Proud to be a woman! Happy International Women's Day!

The other day at table, my 17 year old son commented on how glad he was not to be a woman. Glad not to have to go through childbirth, periods, hair dramas etc..Fair enough. But it made ME realize how much I would have missed not being a woman.

Yes, childbirth was excruciatingly painful but I would never have wanted to miss out on the miracle of birth. My three deliveries will probably remain what I am the most proud of.

Women are able to put differences aside and cooperate for the better good, I saw that so clearly in my years in Africa where inter-ethnic tension would keep  men at each others throats but where the women would come together in order to work more efficiently.

Same here in The Hague and the Women's Business Initiative International or in Dakar and the Dakar Women's Group. We bond and support and motivate, enthuse and learn from each other.

We are as intelligent as men (if not more) but also more emphatic, fun, caring and willing to admit and learn from our mistakes.

We are super women and  multi task juggling family, work and still hope for a little bit of own life with friends and sports. It comes at a cost but still, I find our life is more balanced concerning focus and purpose than most men.

To be able to be glamorous one day and natural the next, to change dramatically with hairstyles and play with make up, to have girlfriends to giggle and cry with,

We can do all of that thanks to the women who came before us.

We have just held our WBII International Womens Day conference. One of the workshops was on Women Leadership and what that is:
"To empower others, connecting, being yourself, enjoying collaboration, bringing out the best in others, interacting, co-creating..so much sharing and joining forces to make the world a better place.
IO had this image of each individual woman with her inner light yearning to make a change in the world. For some a burning desire to make big changes, others, just to bring their own contribution. When all those lights join, what a brighter place we make this world!

Today is International Women's Day:

To all the women we have met and still to share our path, to our mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, mentors, clients, teachers, helpers around us!

To their inner and outer beauty, complete with the struggles,scars and bruises we hide and assimilate as we try to be the best of everything and stay ourselves.

Special thoughts to our sisters in countries where they do not exist in their own rights,  subjugated, mutilated, confined. Where they cant drive or work, go out alone or even to school. I wish them strength and optimism.

To the determination, resilience and boundless love of women.

The UN theme this year is : Empower Women, empower humanity: picture it!"

We may not all be an Angela Merkel, Mother Teresa or a Malala, but by striving to empowering ourselves to sing a true song, we connect to our yearning for the better good and each bring our light to empowering  Humanity
.

I would not want to be anything but a woman,

Flashback: Julie goes Gorilla trecking: every cloud has a silver lining

February 2003: Impossible to leave our three year posting in Uganda without tracking the Gorillas: so here we are.

By 8am Erik-Jan and I are about to set out in our best safari gear to brave hours of tracking in sweltering conditions, slithering in foul smelling swamps, clambering endless gravity-defying slopes in an attempt to find the Gorillas, when disaster strikes. My faithful camera refuses to operate. I must specify this has NEVER happened before. I try and try again, dismantle it, change the batteries, the special low light film but to no avail. I panic, rant, fume, beg, cajole and try very hard to not set off on an already negative note.

A clear bold blue sky, crisp air brimming with energy, a gentle warming sun: the elements are in our favour and dispel my frustration.

First step: a short instruction session. The mountain gorilla, the worlds most endangered ape (only 650 then left ) are only found in small portions of protected afromontane forests in northwest Rwanda, eastern Congo and southwest Uganda. Here at Bwindi there are three groups receiving each day a maximum of 6 visitors for a period of one hour. All precautions are taken to protect them from their biggest threat: human borne disease.

8:30: we follow our guide who is in radio contact with the trackers ahead of us. We are sandwiched between three soldiers in the front and three in the rear, armed, not against the Gorillas but against possible encounters with Interahamwe militia. Bwindi was better remembered in 1999 for the tourists abducted and killed than for its ecotourism.

The forest, dazzling in its fluorescent greenery is bursting with life at every level. We clamber enthusiastically up hillsides aided by lianas, surrounded by monkeys and birds chattering gaily, and somewhere in there serval cats and forest elephants. The air is full of the freshness of leaves, the slightly musty smell of swamps and the musky scent of Africa.

A sudden static crackle and we are all attention: the trackers have found them! No more eating, drinking, sneezing, coughing; talking is limited to whispers. We abandon bags and walking sticks with the army and follow our guide, all nerves on edge.

            “Thack, thack” the machete frays us a way through the dense foliage. My heart is pounding so hard I feel quite nauseous. The guide stops. We approach. I can barely breathe...and there they are. A mother peacefully breast- feeding her three month old baby: the most beautiful sight in the world. Oblivious to our presence she conscientiously strips leaves with her teeth from the branch she holds down, a bundle of soft grey fur and two sparkling eyes clinging on. We are so close we can hear her chewing.

            But the magic is suddenly interrupted by a commanding parting of the undergrowth. My heart skips a beat. It’s the Silverback, the alpha male. Two hundred kilos of sheer power and nobility. He is magnificent. As if on command a shaft of sunlight pierces the thick forest right above him showering his glossy black fur with light. His incredibly broad back, rippling with muscles, shimmers silver. He is 29 years old, 7 meters away and with one powerful swipe of his bulging forearm he could rip my head off. But he doesn’t. He looks up. He looks straight at me. Through me. As if in that split second he absorbs all of who I am, who I was and who I will become. I am spell-bound.

