwandle. Hlengiwe, is a mother living with HIV, who avoided passing the virus on to her baby by taking anti-viral medication during pregnancy. She now mentors other HIV positive mothers with Mothers2Mothers. All of the speakers and performers of the day use their voices to amplify their message towards meaningful change, and serve as examples of how each of us can make an impact.

Moms+SocialGood highlights the role of social media, technology and philanthropy as a means for progress.

Padma Lakshmi, Endometriosis Foundation of America Co-Founder Photo Credit: Stuart Ramson | United Nations Foundation

One of my favorite moments of the day came at the introduction, when Kathy Kalvin, President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation, and Pat Mitchell President and CEO of The Paley Center for Media took the stage. Pat Mitchell immediately addressed the missing Nigerian school girls. She issued a call to action for social media influencers to keep the focus on the return of those girls, and not to let up until they return safely. Kathy Kalvin also opened by reminding us of the great progress that has been made so far in terms of maternal and child health, but there is much work still to be done. She reminded us that we have many of the solutions, weather it’s vaccines or bed nets, we know how to solves the problems, we just have to get it done.

Speakers and panelists such as Kathryn Bolles, Director of the Health and Nutrition Global Initiative with Save The Children gave a stirring presentation on the important work they do towards saving moms and kids in crisis. HRH Princess Sarah Zeid of Jordan joined the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics Dr. Sandra Hassink and Leith Greenslade UN Special Envoy on the MDGs on a panel on investing in mothers and newborns, and improving global health. Amazing panels continued throughout the day and included, moving performances by Saul Paul, and spoken word artist Sarah Kay:

They are all are worth watching, and you can do so via the Livestream videos that were watched globally during the event. Prepare to be inspired.

One of the last speakers of the day was Elizabeth Smart, activist and author who brought the day full circle by offering words of wisdom to the still missing Nigerian schoolgirls. She said that she would give them the same advice her mother gave her when she was rescued from her own abduction experience.

Elizabeth Smart, Photo Credit: Stuart Ramson | United Nations Foundation

You can not be devalued by someone else, if you are abused you still have worth. It does not make them less in any way, it can’t destroy them.

Her message to them was hope for their futures. Her message to society was to shatter that shame in loss of virtue idea that is so destructive. This is a crime that happens everywhere in the world and we should use our voices to make it an ongoing conversation until it ends.

Join the Global Moms Challenge of taking up action, using our voices for positive meaningful impact.

Happy Mothers Day!

Shot@Life Champions w/ President of the American Academy of Pediatrics Dr. Sandra Hassink

Apr25

A Way To #HonorYourMom This Mother’s Day

Posted on April 25, 2014 by documama

A Way To #HonorYourMom This Mother’s Day

Photo of my sister-in-law, my mother, and me.

Mother’s Day is coming up on May 11th, and I have to admit that it brings a tinge of bitter-sweetness for me. My own mother passed away just three months before I first became a mother myself, so of course I think of her, and miss her on that day of the year more than all others. I say just a tinge though, because the bitter of missing her is nearly obliterated by the sweet immense joy, chaos, and love my own four children bring to me each day. Still, for that reason Mother’s Day is an emotional one for me. As anyone who has lost a parent knows, it doesn’t matter how old you are, or how prepared you believed you were. It is an acutely felt loss, where the umbrella of the generation before you is closed, exposing you to the world in a new unsheltered way. Granted I was an adult when she passed away, and so I am grateful for the thirty-three years of my life that I had her, I know how fortunate I am to have had that.

Children need their mother; they need their mother’s love and protection, the devotion above all else that only a mother gives. I know I was blessed to have grown up with that, but I don’t think I knew how much I truly needed her until I gave birth to my own first child. Like most of us I had just lovingly taken for granted that she was there. Quite suddenly when I gave birth to my own daughter, I understood. As a new mother I felt I needed her more than ever, really it was not that I needed her more, but that I wanted her more than ever. It is impossible to register what your own mother went through with pregnancy, birthing, nursing, caring, and nurturing, the scope of physical, and emotional outpouring that motherhood demands, until you are in the midst of it yourself.

With my own little people , Photo by Michelle Amarante

I can no longer express that gratitude to her in person, but I think, and hope that I did well enough when she was still alive. Instead I know that I can honor her by being the best possible mother that I can be to my own children. I try to pass on her legacy of love, and compassion. That is why I think Samahope’s #HonorYourMom campaign resonates with me so deeply. It gives me the opportunity to honor my own mother while giving another mother the opportunity for her children to grow up under the umbrella of her love by providing a safe birth. So if you are thinking about ways to #HonorYourMom that would be truly meaningful this Mother’s Day, check out the Samahope #HonorYourMom campaign page and see the beautiful tributes that have already been posted. Here is how it works:

1. Pick a photo of you & your Mom – Upload a childhood picture of you and Mom on the #HonorYourMom website, and write what makes her so amazing to you. (You can also add an Instagram video.)

