Yesterday was the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day. What thoughts do you have after this historic event? How do they relate to the gift your giving yourself today?
Please post your International Women's Day leftover (or hangover) thoughts as a comment on this post, or link to your blog from this post. If you find International Women's Day leftover (or hangover) thoughts, please help gather them by Tweeting them with the hashtag #IWDLO or leave a comment on this post with a link to the article.
Here are my thoughts, my gift to myself, and the video I'm giving myself time to watch:
The 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day has come and gone. In some countries, women took great personal risk to voice their discontent with the status quo. In other countries, women have never heard of International Women's Day and face a great many challenges.In some so called "primitive cultures, women are held in high esteem, and have the upper hand.(See Reference1). While in many western countries, the importance of the day has been subjugated by ideas of "We've come a long way, and now we can rest on our laurels.", or "We're more fortunate than women in other countries, what do we have to complain about?".
While the positives in culture, politics, health, and other areas are important to hold up as standards to which we can all strive. We must also be vigilant to preserve these positives, lest we become complacent and they become lost. During the 1940's, while women and men were away at war, women on the homefront were needed to fulfill manufacturing roles, therefore many important advances were made to enable women's participation in the work force. Those advances were lost when men returned home from the war, and the average wage for USA working women was reduced from 75 cents to 45cents a week, and daycare centers run by Boards of Education were closed ( See Ref. 2). A further nail was driven in the coffin of child care in the USA in 1971, by then president Nixon, with the veto of the Economic Opportunity Amendments (Ref 3.)
So what does this have to do with putting on our own oxygen masks and caring for ourselves?
The barriers of - "at least you have x,y,z in your country", are false barriers that need to be avoided at all costs if we are to create change in the world. As women we need to put aside false barriers that divide and recognize the things we have in common. There are some things we cannot change (except through plastic surgery) How we deal with things we cannot change, is dependent on how we choose to view them. We can choose to feel sorry for ourselves, we can choose to be angry, we can choose to cherish, we can choose to value, we can choose to feel fortunate, or we can choose to rejoice.We need to allow ourselves to choose.
Today I am giving myself the gift of choosing to rejoice. I will cherish the hot flashes that allow me to wear a summer wardrobe in the dead of winter. I will relish the hot flashes that keep me toasty warm at night.I will cherish the quiet hours of morning when pain draws me from my slumber giving me the gift of a silent house so I can think without interruption. I will choose to laugh, and increase my serotonin levels,(See Ref 4) which will increase my happiness even further, so by evening I should be ecstatic! Here is my first step in my serotonin boost for today: Bookie Bell on Laughter Therapy: Thanks for your uplifting thoughts yesterday!
Blogging from Ontario,Canada,
Suzanne
50 Year-old Sandwich-Genner
Sources Referred to in this post:
(3 are available on Amazon Books and one is a link to an online resource.)
- Argonauts of the western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (Studies in economics and political science)
- In Her Place: A Guide to St. Louis Women's History. (Book Reviews).: An article from: Journal of Southern History
- :Richard Nixon: Veto of the Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1971http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=3251#ixzz1G7t6OOqX
- S-I-S Breaking the Power of Self Inflicted Stress
Oh yes, I'm going to eat a banana too!
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