Let’s talk about sex…part 2
Ha! Got you there…ok, a bit of a cheat
title but this is actually me talking about THE SEXES, as in male and female.
With International Woman’s Day and the
anniversary of women voting for the first time in Italy (only 70 years ago folks.)
I have been thinking a lot about my fellow women, as a whole. Where are we?
What has changed? What the hell is modern feminism all about and more importantly,
is it happening as much as it should? Well I am flummoxed. I could rattle on
about how unfair it all feels to be a woman in Italy. How most adverts still
involve a half naked 19-year-old (or two) begging one to “buy this drill and I
will be so impressed!”. Or that TV programs feel the need to have many, many
nubile young things dancing around gleaming with annoying perfectness before
every announcement. GOD IT’S BORING! And sad. However, a very famous TV show I
notice has changed it’s tune and after years of having two pole dancers
parading around all the time they have cunningly swapped the amazon models for….wait
for it… MEN. Yup, two gleaming oiled Adonis type boys in tiny leather shorts
prancing around the studio. But is that any better? No. I am not sure it is. It
is degrading and cheap regardless of the sex.
So, rather than embarking on a never-ending
debate on equality and feminism I thought I would spend a few lines on the
amazing women I know.
I thought about this for a long time and I realized
that I am terribly fortunate as I am surrounded by incredible women. They are
writers, fighters, thinkers and drinkers (!) mothers and none (through their
own choice) artists, singers, actresses, dressmakers, scientists, doctors,
lawyers, adventures, gardeners, creators, computer geniuses, riders, teachers,
animal lovers, photographers and the list goes on and on and on… Some are
married, separated, divorced or single. Some are gay and some are yet
undecided. Some are terribly worried ALL THE TIME…some are not at all. ALL of
them are wonderful. ALL of them have touched my life. And one lady in
particular touched it for a very brief moment in time.
This is dedicated to her. Lisa.
Lisa has been in my posts before; she was
the in the post about “The Chair”. And that is when I met her, on a dark cold
night in Allerona when neither she or I had any idea that we both had cancer.
Within a few months of each other we had both started to walk on the difficult
and unpredictable path of uncertainty. Lisa was diagnosed with stage IV renal
cancer that had got out of hand. She went through surgery to remove her kidney
and started cancer blocking drugs. She wrote a post, well a FAQ to all her
friends: This will kill me, if a bus doesn’t get me sooner. Or something to
that effect. And I laughed! During my chemo I read her blogs and I laughed, and
I cried and I reached out across the web. Did she stop? Hell no. She walked and
became a park ranger, she went to Vegas and Hawaii with her Husband and two
kids. She did therapy and meditation and painting and arranged pot-luck house
parties. And she QUILTS like a fiend. Please, if you can, take a moment to look
at her blog. Lisa was getting on and living. She recently made a video and
spoke about her future. “When I had my kids, we did a birth plan..which kinda
goes out the window when you actually have them (so true)..now I am making a
death plan”. The way she spoke about death pretty much summed up the person I
met. Frank, Intelligent, calm and human. So terribly human.
And today she had made the decision to go
into Hospice. Enough of the drugs. Her plan is going into action and it is
quite heart-breaking.
What is heart-warming however, is that Lisa
is surrounded by amazing women and men. They are all seemingly equal in this.
They are there for each other. Isn’t that what we should all be like? There for
each other as HUMANS regardless?
I think so. And I am sending my love and
solidarity to Lisa, not as a fellow cancer person and not as a woman to woman
thing, but as a human to human thing.
My fellow readers, here is the link to read
about Lisa. An extraordinary lady. With Love xx
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