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.

October 2010 - Waking up beside the Great Wall Day One

I was unable to blog during the trip - I lacked the technology to connect. Although there are blocks on many internet sites in China, more tech savy visitors can get round this I believe. One or two others in the group had internet access via phone or had brought their laptops with them. On reflection I am quite glad to have been cut off from everything for 10 days. On my second night in China, as I lay awake from 3am, I think that it really began to hit me that much of what I take for granted in my life back at home, was stripped away from me here. The accomodation was basic by our standards, however as I lay there wide awake, I was welcoming this opportunity to take myself right back to the essence of me.
It was not an easy process but looking back on the five days we spent treking and sleeping in different lodges and hotels, I feel so privileged to have had this amazing experience. This process of being stripped away was just beginning to really have an impact on me, when it was time to come home. I could easily have stayed and walked some more, at least another week.
I was so lucky to have been part of this particular group of trekers, as on day four and five I had dipped down into a "not very friendly towards me" place. One of the biggest challenges for me was the closeness to a group of strangers for a week, and facing up to myself. This did not feel safe to me at all and I got myself into a very black hole around day four. So that fact that the people around me were just so generous was such a safety net.
Now I am back home and also in the last day or two of the trip, I really noticed what a great group of people I had been fortunate to have been on this challenge with. The good thing about going alone but with a group of strangers, is that one minute, I could be by myself on the wall, looking out at the fabulous views and soaking this right up into the core of me; the next I could be laughing(or crying) hysterically with some fabulous and courageous people, who were generous enough of spirit to accept me as I am.
The first view we had of The Wall, was from the coach window as we approached our first Lodge on Day 1 of our trek. The journey from Beijing took about three hours and the weather was going to be glorious, which after the smog on the day we had arrived, was a great relief. The weather stayed like this for the whole of our trip, warm with blue skies and pleasant breezes. This was fantastic both for the level of physical challenge that we faced, I imagine cold winds or rain would have pushed us all to the limit; and also for the views and the opportunity to take some pretty cool photographs(although I say it myself).

The Great Wall at Huangyaguan towers above our Lodge and we can look up from the valley below to see it snaking across the hills on each side. This section of the wall has been restored starting in the 1980's and up to date 3025 m of the wall body, 25 terraces, 1 fortress, 1 gateway tower and 1 castle have been so far restored. Originally built between 1403 ans 1424 in the reign of Ming Emporer Yongle, the wall here, according to my little book, was built on precipices and over the river to be a strategic place.
We start walking from Taipingzhai and return back along the wall, to Huangyaguan, as a gentle introduction to our trek. The steps are very steep at the last point and I climb in rhythm with another trekker Chris, stopping every three or four steps to catch our breath. I talk about my Mum a little. I reflect on her life and on how many opportunities women like her did not have, and on how many women like me do have. These past forty years she has not been with me and I have done what I can, sometimes though I have let fear win and lost out on so many wonderful friendships and experiences because I have not believed in myself. There is no excuse anymore for me to let fear stop me from living every moment of my life to the full. I feel angry for her life being ended so young and for the years she has not had with us and with her grandchildren. She would have been a lovely Grandma I know, being a Mum was her life. Her life was filled with this role. I wonder who else she was? I wonder if she would have understood me and this journey I was taking. Would she have liked to travel? What were her interests? I dream that she is musical sometimes due to the piano we had in the house when I was a child. Nobody can answer these questions for me. Forty years was her lifetime and forty years we have been without her. Maybe that is why the Great Wall seems the right place to mark her life and the huge chasm left by her death in our lives.
There are so many people here today with me, walking in memory of their own lost loved ones, some not long gone from life. There are many quiet moments to remember them and honour them in our living every moment of these precious and amazing days.

We walk along the restored wall and think about the people who died building it. It may seem as if I am unhappy walking along the Great Wall as there is so much death and grief around us; not so. I feel that these lost ones are walking with us in life, as we find such joy and awe in this incredible man-made structure that sits so well within the mountains here. It is a symbol of life and of history, powerful and moving across time. Feet have come and gone upon it, and they will continue. Here in this moment I stop to capture a photograph of now, ahead I can see where we are going next but only so far as the next hill; behind I can see where we just walked minutes ago, that steep climb, those steps, that tower in which we rested.

Touching Base

A few months ago while having dinner with one of my older relatives and some of her women friends, one of them mentioned Gladys Aylwood, a Protestant missionary to China in 1930. Gladys Aylwood was at first thwarted in her goal of becoming a missionary to China, she was told she was not clever enough but saved up her wages in order to buy herself a train ticket. Gladys ended up staying in China, learning to speak the language and becoming a Chinese Citizen, she died and was burried there. The woman I was speaking to, remembered when Gladys came back to the UK and gave a series of lectures around the country, one of which this elderly friend of my relative had attended.

This conversation over dinner, reminded me of watching a film about Gladys Aylwood in my childhood. The film, The Inn of the Sixth happiness was Hollywood's 1958 interpretation of Gladys Aylwood's life story as written by Alan Burgess. I had not realised until I started looking a little more closely and reading some accounts of her life, that Gladys had been unhappy with how the film portrayed her. Gladys didn't like her romantic involvement that the film suggested, and she thought that the film focused less on her missionary work in converting the Chinese to Christianity, and more on her heroic actions.The title of the film was also changed as the inn was in fact called The Inn of the Eighth Happiness, I haven't managed to find out why this was thought necessary.

As a child however I was simply inspired by the story of an ordinary woman who travelled across the world on her own and made a difference to the lives of orphaned and abandoned children in China. The film also focused on how also she was part of the enforcement of changes in the laws banning the practice of foot binding


Looking at why Gladys went to China in the first place, it is hard for many of us now, not to judge harshly the negative aspects of the legacy of missionary work, and to separate this out from Gladys Aylwood's heroic and important actions, which took place out of compassion for her fellow human beings.

This article from the New York Times following the Haiti earthquake, explores the motives that different modern day missionary groups might have had at the time. There is also an interesting discussion here that highlights the tension that must exist for religious groups in providing aid/development work without their main aim being about conversion.

Well this blog post seems to have run away with me! I wanted to post about Gladys Aylwood because my first encounter with China was through the film about her life. This blog has a place for stories of inspirational women, and to my child-like eyes she certainly was that. From a child's eye view the answers to the problems in our world can seem much more simple. Claiming your space in the world as an adult brings with it a huge responsibility to "do no harm and leave the world a better place than you found it". (Patricia Cornwell)

This past month the news has been even more heartbreaking than it usually is. In our world today there is always so much to be anxious about, feel angry and sad and powerless about. It's all right there in our living rooms, just a click away. This week we have had the shooting of peace activists by the Israeli Army, the shootings in Cumbria by an angry, isolated and disturbed man, the ongoing reports about the Gulf oil spill and countless other tragedies going on throughout our world.

We rarely hear about the massive amounts of positive action, taken by ordinary people all around the world everyday, we have to look for them. Small actions or big, they go on around us, often unnoticed and it's on days like these that we really need to notice each small voice. In these voices we are reminded of our true selves and are inspired to come together with others to make a difference and stand up for what we believe in. Touching base with individuals past and present, strangers and friends, who are inspirational in so many different ways, is one way for us to find some hope and peace again in a troubled world.

This is just one of these inspiring individuals Rupy Kaur. I am waiting to read about how she got on with her sky-dive yesterday. Hope all went well Rupy.