Self Esteem... Pass it On

(Reward at the bottom of the post)

Self esteem. What does that phrase mean to you? For me, I think of all that encompasses me and how I feel about me. There are definitely things about myself that I am proud of or content with, my appearance is not one of them... specifically my weight. I have major issues with my body that do affect my life and my activities.

I've started wondering how these issues and feelings about myself are going to affect my daughter (when she arrives). What will she learn from looking at me and listening to me? Will she learn to nit pick her every imperfection? Will she learn to say mean things to herself? Will she learn that her appearance makes a difference in what she can do and accomplish? Will she learn that her appearance is of the utmost importance over all of her other qualities? Man, I sure hope not. Of course I won't come right out and teach her these things, but will she derive these "lessons" from my actions?

Now is the time for me to raise my own self-esteem and get myself in check. I want to empower my daughter to be and do anything she wants to. I want her to see beauty in all things and all people including herself. I want healthy habits to be a part of life, not just something you do to "fix" a problem.

What if I do a good job with all of that teaching and empowering, and then she goes to school and gets another message from her peers... or from the media... or a relative... or the list goes on. How will I talk to her? Will she believe me when I say she is beautiful? Or will she think that I am just her mom and I have to say those things?

We all know that low self-esteem affects so much more than what you say to yourself in the mirror. It affects schoolwork, it affects the types of friends you choose or put up with, it affects the risks you take (good and bad), it affects your self worth which in turns gives yourself permission to do certain things... things a mother doesn't want to imagine.

What can I do to help my daughter cope with adolescence and the pressures she'll experience everyday?

The Dove campaign for Real Beauty has recently launched a new initiative called "Real Girls, Real Pressure: A National Report on the State of Self-Esteem, commissioned by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund ".

"Too many girls and young women develop low self-esteem from hang-ups about
looks and consequently fail to reach their full potential in later life. The
Dove Self-Esteem Fund (DSEF) was established as an agent of change to inspire
and educate girls and young women about a wider definition of beauty. The
DSEF is committed to help girls build positive self-esteem and a healthy body
image, with a goal of reaching 5 million girls globally by 2010. It has
already reached 2 million young women."

They are targeting girls ages 8-17 and their mothers to help build/repair/maintain self esteem. The exciting thing is that they provide FREE materials for mothers and daughters to begin talking and working on self -esteem. They have a mother's guide and a mother/daughter activity guide to help you facilitate conversations and about beauty, body, pressures, self-esteem, and self confidence. The guides have questions and activities to help us build an open-relationship with our daughters and to remind us how our own self-esteem and hang-ups affect our girls.

"A mom is one of the most important influences in the life of a daughter. Whether you are a step mom, an auntie, a grandmother, a big sister or just a loving friend, the role of a ‘mother’ is important and necessary in a girl’s development.
Your love and care sets the foundations for your daughter’s life. Who you are will profoundly affect who she is and who she will be. How you feel about yourself, your looks, your body, your beauty, acts like a script from which your daughter will make choices about how she should feel about herself. In order to give your daughter the strength and courage she needs to feel beautiful in a world that may challenge her values, you need to take inventory of your own feelings of beauty."
-Dr. Susie Orbach and Dr. Nancy Etcoff (Dove's Academic Advisors)

(My mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother )

I read through the materials and found them to be informative, thought-provoking and interesting. They also provide an entire FREE workshop kit with DVD/CD to teach you how to run a self-esteem workshop in your area. Dove is also on the road providing workshops in many different states, you can check their map and schedule to see if there will be one in your area soon.

Self-esteem is an important issue, and I am very thankful to Dove for their initiative and for providing FREE tools to all of us. Click on any of the green links above to read more about the campaign, the National Report, and the booklets and activity guides (under self-esteem tools). You can also find short videos and other resources for you, your daughter, or your workshop.

We can support Dove and their Real Beauty and Real Girls Real Pressures programs by buying Dove products and by helping them to spread the word. In an effort to do my part. I'm offering up a small challenge and reward. Please post about self-esteem on your blog and reference Dove's FREE Self-Esteem tools, then come back here and leave a link to your post in the comments of this post. If you do not have a blog, then just leave a comment here about your thoughts on the subject of beauty and self-esteem. I will award 2 winners (chosen at random) and will send you a gift from Dove. Leave your comment or post link by midnight March 29th. Thank you in advance for your support.

Saving the World through Music

"Stand by Me" performed by musicians around the world.

The Playing For Change Foundation is saving the world by connecting the world through music. The Foundation provides resources and builds music schools around the world to help artists share their gifts with their community. You can support them by spreading the word about them, purchasing their CDs, DVDs, merchandise, downloading their songs on Itunes or attending one of their concerts. Poke around on their website to find out a little more about them.

Save the world by emailing as usual

Here is another free and easy way to make a difference. I just made the switch and am now supporting ninemillion.org with every email I write! It seriously took less than a minute!

The i'm Initiative from Microsoft makes helping social causes easy. Every time you use Windows Live(TM) Hotmail(R) or Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft shares a portion of its advertising revenue with organization you choose from a list of some of the world's most effective social cause organizations. Exactly how much will Microsoft share with its partner causes? Well, that's up to us and the growing masses of registered i'm Initiative users. The more messages we send, the more they give. It's an incredibly easy way to address an issue you feel passionate about including poverty, child protection, disease, and environmental degradation. All you have to do is join and then send IM and e-mail messages as usual. Visit http://im.live.com to join.

