Archive for the ‘Women’ Category

Spirituality and religion are entities that I tend to analyze; never quite sure how they fit in my worldview. I also find it fascinating that as women we once lived lives influenced by the moon cycles, ran homes steeped in seasonal rituals, were both healer and keeper of ancient family stories and traditions.  

Today December 21st is Winter Solstice and it is steeped in female folklore:

Women and the Moon

Celebrating Winter Solstice is a bit long but interesting

As a coach I often hear women say that there is an emptiness or void inside of them and perhaps the key to filling that lies in a re-connection with our past. An untamed beach with waves crashing in powerful harmony speaks to my ancient Anglo-Saxon self. And is probably the closest to a spiritual experience that I have known to date.

As a New Year begins our ancestry may hold unexpected revelations about ourselves. The success of 2011 is in the soil between your fingers as you plant herbs, a mountain climbing expedition or returning to the religion of your childhood.    

With Your Biscotti & Coffee

1) The first written record of this sport dates back to 712. Cleaning Up Sumo by Hannah Beech/Saitama Sakae

Two Interesting Women

2) Dr. Hawa Abdi – Heroic, Female and Muslim by Nicholas D. Kristof

3) The perfume business is not all roses especially for perfumer Patricia de Nicolai, Scent of a Woman by Nathalie Atkinson

Recently I read an opinion piece by Barbara Yaffe entitled  PM’s wife stepping out of the shadows then I check the top of the newspaper to make sure I hadn’t regressed in time. The repetitious ‘wife of’ along with phrases such as ‘becoming chatelaine of 24 Sussex avenue’ & ‘highly judicious manner’ had the role of the PM’s wife playing out like a political version of Father Knows Best.

While the US title for the president’s spouse of First Lady is not great; it has definition and in that capacity she does have the support and lee way to define the role and subsequent contributions during the President’s term.

Compare Michelle Obama  on the White House website to Lauren Harper on the Prime Minister’s of Canada website. For balance we can look at the more traditional first lady, Laura Bush and what she accomplished during her years in the White House.

What is keeping the Prime Minister’s wives from fulfilling the potential of their position? Is it an outdated political protocol in Ottawa, type casting by the press or the personality types of the wives themselves? 

One day a Canadian first lady will give that role the depth that it deserves; which is not as the article suggests about being a media personality nor is it about enhancing a husband’s political image. It is recognizing the opportunity to make a difference, leave an imprint in Canadian history and when the children ask what did you do while daddy was Prime Minister the answer is not going to be “Making sure that no one noticed me”.

With Your Biscotti & Coffee

Instead of An Interesting Woman I thought that I would end the year with a few good men and the choices may surprise you.

1. There is little doubt that the old style of politics is gradually and thankfully becoming a thing of the past. Today’s young politicians like Newark’s new mayor are running their cities from the streets. Is Cory Booker the Greatest Mayor in America? by Lucy Kaylin makes you believe in the future of some of America’s defunct cities.

2. South Africa no longer has the wisdom and steady hand of two of its most revered statesmen. In October at the age of 79 Archbishop Desmond Tutu retired. Nelson Mandela is 92 and November of this year his foundation asked that the public allow him to have a peaceful retirement.  

3. At number four is the often abrasive, sometimes inarticulate Prince Charles. Recently interviewed by Brain Williams there is no doubt that above all else he has accomplished a lot through The Prince’s Charities and has been a visionary when it comes to  the environment and organic farming.

The Forgotten Garden has been compared to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden; even author Kate Morton writes veiled references to it in her book. If you expect that quality of narrative and characters you will be disappointed. However if you are looking for the perfect summer read that will whisper “make a glass of ice tea and take me outside for half an hour” this is the book for you.

The story has a charm that takes one from page to page effortlessly. The lives of Nell, Cassandra and Eliza weave around you as their stories unfold in three different time periods.

Morton also wrote some interesting male characters in Linus and Nathaniel and it is a shame that she didn’t allow them to play a more pivotal role in the story line especially as it drew to an end. Linus in particular would have made the conclusion more affective. Instead the ending was predictable and the last few pages insipid but you are so engaged by that point you suffer through the harlequin style dialogue between Christian and Cassandra. I get the romance but Christian was not crucial to the plot that we have been following for over 500 pages.

A woman’s search to find her real family, fascinating fairy tales and a walled garden at the end of a maze all play a key role in everyone’s lives. Underneath all this is the question “How is home defined?” It is the place where we are born? The house that we return to at the end of the day?  Is it being with family or that certain someone? Will one unexpectedly discover home while travelling?  As the book illustrates we know when we have found home, but we don’t know where or even how it may come into our lives.

Kate Morton talks about her book.

With Your Biscotti & Coffee

1 – An Interesting Woman:  Maria Gunnoe
When you fight a big company, a town and a way of life the danger to one’s self and your family is real. Maria Gunnoe took on the big coal industry in Appalachia. Coal Country Crusade by Tamara Jones/More Magazine  

2 - Nine of the most amazing bookstores in the world  from The Huffington Post

3 - American Theatre Wing
An in depth look at what is playing on and off Broadway and behind the scenes.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is currently showing “Renoir in the 20^th Century” ; until May 9^th when it moves to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In true Renoir style many of the women that he painted are voluptuous.  While his paintings are a little vapid for my taste his female models are glorious in their natural and often nude beauty. One can only hope that families and schools take advantage of exhibitions such as these so that we can remember that the human body is really quite spectacular.

