Kirsty Dunphey

The Awesome Woman of the Day is Kirsty Dunphey (1979-) A young Australian entrepreneur, speaker, trainer and author who at the age of 27 was able to retire..not that she has! Such an inspiring girl, she has an awesome work ethic, instilled by her parents from an early age. She started her own real estate agency at the age of 21, which 3 years later was ranked the 24th fastest-growing company in Australia (BRW, 2004). She has been awarded the Young Australian of the Year (2004), won the Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year (2002) and has published six book and had her story retold in a number of others.

"Realising that the passion I'd been searching for so desperately could be right in front of my eyes if I just changed my perspective. I had goals for what I wanted my eventual, fabulous career to be. It had to be fun and exciting, it had to give me the potential to push myself and be really successful, and it had to impact on people's lives in a positive way. When I was younger I didn't see that real estate could do that it was just an after-school job. When I started to see the effect I could have on people's lives in selling homes … that was it for me. I knew I wanted to do it and do it well. That's why I decided to open an agency rather than just working in one."

Adrienne Rich

I am doing an impromptu awesome woman because some of our contributors have been down. we just lost this stunning woman, but she reshaped our culture over some important decades for anyone who cares to think:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Rich

Adrienne Rich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Adrienne Cecile Rich (born May 16, 1929) is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."[1]

Charlotte Selver

The Awesome Woman for Wednesday, March 21, 2012 is Charlotte Selver, one of the pioneers of western sensory awareness training or "body psychotherapy," born April 4, 1901in Germany, died in the USA on August 22, 2003.



In her 20s, Selver began studying with somatic body work pioneer Elsa Gindler (http://judythweaver.com/writings/the-influence-of-elsa-gindler-ancestor-of-sensory-awareness/). Gindler began as a gymnastics teacher who healed herself from tuberculosis by practicing profound body mindfulness so that she could breathe with her healthy lung and rest the infected lung. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_Gindler.

Charlotte Selver studied with her in Germany for 11 years, then brought her work to the United States, where Selver became a catalyst for the human potential movement and taught and collaborated with Erich Fromm, Alan Watts, Paul Reps, Fritz Perls, Richard Baker, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Ruth Denison and Zoketsu Norman Fischer. http://www.returntooursenses.com/charlotte-selver.html

Fromm in particular recognized the connection between Selver's work and zen practice, and the mindfulness methods they taught became the foundation for what are believed to be the most effective ways of helping people heal from trauma (see, e.g., the somatic work of Dr. Peter Levine).

However, the usefulness of sensory awareness goes far beyond healing illness. (Eastern cultures have known this for thousands of years, but we in the west traditionally have had less easy relationships with our bodies :( ). “Sensing is getting more in touch with oneself, with others, and with the world. We are offering to you a work which, in its very character, somehow embraces our possibility of getting in touch with whatever we do or whomever we meet – and going as deeply as possible into this coming-in-contact-with-what–we-do.” ... Charlotte Selver, Waking Up"Charlotte Selver did not want to teach a technique, but encouraged her students to 'find out for themselves' how breathing, movement or interactions with objects and other people unfold naturally," said Stefan Laeng-Gilliatt, president of the Sensory Awareness Foundation in Tesuque, N.M. "At the core of her teaching was the realization that the true understanding emerges from organic levels of perception."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2003%2F08%2F28%2FBA182950.DTL#ixzz1pl9iqmZc

http://charlotteselverbook.org/

http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Work-Charlotte-Selver/dp/1418493759

http://www.returntooursenses.com/charlotte-selver.html

Pushpa Basnet

Today Tuesday March 20, 2012 the WOD is Pushpa Basnet born 1984 Kathmandu, Nepal; Founder of the Early Childhood Development Center. As a 21 year old girl, Pushpa Basnet , gathered the courage to become a loving and caring mother to the innocent children living in jail with their parents who are serving time for their crimes. "It's not fair for (these) children to live in the prison because they haven't done anything wrong," "My mission is to make sure no child grows up behind prison walls."

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world -- according to UNICEF, 55% of the population lives below the international poverty line -- so it lacks the social safety net that exists in most Western nations. Space is extremely limited in the few children's homes affiliated with the government.

