FINALLY. I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long! But today I pulled the two winners of the mailing list giveaway that ended earlier this month. Lauren won a cute newborn Gryffindor diaper cover set from By The Moonlight Creations, and Kim won the custom beaded pendant.
I’ll be emailing you both very soon! There will be more giveaways coming up this year so stay tuned! If any of you WAHMs wants to donate something as a prize shoot me an email.
I was planning to close the giveaway this week, but I’ve decided to extend it through the weekend. I’ll close it on Monday April 4 instead. It’s not too late to join our mailing list and enter to win! Two winners will be chosen, gifts shown below.
Welcome to the first contest of SOAM’s anniversary year!
How to enter: Join the mailing list. That’s it. BOOM. Click that link there, or find a link in the menu bar at the top of this blog. Your information is completely private, I promise. Used only to keep you fully up to date with all the awesome stuff happening at SOAM this year and into the future.
Contest deadline: March 31
Prizes: Winners will be chosen at random and can choose from one of the prizes below.
Hand knit newborn Gryffindor diaper cover and hat set from By the Moonlight Creations. (Etsy) (Facebook)
Custom made pendant with bead colors of your choosing to represent birth stones or whatever colors you like best.
Are you a WAHM and have something to donate to this or other giveaways? Email me at theshapeofamother@gmail.com!
There were 29 separate entries in this giveaway and I drew winners according to comment order via Random.org.
The two winners of 50 Nude Women DVDs are Sara and Annie.
The winner of the MargLenn Naturals gift set is Amy.
Congrats, guys! I’ll shoot you guys emails asking for your mailing addresses in just a moment.
Thanks for entering, everyone! And more than that, thanks for making SOAM what it is. You guys are awesome.
A long story involving hoards of geeks at Comic Con, a stupid humid heatwave, and an small army of mosquitos left me pretty much inhuman (to differing degrees of happiness – I quite liked the Comic Con bits) over the weekend. That means you still have time to enter! I’ll close the comments tonight and announce the winner by Friday. Good luck!
Enter here!
It’s that time of year again! The earth has circled the sun eight times since I started SOAM one day while my little children were napping. Now my children are all big and almost teenagery and SOAM is a worldwide website with more than 100,000 visitors every month. Since SOAM started all those years ago I’ve seen countless other places spring up both celebrating a mom’s body and bodies for women and men who aren’t moms. But there’s no place quite like this one. (And PLEASE don’t think I am knocking the other sources which are similar to SOAM – I am not! They are beautiful and powerful and I love them!) The photos here are not professionally staged or lit, they are not created to be shown in an art show, nor are the subjects chosen by me. The photos here are completely candid and very real, showing every stage of the childbearing process, and showing bodies of all shapes and sizes. But I think the real gem here is the community. Here mamas come to talk about how they are feeling – both the positive and the negative feelings – and they are guaranteed a safe place to receive support from women like them, from women who’ve been there, and from women who see things from a different perspective. It’s truly the ideal type of community for women. We come together to support each other. And that is just as beautiful as each of these mamas here.
SOAM would be nothing at all without your participation. When you send in a story, when you share the website link, when you leave comments for fellow mamas, even when you do nothing but read the stories you are powering this movement that is helping to change the world. I could not be more excited to share this experience with you all. As a thank you I’m going to hold a giveaway!
Details:
~There will be three winners
~The prizes will be my last two copies of Fifty Nude Women (one of the best videos I have ever seen and vitally important for every woman), and a gift set from MargLenn Naturals (because pampering your gorgeous mama body is also vitally important). These prizes will be randomly given to the three winners.
~Enter by leaving a comment below!
~Rules: You must be 18 years old to participate. You MUST leave a comment with a valid email address to participate (email addresses are not visible to anyone but me). Three separate winners will be chosen. The contest will close on July 26th and winners will be announced within one week.
(Yes, I’ve simplified this contest. There wasn’t a lot of participation and you know what? I get it. It’s hot. Who wants to do *stuff*? Now all you have to do is leave a comment to enter! And then go help yourself to a lovely afternoon at the pool.)
Go check it out – I’m closing the giveaway in just a few hours!
I’m giving away a copy of my new favorite novel by Rainbow Rowell over at my other blog ZebraBelly.com. The book is really great in a lot of ways, but in particular I think it might appeal to readers of The Shape of a Mother because it deals with body image, in a way. You can read more and enter here.
Either way, though, I hope you get your hands on a copy and I hope you love Eleanor (and Park!) as much a I do.
And the winner is… Crystal, commenter number 96!
I’m sending you an email now, please make sure you respond by midnight Wednesday or I’ll pick a new winner.
Thanks for participating, everyone!
The last few days have been a strange whirlwind of PMS hormones and the resulting emotions, insomnia and the resulting exhaustion, and some strange allergic reaction and the resulting Benedryl (And, FYI, watching Twin Peaks after taking a Benedryl is, well, exactly how you’d think it is). Under normal circumstances I’d be more prepared to celebrate SOAM’s fifth birthday (this may be wishful thinking) but this entire year has been just about as strange as the last few days and I’m just trying to keep swimming. But five years is a big deal and I want to mark it somehow.
Five years and some months ago, I had that moment in the restaurant in Anaheim that sparked this thought that maybe I wasn’t the only one. The idea took hold and grew as I talked with people about it. And then, one warm July day, as my four year old was taking a nap, I snapped a picture of myself holding the baby, and uploaded it to a new blog. And here we are.
Five years ago I was a different person, at a different place in my journey to self-love. Five years ago, the world was a little different, too. The internet changes things, makes the world smaller. Today it’s so much easier to connect with people who are going through the same things you are going through. Today it’s so much easier to find the information you need for your journey. Five years ago SOAM was just born and now it’s a staple for moms online.
I think right now we are at a sort of crossroads in this fight against society’s idea of what a woman should look like. Over the last five years I have witnessed a massive shift away from that idea. Unfortunately, I have also felt society grip that idea even stronger as it feels us pulling away. So we still have a lot of work to do before women are totally free from it, until we are free to love ourselves as we are, at every step along our own roads. But you mamas have shown me that we can do it.
So, let’s celebrate! Leave a comment here and you’ll be entered to win a copy of Fifty Nude Women which, as I’ve said before, is one of the best short films ever made. I’m also running a contest over on TIAW, so check that out and you can double your chances of winning (although I will make sure the same person doesn’t win both contests). I’ll run both contests until this Friday at midnight and I’ll announce the winners on Saturday Monday. The winners will have until midnight on Monday Wednesday to get me their addresses, or I’ll choose another winner.
UPDATE: Contest is now closed and winners announced! Thanks for participating!
Thank you, all of you. You are beautiful!
(Photos from the SOAM Flickr Pool, all submitted within the last year.)