On Monday night at 8pm, be sure to tune in for our newest episode of Hope Saves the Day on Autism Radio .Tonight's shows Guest will be with Gina Badalaty.
Gina Badalaty is the owner of Mom-Blog.com, a top search engine result for “special needs mom blog", devoted to encouraging and assisting moms of children with special needs and restricted diets. Gina has been blogging about parenting, raising children with disabilities, and allergy-free living for nearly 10 years. She’s blogged for SheSpeaks.com, American Greetings Interactive, and ParentSociety.com, and is a copywriter for natural health products and an IT firm, as well a brand ambassador for a number of products. She loves engaging on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, and has learned to love to cook. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, two gorgeous daughters, and a cat that thinks he’s a dog.
Why blog about being a special needs mom? Because the world needs to know that we are here, we are strong, and we are a force for good.
Why? Because we want to inform the world to treat our children and all people with special needs and disabilities with dignity, respect, and honor.
Why? Because it’s important for people to know that people with special needs are valuable, useful, productive, and beautiful, and can be amazing people. Why? Because a diverse planet is a beautiful planet.
Why? Because diversity, tolerance and acceptance engenders love, respect and harmony. (Thanks to Justine Musk, for prompting me to explore “the five whys”. Try it yourself.)
Hi, I’m Gina, owner of Mom-Blog. I’ve been blogging since 2002 (yes, that’s correct) and I’m excited when I think about helping other moms who raise kids with special needs and disabled, just like I do. We are a breed apart, and we deserve a little attention, so we can go about the really important job of helping our kids have a good life – and helping others to accept, respect, and love them too.
OTHER STUFF ABOUT ME: I’m a late-in-life mom, a special needs mom, a fussy child mom, future novelist, a web developer & designer, a writer, work at home mom, mom entrepreneur, getting into marketing and copywriter, and oh yea, happily married wife and a pretty cool chick too. When I was 33, I had a stroke caused by a rare genetic mutation, and “miraculously” recovered 100% in less than 6 months.
FAMILY: Two outstandingly beautiful girls, my awesome hubby, and one gender/species-confused cat and yes, we speak disability…but mostly we speak ABILITY!
FOOD AND NATURE: Our family is striving to become more whole food- and eco-friendly every day. We are on the gluten-free, casein-free diet and we are starting to take supplements. Our approach to life is more non-toxic every day, as we discard processed foods and work towards eating more truly organic foods.
MISSION: To help, encourage, inspire and commiserate with other parents, especially if they are raising special needs children. To work with brands that resonate with special needs parents and with the following:
- gluten-free, casein-free
- celiac friendly
- eco-friendly
- organic
- biomedical
- autism
- Down syndrome / Mosaic Down syndrome
- raising girls
- learning disabilities
- autism
- sensory processing disorder
LOCATION: After 37 years of life in New York City, I did the scariest thing in the world and moved to the Poconos, PA, where I think the sun hides 14 hours a day. I lived in the Poconos for a bit where my family resides, but now I’m south of Allentown and north of Philly and I LOVE it here.
HOBBIES: My favorite hobby is reading and my 2nd favorite hobby is reading too. I love too many books to name them all, but I’m a fussy reader. Literary fiction is my favorite, but nonfiction can be very good and a good Neil Gaiman always makes me happy.
PHILOSOPHY: I am that rare breed of liberal Christian. Love, peace, nonviolence, and “don’t panic” are my mantras”.
BOOKS: Too many favorites to count! Anything by Jane Austen, “Middlemarch”, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Time Traveler’s Wife”, “House on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet”, the “Soulless” series, “Watermark”, “People of the Book”, “The Crimson Petal and the White”
POLITICS: I’m a patriot and a liberal. People who don’t vote piss me off, but since this includes just about everyone I love, I forgive them…AFTER election day.
CULTURE: Contemporary alternative music is my favorite, but what really rocks my core is solid blues. I love a lot of music actually. I’m of all Sicilian descent, but I’m fascinated by Middle Eastern cultures and I long long long to see Paris again!
MOVIES: I went to film school, so they are VERY important to me. I love early Scorsese and Woody Allen – good deep drama and intelligent comedy. But THESE are my fav’s, meaning I can watch over and over:
- The Illusionist: one of the best movies EVER, amazing cast too.
- National Treasure: you can never see the Declaration of Independence getting stolen by the good guys too many times! Sequel’s ok, I think, too.
- Pirates of the Caribbean…1, 2, 3 or 4. Well, revise that, 1′s the best.
- The 6th Sense and Signs: the best work IMO by M. Shamylin Night. The rest of his movies pretty much SUCK.
- Pride & Prejudice (original): What is 6 hours when you’ve got Colin Firth as DARCY???
- Bruce Almighty
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind AND Being John Malchovich (I love John Malchovich)
- Zoolander
- The Wedding Singer
- The Matrix (first one only, the rest were you-know-what)
- Star Wars, episodes IV-VI (this is so as not to disappoint my hubby. The new episodes were you-know-what.)