Where in the world do you live? And, are you from there?

I live in Rhode Island, U.S.A, and though I have lived in New York & Maryland, and traveled the  world in between, I ended up settling down only an hour from where I grew up in Massachusetts.

What language(s) do you speak?  

English, and Spanish at about the level of a five year old.

When did you first become a mother?

I had my first baby when I was 32, which is young compared to my own mother who had her first child at 43.

Are you a stay-at-home mom or do you work outside the home? 

I am a stay at home mother, which I had always wanted to be. Having grown up a latch key kid with a working mother, I had always idealized my neighbor who stayed home with her kids, baked cookies and sewed clothes for them. (not that I can sew)

Why do you blog/write?

Like many writers, I have always just written, starting as a kid with journals and stories.  Watching my daughter do the same thing I almost wonder if there is a genetic component to it, I remember my father always writing too.  I was asked to be a contributing writer for a friends blog a couple of years ago and loved getting back to writing.  It was also at the time my youngest was entering school full time so I was wondering what I wanted to be when I grew up now that I had some time. I realized that blogging was a great alternate platform as a documentarian, and something I could do from home to still be there for my family.

How would you say that you are different from other mothers?  

I thing globally mothers are more alike than different, and I love how I can relate to women form such totally different backgrounds through motherhood.  That said I am so grateful that I did all of the adventurous things that I did before getting married and having kids. It has allowed me a contentment in just staying home with my kids that I know would not have been there had I not already lived out many of my dreams. Of course we love to travel with our kids, and look forward to adventures when they are grown, but once you have children there is a cautiousness that was never there before.

What do you view as the challenges of raising a child in today’s world?

From the moment a mother finds out she is pregnant the worry about the health and safety of her child begins.  It is a challenge to give them the freedom to go out into the world and trust that they will be safe.  I try to help them understand the need to take care of our environment, to contribute to society by caring for those who are not as fortunate, and not to take for granted their access to health and security  that we have where we live.

How did you find World Moms Blog?

When I started my own blog at documama.org I had envisioned someday finding a global community of mothers sharing their experiences and world views to help us all gain a more universal understanding of each other. I was looking for global mothers online to communicate with, and came across worldmomsblog.  It was my ideal blog, and so beautifully put together, I was really excited to find that it existed! Then I had the pleasure of meeting Jen Burden at Blogher this year, it felt like serendipity, and that I needed to somehow become involved in this community.

This is an original post for World Moms Blog. Elizabeth blogs at Documama.org.

Photo Credit to the author.

Elizabeth Atalay

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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