Category Archives: Womens’ rights

Confident Carry – Overcoming Shame Around Menstrual Products

A call to action: girls in need…

I was recently reading Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: a new biography and she shares research in it which proves that sexual abuse is not “just” done to the body. It is the ultimate way to destroy a woman’s sense of self and sacredness. Because of the connection between yoni, spinal nerves and brain, an attack on the vagina literally closes down feminine consciousness.

My biggest fear as a woman, as a mother of daughters is the possibility of my sex, my sexuality being raped or abused. Not just for the moment that it happens, but for the life long consequences of it. It is our biggest vulnerability as women, and one that has been ruthlessly used globally throughout history to punish women, keep them small, keep them silent, shamed, alone, indentured.

I was contacted today by More Than Me, an education and girls’ empowerment non-profit that gets little girls off the street and into school in one of the world’s most dangerous slums in the world in Liberia, West Africa. They work with community leaders to identify the girls who are at the highest risk of being sexually exploited to ensure that education and opportunity, not exploitation and poverty, defines their lives. They pay tuition, provide school lunch and work with the school and community to make it impossible for her to fail.

They have been shortlisted for a $1 million prize and need our votes. Their work is in total alignment with my aims at The Happy Womb, and I ask you all to take 15 seconds out of your day to support their campaign, so that they are financially assisted in helping empower many more girls who need support, love and safety and have nowhere else to turn to for it.

Educating one girl changes, well, everything. Here’s why:

When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children.
An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent.
When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man.
When we invest in girls — we all win. Our communities are stronger. Our families are healthier. And our collective future is brighter.
Check out the girl effect video.

One of the girls they are currently helping is Abigale.

My name is Abigail.

I’m 13-years-old. I live in West Point, Liberia. I don’t know my parents… I was left with prostitutes when I was six-years-old. They took care of me, but life was hard. Often, I didn’t have a place to sleep or food to eat. I never went to school. And I would often sleep at a video club so men could find me and then “rent” me for the night. I was abused, both in my mind and body. I didn’t feel loved.

When I met the people at More Than Me, my life changed. I have a new home now and food to eat. I’m in school now. I’m happy now. I feel like I have a future now. I feel loved. I’ve learned how to bake, which helps me earn extra money.

Please help vote for me so I can continue in this new life and stay in school. Your vote is my future. I’ll do anything to show you that I’ll do my best in school and become something with my life.

Love,

Abigail

Please, take 15 seconds to make the lives of these girls a bit better by doing two very simple and extremely meaningful things: VOTE NOW through Dec. 4 for Abigail and girls like her at voteabigail.org and… then share it with others.

The right to life

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I am writing today in a somber mood. A woman has just died in Ireland (where I live) because the law of the land does not allow for abortion under any circumstance.

Presenting at hospital with a miscarriage, the doctors would not act to remove the fetus until its heartbeat had stopped, three days later. After four more days in intensive care she died of septicemia. A tragic, needless, even criminal death.

“Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby. When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning Savita asked if they could not save the baby could they induce to end the pregnancy. The consultant said, ‘As long as there is a foetal heartbeat we can’t do anything’.

“Again on Tuesday morning, the ward rounds and the same discussion. The consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita [a Hindu] said: ‘I am neither Irish nor Catholic’ but they said there was nothing they could do.” (The Irish Times)

This is not about religion or politics. This is about the right to life. not just for fetuses. For women too.

We live in a baby-centric culture.

Many times when pregnant I felt invisible and unsupported by doctors and medical personnel: no more than a baby container who, through the act of impregnation, had surrendered her rights of self. It seems that when maternity strikes, a woman becomes invisible. An invisibility which continues to some extent for all of her mothering life. Despite her seemingly miraculous ability to gestate and nurture new life, she is a second class citizen.

Wherever you are on the abortion spectrum – for or against – a woman’s life is a woman’s life and to sacrifice it needlessly on the altar of religious dogma, patriarchy or disinterest is unforgivable. But not unusual.

This must change.