Women - 20th Day of Gratitude

I have known many women in my life, the first I suppose was my Mother, who is sadly no longer with us. Sadly, because I am sure we would actually be great company for each other these days; now that I have grown to become a woman and I understand her more.

You see, when I was growing up, we just did not get on, in fact, far beyond my growing up.

Mum suffered from Depression.  I know that is something these days which is fairly common, but in the 1960's, 70s, 80s and even 90s, Mental Illness was not considered an illness at all. Ironically people would say "Its all in your head." (duh) Psychology wasn't really understood. Nor was anxiety and depression.

Those were times when you would simply be put in a corner or locked in an institution or treated like an outcast and for all time then after considered to have "gone mad", never to be accepted as a part of civilised society again.

Anti Depressants for what they were worth, were more like a sedative, doing nothing to help a person function again and in fact making the problem much worse particularly in a social sense.

It was her Depression that made our relationship so difficult for the most part, I found her unreliable, inconsistent, unable to function when I needed her and then ... I hit puberty.

Too late then for us to reconcile, and so all those lessons of character I had learnt, became a part of my own life and I rebelled.

Before my Mother became seriously ill, she was an intelligent capable woman, I do remember some of that. We saw snippets of it through those years too as she fought what I now know must have been a hell of a fight to be well.

I know she was Queen of Trivial Pursuit. We would all refuse to play, as no game is all that fun when you know who is going to win! But I believe that talent also rubbed off a bit; I often surprise myself with the things that just seem to come to mind.

Thankfully, although I don't have my Mother, there are other women who have come into my life over time. Women I can spend hours chatting with, covering many topics, laughing at our own jokes, recounting embarrassing stories from years gone by and even shedding a tear or two.

These are women who when I posted this blog post about my feeling unwell, made contact with me offering soup, supplements, advice and comfort and just about anything else I might have needed.

These are the women who have helped me to heal, who have filled that hole in my life where a Mother is not, and who give me the strength and courage each day to just keep moving forward.  These are the women who care.

We all have these women in our lives, they come in many shapes and forms; and to many, we are those women. In reading this post, I hope it inspires you to recognise those women in your life and have a moment of real gratitude for the wonder of who they are.

Today, I am grateful for women, my women.

Losing My Religion - Jimmy Carter

I had not planned this post, but could not let it ride after discovering this very powerful piece that was published in The Age today ...

Losing my religion, for equality - Jimmy Carter

It is an absolute MUST READ for all, not just Women, so ... tell a friend!

Justice for Women

Today is the first day of the rest of my life!

A statement that I am sure will be familiar to most ... A statement that I thought would mean, I knew what I would do next. As it turns out, for me, it is quite the opposite.

In the past I have spent so much of my time planning my behaviour, shielding people from the me that I have been bursting at the seams to be, so I sometimes forget to, well, "Just Do It", another catch phrase that will be well known lol.

I forget to simply be me. So today I got on with the last of the unpacking, the fall out of our recent house move, I got on with preparing meals for the week, I got on with tidying the house and I finally sat down with some left over shortbread and a home made cappuccino to check out the 'goings on' on Twitter ...

I had been so caught up in the stuff I had needed to do in the last couple of weeks (including celebrate with my kids the coming and going of a wonderful Christmas and the wonder of the coming in of a New Year) that I had not really paid much attention to those things external to my world.

And there it was ... the mention of a 23 year old girl in India, who had died as a result of the injuries she received during what can only be described as the most brutal gang rape I have ever heard of outside of Australia.

In Australia recently, we all grieved the loss of Jill Meagher, her death incited a nation because of the lack of safety in our streets and the continued crimes against women. Jill was raped and murdered by one man, does that make it not so bad? HELL NO!!!

Crimes against women can be found happening every day. Crimes that have been happening since the beginning of time. We can go back to our own horrific history and find names such as Anita Cobby, Janine Balding, Virginia Morse, Ebony Simpson and the list goes on.  Brutal, rapes and/or murders. Crimes against "the fairer sex".

We can analyse these crimes until we are exhausted, but there is NO good reason for them. Does that mean however, we must live in a world of hate for these perpetrators? (not all men by the way), does it mean we should become immune to the occurrence of these crimes and accept this is our history and therefore our future?

As a group, a species, a race (the human race that is), we have become far too numb to the crime that continues to take place on a daily basis in our world, our country, our state, our suburb and yes, sadly, sometimes in our homes.

We can argue we have become desensitised because of video games, it is because the news is so graphic now, the police shows we see every night on TV depict crime in such detail with their special effects that we have all come to accept these events as being a part of life, and nobody is shocked (when we should be).

We can try to guess what brings people to the place where they are capable of such crimes ... bad luck, bad breeding, no love, no discipline, mental health, drugs, alcohol, culture, etc., but we may never know, each one being so different.

When it comes down to it, I personally can't feel anything for these perpetrators. I don't hate them, I don't pity them, I don't understand them nor do I try to, nor do I want to.

I do feel compassion, love, heartbreak, sorrow and a feeling of complete helplessness to make the families of the victims feel any better, to speed their healing, to bring back their loved one, to assure them, it won't happen again, to turn back the hands of time and make it so the crime that came to their home, place of work, neighbourhood had never happened.

In the absence of magical powers, we have what is called a Justice System (well at least we do in this country) and it was this system precisely that called for public silence when Jill Meagher was killed so as to not hinder due process in the fair trial of her alleged rapist and murderer, for fear he would not be jailed.

It was with great restraint that a nation that was steaming mad, refrained from any further public comment and laid quiet, so the Justice system can do it's work. Let's pray it does.

In India, the law is not as advanced as ours is, particularly in the protection of women.

So what do we do?  We are obviously in a state of turmoil about this crime, it is in our news, it is being discussed in our social media and at times with great passion.

We do not hate the men (unless you feel you need to), we cannot judge them (unless you think you know them), but we can call for Justice, we can call for them to be held accountable, to take responsibility for their actions, for a crime that is simply WRONG and there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for; no reason in the world that can make what they did acceptable by ANY human being upon another!

I also found on Twitter tonight a Petition ... think of Petitions what you may, but beyond this blog post, I felt it was the only other thing I could do, so I have signed it; I hope you will too!
(Click on the following link and fill in your details)

http://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/president-cji-stop-rape-now?utm_campaign=action_box&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition

The only Happy Ending we can hope for with this, is that we can somehow make a change.

Change that will bring us all closer together as people, change that may one day mean crimes like this do actually shock us and cause us to come together as one to demand it never happens again.

What would you like to see done to bring about change and justice?