2. Donate in your Mother’s Name – Make a donation to support safe births and life-changing medical treatments for other moms in need.

3. Your mother will get a gift she’ll cherish – A special dedication page is created for your mom, and she’ll get a personalized gift in the mail for Mother’s Day.

Those of us fortunate enough to know our mother’s love, and to be able to pass that on to our own children, can’t take those gifts for granted. Too many mothers still die in childbirth; too many children are forced to grow up without their mother. This can often cause them to end up stuck in the cycle of extreme poverty. No mother should lose their own life-giving birth, and no child should have to grow up without their mother’s love. Samahope hopes to provide 1,000 safe births to mothers in need with the #HonorYourMom campaign. What better way to honor mothers everywhere this Mother’s Day.

Mar8

Global Impact’s Women And Girls Fund On #InternationalWomen’sDay

Posted on March 8, 2014 by documama

Global Impact’s Women And Girls Fund On #InternationalWomen’sDay

Woman in Long Ampung, Borneo taken by Elizabeth Atalay

I was trying not to stare at her earlobe, but finally I had to ask. Not in English mind you because she spoke the local dialect of her village in Kalimantan. I asked her in that international pantomime us travelers learn to speak. One earlobe hung to her chin weighted with gold rings like most of the women. It was the inverted crescent of the other ear that had caught my attention, where the decorative lobe had been cut off. She stood and sliced the air with two hands holding an invisible scythe. Bending over she then grasped at the shorn earlobe. Chuckles came from the other village women with whom I sat on the floor of the longhouse as she did this, and I nodded that I understood.

According to Global Impact, two-thirds of the labor to produce more than half the world’s food is done by women. Meanwhile women control less than 10 percent of the world’s assets. I had seen the women working in the fields, carrying thatched backpacks full of grain back to the village, and then pounding it into fine powder. The missing earlobe was merely an occupational hazard. In turn she motioned to her belly in a sweeping outward gesture unmistakable as pregnancy, and then clasped her arms to her breast. I shook my head “no” and smiled. I had no children yet, knowing as their faces flooded with pity that being in my mid twenties this would be shocking to them. Still, despite our cultural differences and our language barriers, I remember being amazed at the feeling of sisterhood I felt as their guest. I was a stranger from a faraway land, but as women we connected and understood each other on some very basic level.

This type of experience would repeat itself for me all round the world, fortifying my sense of global sisterhood as I went. The feeling was bolstered even more so after having my own children, knowing for women the experiences that go along with that are universal. As is the love we feel for our children, and our hopes and dreams for their futures. That sisterhood stays with me, as does the knowledge that the population most affected by global poverty is women and girls. Women and girls are integral in overcoming poverty, for a family, a community or a nation.

This International Women’s Day, Global Impact has launched the Women and Girls Fund which harnesses four of the most respected charities working to help women and girls, CARE, World Vision, Plan International, and the International Center for Research on Women. These charities work to provide education, health care, protection from violence, protection from sexual exploitation, and job training to women and girls around the world.

We women need to stick together in this world, it is unacceptable that 1 in 9 girls will be forced into marriage before her 15^th birthday, or that nearly 300,000 women will die from preventable childbirth related causes. Girls in the developing world face overwhelming odds from the day they are born. By educating girls we give them the chance to rise out of poverty, earn a living, and send their own children to school one day. With proper health care and nutrition we can ensure that they grow to contribute fully to their communities. Together we can help change the world by simply investing in women and girls. I think about the women I met along my travels who fed me and housed me despite their meager means, and that stranger from a strange land that I was to them, and I want to give back. I still appreciate the camaraderie we shared so many years and miles away from my here and now, and it calls me to action.

Global Impact’s Women and Girls Fund has the goal of helping women and girls everywhere to live healthy lives, protected, educated, respected, and empowered to reach their full potential. Through this fund you can join millions of people working to help women and girls. All contributions go directly to supporting programs to improve the lives of women and girls around the world. Please visit www.togetherforwomen.org to learn more about this great opportunity to make a difference.

This post is a part of a sponsored awareness program that seeks to help women and girls everywhere live healthy lives wherein they are protected, respected, educated and empowered to reach their potential. Visit www.togetherforwomen.org.

I wrote this post as part of The Global Team of 200, a highly specialized group of members of Mom Bloggers for Social Good that concentrates on issues involving women and girls, children, world hunger and maternal health. Our Motto: Individually we are all powerful. Together we can change the world. We believe in the power of collective action to help others and believe in ourselves to make this world a better place for our children and the world’s children.

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What Makes Your Soul Shine?

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