Two females keep a watchful eye over three juveniles as they prance around, climbing  their mother’s backs, which they bear with indulgence, amused and sometimes irritated like any mother would be. An adolescent male rests to the side.

            For one unforgettable hour we follow this family, keeping an average distance of seven meters. When they settle, we crouch down and watch, and I am overwhelmed by how privileged we are to be allowed a glimpse of their life. It feels almost voyeuristic prying on such an intimate family scene but they seem to absorb us as a rightful part of their environment.

I can not believe now that a few hours ago I felt all was ruined as I had no camera. It enabled me to fully feel the privilege of the moment. No focusing and clicking and experiencing through a lense but directly and so much more powerfully. I have no photos to show but that experience is more ingrained in my memory than any photo could have done.

What the army, trackers and porter who had stayed aside had not realized was that we had walked a full circle. Our hour is just about up when we hear a terrific, blood curdling roar followed by human squeals. The Silverback had encountered the other half of our party on his road, and whereas he is used to having one group with him for an hour a day, he did not expect two, especially not in his path. So he charged, the guards scattered and thankfully the Silverback didn't follow suit, he just wanted them out of his way!

And so, on a high adrenaline note, ended our unforgettable visit to the Gorillas.

Some things just happen for a reason and what a silver lining that cloud turned out to have….

Introduction

Daunting!!!

Once upon a time... I wanted to write a book, but am finding it overwelming wheras a blog is a good start.

My idea is to try and be sane (notice I do not say "remain"sane!) by downloading thoughts and emotions, sometimes light, sometimes deeper and involve my wonderful network of friends in sharing thoughts and tips and inspiration- or maybe just a laugh- as we all follow our seperate ways through the sometimes confusing path of life. I hope you will join me.

Recap: My name is Julie Kennedy, I am an expat without a pat. British brought up in France I am currently in Holland and purposefully seperating (otherwise known as conscious uncoupling) from my lovely Dutch husband of 20 years and Father of my three children. So a time of reflection... 

Is it midlife? Most make it sound as if this is some silly frivolous infliction, I would say it is the moment you take a clear look at your life. Are you where you want to be? Is OK good enough? And time to decide that if it is not, now is the time. And I did.

A long tortuous road of hesitations and guilt from which I have emerged authentic and free with all the financial and location issues you can imagine.

For today I am gathering followers, so join me,  comment on my weekly post and let us all at our various ages, nationalities, locations and personal circumstances bond over the web and share a moment of life together.

Partner for life????

With all the soul searching I have been undergoing resulting in my recent decision to seperate from my loving husband of 20 years, I have been thinking a lot about the nature of relationships and our sacrosanct concept of soul mate and partner for life.

Slipping on the amateur intellectual hat, I remember discovering with interest and an uncanny feeling of recognition, our origins as a matriarchal society under the protection of Mother Nature. Women were goddesses bearing children and governing the group, mating was done on primal instinct and male companions came and went, sharing your hearth and providing for the mate and whatever children were there. If I recollect well it was then the concept of  war within groups which created a need for division of groups and most importantly religion, among which Christianity with the concept of family, marriage, ownership and little by little women slipped into an underdog position whose ability to provide children and provide care for the male was the main attribute.

Sure it is easier to have a partner for life, who will fall in love when we are gorgeous and fresh, share a lifetime of memories, learn together, have children, help each other through the ups and downs and have a familiar companion in our later years to potter around with..But is it natural?

The sort of boys I fancied in my early twenties I would never have considered as a husband.
When my husband asks if I feel our marriage was a mistake I recoil in shock: not at all! He was what I wanted in a husband and even more importantly the man I chose to have children with.
But now 20 years later, our expat life on hold and the children a lot more independent, it just doesn't work anymore. The things that we shared are no more and the differences seem so blatant to be incompatible.
There comes a time when one thinks: is OK good enough? I guess that is what is meant by "midlife crisis", we take stock of where we are and if we are still on the right path.
In my case the inner turmoil was intense, we who as mothers work so hard protecting our children, I was  going to have to hurt them more than anyone! And my loving husband who had always done his best and deserved a lot more than my constant irritation...

We are in a society which gives up easily and I refused to be part of the selfish group who just walk out on a limb. So it took me a long time to realize that both he and I would develop more happily apart...
But I am not sure I feel it is wrong. I read not long ago a sociologist stating that maybe we were heading for a society where indeed we had different partners at different stages of our life..somehow it makes sense to me. Not that we have to, some of us do mate for life, but should it be a rule we have to strive to withhold?
Yes, it is different when children are involved. In our case, though of course they suffer, we have chosen for the friends approach, share a car, all eat together on Sundays, help each other out and I am hoping that the patchwork family concept can work, maybe in the long-term, also involving holidays with extended families...

What do you think? Is having a partner for life a natural disposition or one society at a certain time needed to create itself and maybe no longer a sociological necessity?
Looking forward to your comments.