Weekend links-I-liked and meanderings of mind......

"By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long since passed which determined the future." 

- Zelda Fitzgerald

1. I'm waiting for this book to arrive.....

Having been a massive fan of F.Scott Fitzgerald since reading The Great Gatsby in my teens, Zelda Fitzgerald somehow hadn't featured on my radar until I recently learnt more about her life and death a few weeks ago here. I was always aware that she was also a writer, and that there was a tension between herself and her husband over his success. Her story reminds me a little of that of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, as both women suffered mental illness and were artists/poet/writers in their own right but not as successful as the men they were married to. I wasn't aware until recently, however that Zelda was diagnosed with Schizophrenia and that she was institutionalised for most of her adult life, finally dying in a fire in a mental hospital, which also killed eight other women patients on the same night - 10th March 1948.

I decided to order this collected writings to try to get to know her more, she isn't a woman that I would typically identify with as she was white and privileged..... "the quintessential southern belle". However the fact that she married "as a way out", and that in the article I found above it describes her as "struggling against her traditional southern upbringing and its societal constraints to create a new independent identity for herself and others"...makes me curious about this women who history might forget in the shadow of her successful husband. The oppression of women who were clearly privileged in that time and place, in terms of race and class, is a difficult subject but Zelda's is a story repeated for so many women.....simply because they are women.

2. Last Saturday I woke up to the news of a Trump rally being called off in Chicago and watched the news videos of Jedidiah Brown speaking out, that seemed to echo something of the civil rights demonstrations from years ago, and that must inspire hope in the face of the support for the Republican candidate for the presidential nomination who is famous for his words of hatred and division. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be living in the USA and to be faced with years of shootings of young black men and boys, or to be Muslim or from other ethnic minorities..... and now to be faced with words of hate and fear on a daily basis.

Then this weekend I woke up to this news video.....

3. Here is a really powerful analogy for racism and the impact on an individual that I've never heard before.... and a really powerful article from a Mother of black sons about racism and the invisibility of white privilege.

 

"She took my hand and ran her fingernail across the top, and asked me if it hurt. Of course I said No. She responded, “Well, what if I keep doing that over and over in that same spot for years? Eventually the skin will break, it will bleed, maybe fester and scab over. Then someone else comes along, does the same little thing which normally wouldn’t hurt, but breaks the scab open, and you scream and howl in pain and punch them in the face. That is how years and years of discrimination wear on a person, and why sometimes we react in the ways we do.”

-

Christy Richardson

 4.  I'm really liking this link today.......Seven things to do when you just don't know what to do. 
I'm taking Jamie's really good advice and have worked through the list.....and I still just don't know what to do....number seven right? Surrender? Getting up every day is enough for me right now and surrendering to whatever the day brings. It feels a little bit like I am in hell most days so I know that this can't go on for much longer. In the meantime......

5. I'm being distracted by The Easter Rising 1916 today and found that this lecture was really informative as a starting point for understanding the history, on the 100th anniversary of the uprising which left almost 500 people dead. More than 2,600 were wounded. I also found this Guardian article about Irish women's lives at the time and since the Easter Rising.

6.  Every week I find that I cannot do without the Right Brain Planner blog and that whilst I cannot seem to use what I find there as constructively as I would like right now, the words and ideas do bring me some comfort in the moment. Clearing a Path was a blog post by Teresa earlier this week and has really helped me to think about "hope" and how to keep trying when you've lost sight of your vision or when your vision no longer seems possible for you to achieve.

How to manage that fear of failure.

How to manage the reality of failure. 

How to change your perspective about failure.

"You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy. I have never met a heavy heart that wasn't a phone booth with a red cape inside. Some people will never understand the kind of super power it takes for some people to just face the day." 

- 

Andrea Gibson

 7. And then there was this...just beautiful and breathtaking and......so frightening to contemplate.

Dappled light on tree trunk - September 2015

International Women's Day, Mother's Day and Numbers.

 

Today I notice on Facebook an event was happening to mark International Women's Day , which falls on Wednesday this year. Sadly I think that this day often gets overlooked and events are not often publicised widely. As I don't work in a school or community centre I wonder if the event is given enough attention. Of course my view is that women's history and equality issues that continue for women currently should be on the curriculum in schools and need to be worked on locally with ordinary women and men - in workplaces, theatres, art galleries and community centres. It takes passion and dedication to find ways to bring these matters into people's consciousness without creating barriers. Often this is seem as additional to community and educational work, unless you are a worker specifically working with women or girls. 

The UN website states:

"Increasingly, International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities."

 I therefore want to flag the day up today and to celebrate ordinary women all over the world who are working for change or who are just surviving in the life they have been born into.

Source for picture rabble.ca

My posts often seem to link lots of ideas and themes in one. I have always been someone who likes to see connections and make connections where maybe there were none. Connections that are meaningful to me I suppose, but also that others might find useful or interesting. Maybe it's hard for others to see my leaps but hopefully someone else out there understands or enjoys. Logging these journeys of learning, is also helpful to me, to see where my interest takes me and to maybe explore my own mind and where it likes to wander (albeit often aimlessly).

It's Mother's Day tomorrow here in the UK and I've written before about my birth Mother - a bit about her life and how I never really knew much about her. She was a working Mother, left to look after the children on her own for a time when my Father was away, and she continued to work and care for us children when he came back. Times were not always easy during her marriage and she was a victim of Domestic Abuse.

This Mother's Day I'm going to be making a donation to Refuge there are some stark numbers to be found there, if you follow this link and can bear to read. One of the most shocking statistic is this one - "2 women are killed every week in England and Wales by a current or former partner (Office of National Statistics, 2015) – 1 woman killed every 3 days."

I often think about her life and how it went...... after she met my Father and became a wife and a mother. In photographs she always shone out....a bright light. That's my Mother on the left in the photograph with her sisters and brother. She just stands out somehow and my Uncle, who was married to the sister in the middle, told me once that my Mother did stand out....she was wild, friendly and fearless....she had spirit.

 

It's 45 years today that my Mother died.

Having counted up the years this morning, it appears to be 45 years to the day - although I cannot be sure as my memory has played tricks on me before and often there was no-one I could ask.

However long it has been......It feels like yesterday...and at the same time like a very long time indeed.

I try not to be defined by her death or by the lack I have often felt during my adulthood (maybe because I wasn't "allowed" to feel this lack in my childhood).

Still it rests heavy on my shoulders sometimes.

I'd love to go back into this photograph, and play on the beach with my Mother and her siblings....get to know her.

45 years after her death I still miss her and the relationship we might have had. Her loss and how I and others have dealt with this, has affected my life in so many different ways. I have gained so much I know and am grateful for much that is in my life because of this event.

But today I just feel the lack and the empty space.

Source of picture nytimes.com

I've been watching this amazing TV drama, "One Child" which is about a women who was adopted from China by an Anglo-American couple, as a result of China's one child policy. 

It is about so much more than that however, mainly about corruption and human rights abuses in China....but woven throughout the main plot are stories of loss and women's lives. 

The drama ends very sadly and the filming was very powerful and emotionally, bringing home the sense of the disposable nature of ordinary people's lives to the corrupt regime and officials in China. 

41 years after the first International Women's Day, here are Amnesty's six reasons why we still need it and ways you can help.