While this LA museum is celebrating the Renoir’s females down the highway television executives decided that a Lane Bryant plus size lingerie commercial should not appear on certain shows in specific time slots.

“According to Lane Bryant, the ad was rejected from a number of programs that would air at 9:00 p.m. including Dancing with the Stars, Game Shows, America’s Funniest Videos, Extreme Makeover, Home Edition and Wipeout …………..”

So why the puritanical censorship when it comes to this company? The model, lingerie and filming are all stunning. One must assume that they object to the  plus size cleavage but if we ignore for a minute the sales pitch perspective are not commercials just another form of modern artistic expression?

In 2210 when the Philadelphia Museum of Art is exhibiting ‘Women of the Early 21^st Century” will it truly reflect what we see as we dress every morning. For centuries art has been about the  portrayal of the authentic female form but perhaps I am wrong and ABC knows better.

 Written by a sublimely less than perfect woman

1. Buy really smelly cheese.

2. Replace your laptop on the dining table with a place setting for a person

3. Attempt to write something dazzling in cards to clients but end up with ‘best wishes’

4. Slip into your office to catch up on work and don’t answer the phone

5. Wonder why you keep buying boxes of crackers

6. Go to farmers markets and expensive bakeries for your ‘homemade’ baking

7. Curl up at 2pm with a book, hot cocoa and no guilt

8. Carry on whole conversations without any interruption

9. Feel like a kid again and actually enjoy the snow

10. Stop planning everything with military precision

…………. remember that the best moments are spontaneous.

In her recent article Mrs., Ms. or Miss: Addressing Modern Women , Nancy Gibbs ended with this statement

Feminists a generation ago fought for the title and dreamed of Freedom and Choice and Opportunity; maybe the surest sign that they’ve won is not which title we pick, but that we can have them all at once.

I also like the fact that how we choose to be addressed is now a matter of personal choice not societal mandate. I use Ms. for all things business; preferring the neutrality that it provides.  Whether I am married or single is irrelevant in my professional life.

For business I also use my family name of Crossland and that decision had nothing to do with patriarchy. I like the name and am proud of the English heritage behind it -

English (chiefly West Yorkshire): habitational name from a place in the parish of Almondbury, West Yorkshire, named Crosland, from Old English cros ‘cross’ + land ‘newly cultivated land’.

(English or Scandinavian) Belonging to Crosland/Crossland (Yorks) = the Land of the Cross [Middle English cros, Old Norse kross + land].

Early records of the name mention CROSLAND (without surname) who was recorded as a tenant in the Domesday Book of 1086.

In my own way I keep the family name in a state of perpetuation and part of me imagines how proud my father would have been to see the name being branded in my company and as the byline to my writing.

Googling one’s name is always interesting. Jill Crossland, the pianist comes up first and frequently but I manage to hold my own somewhere on the first page of the search.

For those personal matters such as banking, legal documents. Mrs.  Sadie married lady steps forward.

I have never liked the practice of hyphenating last names unless there is a cultural or social reason; as it gives one the impression of a need to try to please everyone. So this is the only time that you will ever see ……….. Jill Barbara Crossland-Pappageorgiou.

In an O magazine article Looking for Stillness author (Riding In Cars With Boys), Beverly Donofrio goes monastery-hopping (her words) and she discovers ‘peace, clarity, connection, grace and a kind of hush’.  At the end of the article she returns to the Nada Hermitage in Colorado “Where you can hear your own bare feet on the floor”.

When was the last time you heard your own bare feet on the floor?

If you are anything like me noise is embedded into your life. I get up, turn on the news so that I can hear what has transpired in the world while I slept.  Feed excited and hungry dogs/cats, water runs, the coffee pot beeps to let me know when the coffee is ready, the toaster dings, my computer says “Good morning, Jill”, a phone rings and the day is underway.

As the hours progress my heels will click on busy pavement or loafers connect with my office’s hardwood but somehow I missed that moment when my bare feet quietly set my life in motion.

In between the self-effacing attempts at humour and the ambiguous medical reports is a woman in menopause. I have used humour myself but the truth is, it is not all that funny.  No woman enjoys the  extreme mood swings, muddied thinking, hot flashes, and assorted other symptoms that ebb and flow over a span of years. Not to mention the affect that fluctuating hormones is having on our intimate relationships.

I am not asking for drugs, quite the contrary if you look in my medicine cabinet you would die from boredom.  There is a jar of Vicks, pills for my Afib and some Bufferin.
It is the fact that nine years into the 21st century I would have expected more in the way of unbiased research and possible options.

Hormone therapy has been a roller coaster of benefits vs risks since the ‘60s this all culminated in 2002 with the Women’s Health Initiative study. Controversy continues to swirl around drugs such as Premarin and Prempro not the least of which is how it is obtained from pregnant mares’ urine.

Understandably weary of the whole HT approach of “we’ll get it right, even if we just lower the risks to your overall good health”; women started to look to the bioidentical option that has became part of the menopause fray. Suzanne Somers and Robin McGraw have marketed themselves as part of the next big menopause solution package. This is also equally unnerving.  I mean you are probably lovely ladies (call me we’ll do lunch) but in reality you are just baby boomer women; the difference is you have the money and resources to get books published and garner media hype. However you are not experts in any field.

My concern is that menopause is quickly becoming another money making health condition. Once it reaches that status we the real women of menopause; will never be offered anything more than quick fixes, snake oil scams, self-help fluff and pharmaceutical companies trying to ‘cure’ us. Or are we already there?