So when no local guardian is available, an arrested parent often must choose between bringing their children to jail with them or letting them live on the streets. Nepal's Department of Prison Management estimates 80 children live in the nation's prisons.

Basnet was just 21 when she discovered her calling, she said. While her family ran a successful business, she was studying social work in college. As part of her studies, she visited a women's prison and was appalled by the dire conditions. She also was shocked to discover children living behind bars.

One baby girl grabbed Basnet's shawl and gave her a big smile. "I felt she was calling me," Basnet said. "I went back home and told my parents about it. They told me it was a normal thing and that in a couple of days I'd forget it. But I couldn't forget."

Basnet decided to start a day care to get incarcerated children out from behind the prison walls. While her parents were against the idea at first -- she had no job or way to sustain it financially -- eventually they helped support her. But prison officials, government workers and even some of the imprisoned mothers she approached doubted that someone her age could handle such a project.

"When I started, nobody believed in me," Basnet said. "People thought I was crazy. They laughed at me."

But Basnet was undaunted. She got friends to donate money and she rented a building in Kathmandu to house her new organization, the Early Childhood Development Center. She furnished it largely by convincing her parents that they needed a new refrigerator or kitchen table; when her parents' replacement would arrive, she'd whisk the old one to her center.

Just two months after she first visited the prison, Basnet began to care for five children. She picked them up at the prison every weekday morning, brought them to her center and then returned them in the afternoon. Basnet's program was the first of its kind in Kathmandu; when she started, some of the children in her care had never been outside a prison.

Two years later Basnet established the Butterfly Home, a children's home where she herself has lived for the past five years. While she now has a few staff members who help her, Basnet is still very hands on.

"We do cooking, washing, shopping," she said. "It's amazing, I never get tired. (The children) give me the energy. ... The smiles of my children keep me motivated."

Coordinating all of this is no easy task. But at the Butterfly Home, the older kids help care for the younger ones and everyone pitches in with household chores. The atmosphere feels like an extremely large family, a feeling that's fostered by Basnet, who smothers the children with love. The children reciprocate by calling her "Mamu," which means "Mommy."

"I don't ever get a day off, but if I [didn't] have the children around me, it would be hard," she said. "When I'm with them, I'm happy."

All the children are at the Butterfly Home with the consent of the imprisoned parent. When Basnet hears about an imprisoned child, she'll visit the prison -- even in remote areas of the country -- and tell the parent what she can provide. If the parent agrees, Basnet brings the child back.

She is still eager, however, for the children to maintain relationships with their parents. During school holidays, she sends the younger children to the prisons to visit, and she brings them food, clothing and fresh water during their stay. Ultimately, Basnet wants the families to reunite outside prison, and 60 of her children have been able to do just that.

Parents like Kum Maya Tamang are grateful for Basnet's efforts. Tamang has spent the last seven years in a women's prison in Kathmandu. When she was convicted on drug charges, she had no other options for child care, so she brought her two daughters to jail with her. When she heard about Basnet's program, she decided to let them go live with her.

"If Pushpa wasn't around, (they) could have never gotten an education ... (they) would have probably had to live on the streets," she said. "I feel she treats (them) the way I would."

Tamang's oldest daughter, Laxmi, said she can't imagine life without Basnet.

"My life would have been dark without her," said Laxmi, 14. "I would've probably always had a sad life. But now I won't, because of Pushpa."

In 2009, Basnet started a program to teach the parents how to make handicrafts, which she sells to raise money for the children's care. Both mothers and fathers participate. It not only gives them skills that might help them support themselves when they're released, but it also helps them feel connected to their children.

"Often, they think that they're useless because they're in prison," Basnet said. "I want to make them feel that they are contributing back to us."

Making ends meet is always a struggle, though. The children help by making greeting cards that Basnet sells as part of her handicraft business. In the past, she has sold her own jewelry and possessions to keep the center going.

Her biggest concern is trying to find ways to do more to give the children a better future. She recently set up a bank account to save for their higher educations, and one day she hopes to buy or build a house so they'll always have a place to call home. Their happiness is always foremost in her thoughts.

"This is what I want to do with my life," she said. "It makes me feel (good) when I see that they are happy, but it makes me want to work harder. ... I want to fulfill all their dreams."

Basnet is now one of many in Nepal who have started groups to get children out of prison. Since 2005, she has assisted more than 100 children of incarcerated parents.

