March is flying by! Today is St. Patrick’s Day. Easter’s here in a few weeks, and Mother’s Day follows soon after that. Believe it or not, I’m already planning into May for the blog. Hence, a random Mother’s Day post in the middle of March!
Let me explain why I’m reaching out to y’all today.
In 2013, I hosted a month-long Mother’s Day series titled Special Mamas. The series featured guest posts from a variety of special moms, including a foster mom, a mom of seven, an adoptive mom, a mom of a child who has autism, and a mom of three from my blogging community. The series went fabulously and I intended to continue the series on an annual basis.
Time got away from me in 2014. I’d planned to move forward with a second annual Special Mamas series, but didn’t get moving on it early enough. I invited one mama to participate and she was excited to write a post, but because of legalities surrounding the adoption of her foster children, she decided it would be best to wait. Around that time, a bunch of posts on motherhood were swirling in my mind, so I decided to skip Special Mamas for 2014 and wrote a month-long series titled Motherhood Unraveled instead. It, too, went fabulously, but I always knew I’d return to Special Mamas in 2015.
So here we are! Mother’s Day is rapidly approaching. I run the Special Mamas guest post series all of May, which means it’s time to start lining up a group of special mamas who are willing to write about their journey to and/or through motherhood.
In 2013, I personally invited all the special mamas who guest posted.
This year, I’m extending an open invitation to anyone who’d like to participate!
Here are the basic requirements:
1) You like to write! And maybe you’re good at it too?!
2) You’re willing to share your mothering story publicly in a guest post on my blog, www.amybethpederson.com.
3) You’re willing to be vulnerable in telling your story, at least a little. These posts will have the greatest impact if you’re willing to share your journey, but also your thoughts and feelings about the journey. Perhaps you’ve had to be patient. Perhaps your faith has led you through. Perhaps you’ve had to tap into community to help along the way. Perhaps motherhood isn’t anything like you expected. I don’t know your story, but we want to hear it.
4) Your guest post will need to be between 500-1,200 words in length.
5) I’ll need a minimum of three photographs from you to include in the blog post, horizontal orientation strongly preferred. More photos are just fine. This blog is big on photos!
6) You have time to write and edit a guest post between now and May 17th. All posts will be published on this blog between May 1st and May 31st, 2015. All posts need to be submitted to me 10-14 days in advance of your assigned date of publication. When you sign up to guest post, I’ll ask whether you prefer to be published early, middle, or late May. I’ll assign a date based on the preference you indicated!
7) You don’t have to be a blogger to participate in this series, but bloggers are more than welcome! If you’re a blogger, I will NOT edit your post unless I catch spelling errors. If you’re NOT a blogger, I reserve the right to make some small edits to your post (only as necessary), with final review by you prior to publication.
And last, but not least, I want to clarify who I’m looking for as far as “Special Mamas.” You might be a good fit for this series if you are…
- A foster mama
- An adoptive mama
- A mama actively in the process of adopting
- A mama who’s desperately waiting to be chosen as an adoptive mama
- A foster mama who turned into an adoptive mama
- A mama who’s going through infertility
- A woman who REALLY WANTS TO BE A MAMA, but isn’t in that life stage yet for some reason
- A mama of a child who has special needs of any kind
- A mama of a child who has a mental illness
- A mama of multiples
- A mama with multiple children (6 or more children)
- A mama who has one child (by choice or for other reasons)
- A mama who’s going through a major life transition
- A teen mama or someone who gave birth as a teen
- A military mama
- A mama whose mother passed away at an early age
- A mama who never had a mother in her life at all
- A mama who was adopted as an infant or child
- A mama who’s single
- A woman who doesn’t ever plan to have children
- A mama who’s living in poverty
- A grandma who’s raising her grandchildren
- A grandma who’s actively helping raise her grandchildren
- A stepmom
- A mama who has a mental illness
- A mama who’s experienced more than one miscarriage
- A mama who’s experienced stillbirth
- A mama who’s lost a baby or child
- A mama whose child HAS experienced or IS experiencing a significant medical crisis
If you don’t see yourself listed above, but think your mothering story is similarly unique, please let me know! We’ll connect and definitely get you in the series if your journey seems to be a fit.
If everything I’ve listed above feels like a match, and you’d like to write a guest post for my “Special Mamas” guest post series in May 2015, please fill out the Survey Monkey form below. It’s just a few questions and shouldn’t take you more than a couple minutes. I wanted to offer you a way to share your contact information and brief summary of who you are without making it public quite yet.
I’m looking for a total of 12 guest post submissions for May. If more than 12 mamas are interested, I may open it up to more!
Thanks everyone! I can’t wait to see who’s interested! I’ll try to keep an update here on the blog, and on Facebook as well so you know when I’ve reached 12, or if I’m still looking for submissions. Oh, and one more note! If you know a mom who might be interested in this, or are connected to a group of moms who might be a good fit, please share this post with them. Looking to get the word out on this one!