Tip-toe through the sidebar

UPDATE: All of the following links can still be found in my sidebar, however they are now text links and on the right hand side of the page (a bit re-organized). All wonderful and worth checking out.

Let's take a moment to play around in my sidebar and remind ourselves of a few simple ways to save the world. Once we scroll past the slideshow of my beautiful baby, the categories for my random postings, the blogrolls for my favorite reads and my familial reads we come to the first point of interest:


Visit 29-Day Giving Challenge
This is a fun way to save the world: give. Give of yourself or give a gift to be held. Make a difference in your own life as well as the lives of others.

Give one thing away each day for 29 days. Share your stories about how it
impacts your life to focus on giving. Join the 29-Day Giving Challenge community
today.
Why? Because to see the world change, we have to do something to
change the world. Plus, the best way to attract abundance into your life is to
be in a perpetual state of giving and gratitude. Be an important part of the
global giving movement that inspires more generosity on our planet.



The R word campaign is just a reminder of your responsibility to others when you open your mouth. Your words are powerful. What kind of power do you what them to have?

The “r” Word Some people have mental retardation. While mental retardation is
not a bad word, when used to describe someone or something you think is bad it
becomes another thoughtless hurtful word. People with mental retardation are not
bad, their condition is not bad, the prejudice and discrimination to people with
mental retardation is BAD…and WRONG! Please stop using the word ‘retard’, it
hurts people with disabilities.

Every Day you can click on this button , and sponsors will donate money toward free mammograms. That is all you do. You click, they donate, a life may be saved. It doesn't get easier than that! After clicking you'll notice at the very top of the page are tabs for other "click projects".

You can click to give food to those in need at the the Hunger Site.

You can click to to give free child health care at the Child Health Site.
You can click to give free books at the Literacy Site.
You can click to protect natural habitats at the Rainforest Site.
You can click to give free food and care at the Animal Rescue Site.

All of these are just a click, just a second of your time, no money, barely any effort... and you can make a big difference.

• 

Free rice is another FREE way to help end world hunger. Click on the button and you will be moved to a page where you can take a vocab quiz. For every word you get correct 20 grains of rice are donated to someone in need.

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.
FreeRice has two goals:
Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.
Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.
Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.

Team In Training is a fun way to train for and complete an endurance event (marathon, half marathon, triathlon, etc.). All the while you are raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. This is an incredible experience, and although it is much more of a commitment than the organizations above... it is well worth it. You'll make new friends, get in shape, accomplish a major goal and SAVE LIVES - not to be taken lightly. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and will definitely be doing It again sometime.

Remember when you all freaked out at the suggestion of making your own sanitary napkins? Well, bite your tongue and check out this terrific organization called Goods 4 Girls. This project is to get reusable sanitary napkins to girls in Africa so that they do not have to miss school every time Aunt Flo comes for a visit. What you can do is buy, make or donate money toward these reusable pads. There are lots of ways to do it and all of them would make a huge difference in another woman's life. (can you imagine having to use newspaper, camel skin... or nothing at all?) The cost is low, and the good is great!

Goods 4 Girls was started to seek out donors to sew or purchase new, reusable menstrual pads for donations to areas of Africa where these products are needed most. Providing reusable supplies not only provides a more environmentally friendly alternative for these young women (in areas of adequate water supply for washing), it reduces their dependence on outside aid organizations to continue providing for their monthly needs.

The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of thousands of family farms,
restaurants, markets and other outlets that offer local, fresh and sustainable
food in the United States and Canada. Visitors simply enter a zip or postal code
to search for food that is free of antibiotics and added hormones, and produced
by healthy and humane methods that include organic, pasture-raised and heritage.

For those of us who are trying not to use all of those plastic bottles and instead have switched to filters.... what to do with the filter? You can't recycle it or reuse it... so what's a greenie to do? Sign the petition to get the Clorox company (who owns Brita) to make some changes. Also you can send your used filters to the address on this site and they will give them back to Brita for us (as a visual aid to the landfill clogging problem of the current filter design).

Use the Z Report. At the Store. With Text Messaging.
Posted by Jeremiah McNichols
Have you read and reread the Z Report on BPA, but have trouble remembering which brands are which when you get to the store?Have you been meaning to replace some bottles or a sippy cup, but have a hard time deciding when you're staring at all those products on the shelf?Now you can keep the Z Report at your fingertips, with information that doesn't go out-of-date, updated with new products at the same time they arrive on store shelves. Thanks to a partnership between ZRecs and Mobile Commons, our comprehensive directory of BPA in children's feeding products is now available via text message.

Well, now I think we are all acquainted with the sidebar, and maybe we can make a few easy changes or larger commitments to do our part in saving the world!

Still can't think of a really unique or meaningful Mother's Day gift???

Global Giving has a Mother's Day Menu, where you can choose to give your mother/grandmother/godmother/wife the gift of giving. You can choose from a number of different grassroots projects that are helping to save the world. On Mother's Day, specifically you can choose to educate, heal, and empower women. For $10 you can give and adolescent girl in India learning materials. Check out the menu or the other projects. You may just find something in your price range that would be meaningful to the woman in your life as well as another woman in this world.