"I had a very fortunate life, with a good education," Basnet said. "I should give it to somebody else."

Margaret Joan Sinclair Trudeau Kemper

My Awesome Woman of the Day is Margaret Joan Sinclair Trudeau Kemper born September 10, 1948 in Vancouver British Columbia. She is the daughter of a former liberal member of Pariliament and the former first lady of Canada having been married to our 15th Prime Minister, Pierre Elliiot Trudeau.

Margaret attended Simon Fraser Univeristy where she majored in English Literature.She was only 18 years old when she met Trudeau, the then Minister of Justice in the Liberal Party and 30 years her senior. It was in Tahiti, and the older statesman was smitten with the young and vivacious Margaret who was proficient in four languages and able to converse on a level beyond her young age. Trudeau was still a bachelor when he was appointed Prime Minister of Canada, and the relationship between the two came as a complete surprise when they married in a private ceremony on March 4th, 1971. It broke the hearts of many a young girl, and some not so young ones. It was the era of Trudeaumania - the love affair of a country with it's progressive leader.Margaret began having difficulties adjusting to her role as a Minister's wife from the outset.

Theirs was a life filled with tumultuous and public arguments and scenes - one of which was the infamous black eye that he gave her after an all night party with the Rolling Stones in Toronto. She became a national embarrassment and a political liability. Despite her erratic and strange behaviours, the couple had three children, all boys. It was common knowledge that Margaret was hospitalized on more than one occasion for 'stress'.

Years later, she wrote her first book, " Beyond Reason" which included a revelation that she had an 'affair' with Senator Ted Kennedy.The Trudeaus eventually separated in 1977, and officially divorced in 1984, at which time she remarried and went on to have two more children, a boy and a girl. It was only after the divorce to Kemper that Margaret's bouts of depression and bi-polar disorder came to light. She went public in recounting her history with mental illness which was her second book " Changing My Mind" in 2010. She went on to become a vocal advocate for individuals with mental illnesses in an attempt to demythologize and destigmatize mental illness.

Margaret's life was fraught with relational issues, occasional hospitalizations, and personal tragedies. Her son Michel was killed in an avalanche in November of 1998. When Pierre Trudeau died in 2000, she was by his side. It was following Trudeau's death, that she found meaning both in her private life, and the work that she chose to do in Africa.

She is currently the honourary president of Water-Can, an " Ottawa based organization, dedicated to helping the poorest communities in developing countries build sustainable water supply and sanitation services " ( Wikipedia). Having gone public in 2006 as an advocate for bipolar disorder and mental illness, she has become a much sought after speaker across North America and enjoys living alone these days while spending time with friends and family.

Rosa Luxemburg

Better late than never, right? And I'm hoping she isn't a repeat, but it's been awhile I'm sure, if she's been our AWoD. I want to keep learning more about this woman (a fellow Pisces who shares my first niece's birthday) - I need more gutsy strong women to guide me in my path.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSluxemburg.htm

Rosa Luxemburg : Biography

www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

Rosa Luxemburg, the youngest of five children of a lower middle-class Jewish family was born in Zamość, in the Polish area of Russia, on 5th March, 1871. She became interested in politics while still at school. At sixteen, when she graduated at the top of her class from the girls' gymnasium in Warsa...

Rachel Carson

Today Tuesday March 13, 2012 the WOD is Rachel Carson (1907-1964) writer, scientist, and ecologist. I do believe I did her as a WOD a long time ago (or I just ment to) either way she is worth a re-visit. I was inspired by my recent trip to the Franklin Institute with my daughter’s 8th grade class. There is a mosaic of her on the wall down near the kid’s lunchrooms/bathrooms. I was waiting for my group to come out of the lunchroom and bam there she was.

Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907, on a small family farm near Springdale, Pennsylvania, just up theAllegheny River from Pittsburgh. Her mother bequeathed to her a life-long love of nature and the living world that Rachel expressed first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology. An avid reader, she also spent a lot of time exploring around her family's 65-acre farm. She began writing stories (often involving animals) at age eight, and had her first story published at age eleven. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.

She was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936 and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

She wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time turned her government research into lyric prose, first as an article "Undersea" (1937, for the Atlantic Monthly), and then in a book, Under the Sea-wind (1941). In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955. These books constituted a biography of the ocean and made Carson famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. Carson resigned from government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing.

