Women Are Singing Now | Women Lifestyle, Fashion, Health, Beauty and Personality

Women Are Singing Now
Category : Women Diary, Women Lifestyle, Women Business

Women are remarkable creatures. Think about it. We bear children. We actually grow new life in our bodies! A little seed is planted inside us, and our bodies spend the next 9 months providing the nourishment and environment they need to develop into little human beings!
This doesn’t happen automatically. It’s up to the woman to take care of our bodies in order to nurture the growth of our children.

And once we give birth, well, then the hard work really begins! The mother is still responsible for the baby’s nourishment with her breast milk! Then, once weaned, it’s still usually the mother who has the primary responsibility of feeding and providing adequate nutrition for the child for the next 18 years!

It’s also usually the mother who is primarily responsible for the child’s development. If only one parent takes leave from a job to care for the new baby, it’s usually the mother. Often times, the mother will forego women career to stay at home and care for the baby during those first few years.

The mother’s work doesn’t end at 5pm; it’s a 24/7 job. And it doesn’t matter if Mom has a job outside of the home either. If she does, it’s just tacked on to her 24/7 job as a mom. If the child gets sick at school, it’s usually the mother who gets called and has to leave work early to pick little Johnny up. And when Dad catches little Johnny’s stomach flu, it is Mom who has to take care of the whole household. And when Mom comes down with it too well, she usually just barrels through and continues taking care of everyone else. It’s just expected!

Somehow, sometime, probably thousands of years ago, the woman became the backbone of every family. It was just unwritten law that she put her own needs last, behind the kids and behind the husband. She’s done it for centuries.

Mothers and wives are the unsung heroes of everyday life. We do it all, and much of the time without thanks or reward, other than the pleasure we derive from seeing our family grow, and be happy and healthy.

Those of us who make the choice of family over career inevitably come upon the day when the kids are self-sufficient, and we find ourselves in a real predicament.
We’re pretty much unemployable because we haven’t had any practical workplace experience for the past 14-18 years, technology has passed us by and, in many cases, most of our social contact has been in play dates as opposed to career networking!

We’re not used to putting our own needs first, and when we finally have time to, we really don’t know how to do it. “This is where Mommy Mentors comes in,” explains Barbara Theodosiou, founder of the Ft. Lauderdale based group who helps women, as she puts it, “awaken from the Mommy Coma!”

Mommy Mentors has a few different components, all in existence for the express purpose of bringing women together, and learning from their cumulative life experiences.

Theodosiou, who is in her final months of earning a master’s degree in family counseling from Nova Southeastern University, knows from her own experience. “I have 4 children. It was a huge step for me to go back to school to earn my masters. If a group like Mommy Mentors existed when I was agonizing over what to do, my decisions would probably have been made a little easier.”

In addition, Barbara found herself a single mother with 3 school-aged children when her first marriage ended in divorce. She picked herself back up after a long post-divorce depression, and managed to find the love of her love, remarried, and had another child. But it wasn’t easy.
“I would have given anything back then for a support system that I could draw on for strength and ideas. I set a goal and reached it, but many women don’t have the strength that I somehow mustered to pull myself out of a bad situation,” explains Theodosiou about her past. Within the membership ranks, Mommy Mentors Partners have been through it all, and are willingand able to help others get through it too.

There’s a lot of give and take– one member who might be helping another through divorce could, concurrently, be getting help from yet another member on starting a business. Yes, business. It’s not all about mothering and nurturing.

Those skills which we, as mothers, must develop by instinct are often the same skills we need to run a business. So, Mommy Mentors has formed the first Mom’s Business Mastermind Group chapter in South Florida, complete with business mentors, a Speakers Bureau, brainstorming sessions, and even a “Business in a Box!”

Unsung? No longer! As Hilary Clinton said, “It takes a village.” Women are finally using the power of our strength to help one another, and together, we’re singing loud and strong!

Contributed by Nicole Sandler, a single mother and small business owner. She can be reached through her website at www.legacygroupunlimited.com