She wrote several other articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including "Help Your Child to Wonder," (1956) and "Our Ever-Changing Shore" (1957), and planned another book on the ecology of life. Embedded within all of Carson's writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly.

Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. By fall 1957, Carson was closely following federal proposals for widespread pesticide spraying; theUSDA planned to eradicate fire ants, and other spraying programs involving chlorinated hydrocarbonsand organophosphates were on the rise. For the rest of her life, Carson's main professional focus would be the dangers of pesticide overuse. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.

Carson was attacked by the chemical industry and some in government as an alarmist, but courageously spoke out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem. Testifying before Congress in 1963, Carson called for new policies to protect human health and the environment. If it weren't for Rachel Carson, the green movement might not exist today. The revelations from her book Silent Spring eventually helped lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer. Her witness for the beauty and integrity of life continues to inspire new generations to protect the living world and all its creatures.

Jarrah Hodge

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Thursday, March 8, 2012 is Jarrah Hodge.


In honour of International Women's Day, I decided to induct a woman who's inspired me and helped me grow as a feminist. Jarrah runs the Canadian Blog Gender Focus. I was a reader for a couple years, when I contacted her to see if she planned on writing about the Occupy wall street protests at all. She encouraged me to write an article and published it on the site. Since I've become a regular contributor. Writing has helped me find my voice and become much more active in the fight for equality.

Jarrah graduated from the University of British Columbia with a B.A. in Women’s Studies and Sociology. In addition to running Gender Focus, Jarrah blogs for the Huffington Post. In 2011 she wrote a series of posts on feminism and nerd culture for Bitch Magazine Blogs and she has also written for the Vancouver Observer and About-Face. She’s a fan of politics, crafts, boardgames, musical theatre, and brunch. — with Amy Feld.

"Trish"

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, March 7, 2012 is my friend Trish. She's not famous. She's one of my best friends from Minnesota (USA) and has been a profound influence on me since I was about 14.

Trish was born near St. Paul, MN USA on March 1, 1961, and she grew up in Eagan. She was the sixth of seven kids, described by her mother, Rose, as her spiritual child.

The first time I saw Trish, she was being bullied by an older guy who was an unbelievable douche. It was the first week or so of high school, and she was from the other junior high. She yelled at the guy and fought back. And that was the first of so many examples she set for me over the years.

Every really difficult thing I've ever had to do in my life since tenth grade, she's either led the way or been there to give me support. She showed me how to let go of hurt feelings or anger over the small stuff (That was yesterday.l I was mad then. This is today, and I'm over it).

She showed me how to walk away from someone you love who is hurting you - and then get back together with that person once things changed. She showed me how to be a mom with a chronic illness. She was diagnosed with MS in 1994, and she has never ever minimized how bad that sucks. At the same time, she has never stopped doing whatever she can to make her life better in the moment that she's in, no matter what her physical limitations are any given day.

And she raised her daughter to be able to deal with the fact that her mother wasn't as available as they both wanted her to be, feeling the disappointment and getting through it. And no matter how bad it sucks, she laughs.

What matters is now, she says.

March is National MS Education & Awareness Month in the USA. 

National MS Education & Awareness Month www.msfocus.org
What is National MS Education and Awareness Month™? National MS Education and Awareness Month is an effort by the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation (MSF) and affiliated groups to raise the public's awareness of multiple sclerosis. The vital goals of this campaign are to promote an understanding of the ...

Sandra Fluke

I feel I would be remiss to not make her our WOD this week, unless you have been living under a rock you have heard of our WOD for Tuesday March 6, 2012 is Sandra Kay Fluke (born April 17, 1981). She is the American feminist and activist enrolled at Georgetown University Law Center. 

Fluke graduated from Cornell University in 2003 and spent five years working for Sanctuary for Families, a New York-based nonprofit aiding victims of domestic violence, where she launched the agency's pilot Program Evaluation Initiative. She co-founded the New York Statewide Coalition for Fair Access to Family Court, which successfully advocated for legislation granting access to civil orders of protection for unmarried victims of domestic violence, including LGBTQ victims and teens. Fluke was also a member of the Manhattan Borough President's Taskforce on Domestic Violence and numerous other New York City and New York State coalitions that successfully advocated for policy improvements impacting victims of domestic violence.

While at Georgetown University Law Center, she worked on issues that involved domestic violence and human trafficking.

While these accomplishments are impressive and worthy of her being considered as a WOD, I also feel that she has demonstrated poise and class with respect to the vicious attacks perpetrated on her by the Vile sub-human radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

You see, Sandra Fluke testified before Democratic members of the House of Representatives on why she believed free contraception is generally essential.

In Fluke's testimony, she argued in favor of requiring all private insurance plans to cover contraception coverage, even religious institutions. She argued that over the three years as a law student, birth control could cost $3,000 in some cases. She continued that the lack of free contraception would induce many low income students to go without contraceptives and that women's free health clinics cannot meet the need.

She then discussed the consequence of such policies, anecdotally citing a friend with polycystic ovary syndrome. While the condition was "covered by Georgetown insurance", getting treatment was difficult because of the policy. According to Fluke, her friend was denied coverage, even with a verified condition from her doctor. She also added that this is not a rare event for women with these medical conditions under insurance plans that did not coverage contraception. She then stated that she wanted equal treatment for women's health issues and did not see the issue as being against the Catholic Church.

What did that mean to Rush? Well of course that meant that she was a “slut” who wanted the US taxpayers to pay for her birth control so that she can have even more sex. The fact that this man has been married 4 times to younger women and still does not know how birth control works is troubling to say the least. He even went so far as to say he wanted her to videotape herself having sex and post it on-line so the taxpayers who pay for her birth control could watch where their money was going. He continued his attacks on Miss Fluke for three days on his show. Limbaugh repeated his previous attacks against Fluke and insurance coverage for contraception until his advertisers started dropping his show. 

The pressure of the almighty dollar finally forced his hand to issue a statement. He released an apology on his official website, which wasn’t an apology as much as it was an attack on the Left for bringing him to the point that he just Had to “sink to their level”

Fluke responded to his latest apology on ABC's The View saying:

I don't think that a statement like this, saying that his choice of words was not the best, changes anything, and especially when that statement is issued when he's under significant pressure from his sponsors who have begun to pull their support from the show. / I think any woman who has ever been called these types of names is [shocked] at first. / But then I tried to see this for what it is, and I believe that what it is, is an attempt to silence me, to silence the millions of women and the men who support them who have been speaking out about this issue and conveying that contraception is an important healthcare need that they need to have met in an affordable, accessible way.

She said Limbaugh's comments were not "one person who went crazy" and made one inappropriate remark. "He insulted me more than 50 times over three days," said Fluke

Sandra Fluke, standing up for women’s reproductive rights and holding her head high since March 2012. Her parents should be very proud…a sentiment shared and conveyed to her by our president.

Edra Mbatha

The AWOD for this Sunday March 4 is EDRA MBATHA of Nairobi, Kenya, who has dreamed up an innovative way to protect children from widespread sexual abuse and neglect. After she completed her O levels, Mbatha moved from her rural hometown -- as do so many young adults with no resources in Kenya -- to a slum in Nairobi in hopes of finding employment and making a life for herself.

But soon after arriving and seeing the terrible conditions in which people were living, and noticing how so many women had "given up" and just stood around all day gossiping, Mbathe began working as a volunteer with a grassroots women's group. Close to two decades later, Mbatha is still working within the Mathare community.

In 2008 during preelection violence she noticed that children were at high risk. "It was a chaotic time for children," she remembers. "In the slums, the myth that having sex with minors could cure people living with HIV was rife and children were defiled in large numbers." While the women's organization was providing some services to the children, Mbatha saw the clear need for early intervention to prevent victimization from happening at all.

She realized that sexual predators would strike during those hours when working parents left their children alone. So she started Mathare Early Childhood Development Centre, which began as a daytime "safe house" collectively funded by parents of the children, and has become a school that also provides nutrition and counseling for 30 children.

Beyond the powerful support and direct aid being provided to the students and their parents, Mbatha has a broad vision in which the Centre will produce politically aware adults and long-term changes in Kenyan society. "It’s lack of education that sees Kenyans manipulated by politicians to take arms against their neighbours."


(source: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/sports/InsidePage.php?id=2000048503&cid=620)