The death of a little girl

Face number 3

     Half the Sky. Its a book about the oppression and abuse of women and their rights all around the world. It made me cry, it made me want to scream and throw up and pull out my hair. It made me want to hurt the people responsible for the horrible treatment of the women and girls I was reading about. As I read the stories my emotions over ran me and then left me. I felt numb and knew what I was reading was horrible, but that I couldn't feel any of it. It was like my mind knew how many worlds would be taken up if the full amount of pain and sorrow in that book were to escape its pages. It would be to much for my heart mind and body to understand, to carry. Yet its happening every day, these horrible deaths, these evil deeds, I could not face reading them but somewhere out there a girl is facing it in person. It breaks my heart. In my speech for the AAUW I talk about how every five minutes a little girl in India dies because she is not considered as important as her brothers and so neglected and not cared for. In my speech I says that this breaks my heart. It does. However when a speech coach was helping me to go over my work he told me that I shouldn't say it breaks my heart. When I asked him why he told me because he can't see that it does, that I don't act like it burdens me that much. I thought about it and realized that I had put up a wall between me and those little girls, I could say the words but I would no longer let myself feel them. The speech instructor told me to try again, and this time mean what I say. As I started my speech over I thought about it, I realized this speech was five minutes, I realized when I had drawn the last breath of my speech a little girl would have drawn the last breath of her life. When I got to the point in my speech where I would talk about those little girls, I could see in my mind a little girl in the corner of a hut, dying. Here I was talking about her, as she died, and there was nothing I could do to help her. That little girl would be dead. And thousands just like her would die. And it broke my heart. I started to cry, right there with a speech instructor and a full room of AAUW women. I couldn't do it. I ran out of the room and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Finally I was able to get my wall back up and walk back inside. By then, the little girl that had been alive when I had started my speech.. was long gone. Later my mom gave me a piece of advice that really rang true for me, she told me I don't need to feel or carry all their pain, I just need to speak for them. Yes I can let me emotion show through, and yes it breaks my heart, but I can't break down in the middle of my speech because that's the one chance I have to help these girls. I need to tell everyone in the room that this is what is happening.

     The research that I had to do for this speech was horrible. It made me come to some horrible realizations. For example did you know that more woman and girls have died in the last 50 years simply because they are women than all the men killed in all the wars of the 20th century? and that More girls are killed in this routine “gendercide” in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century? I had no idea until I read the book half the sky. I believe that we all have a duty to help our fellow human beings, just as I believe that we are all related. Woman need to help their sisters, I was born into the United States instead of a Cambodian sex brothel for a reason, I have this life because I am now in a better position to help my fellow females. I will have a good education and I will grow up strong and confident and Independent. Then I will be ready and capable of helping my sisters all over the world free themselves from the horrible terrors they endure. I know I can't help everyone and I can't save them all but I believe that we all can make a difference. Even with the smallest of actions we can make a difference. If I put a pebble into the river of hatred, and whoever is reading this put a pebble in, and then their friends put in a pebble, then pretty soon we would have a damn. We all need to work together to defeat all the things that are evil in this world, if you stop just one stoning of one little girl, or help one freed slave start a new life, or simply smile at others when you pass by you will be making an extraordinary difference in the lives of every individual you come across. That is what we should be striving to do. That is who we should try to be. If we can all work together we can do anything.

Amen sister!

Em

 myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is:  I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a door mat or a prostitute.  ~Rebecca West

Lady Power

Face Number 2

     Greys Anatomy. Nothing else in the world has such an uncanny ability to pull me away from the things that I need to do. On the first weekend of April I am to give a speech at the state meeting for AAUW. My speech topic is to be on women and how they are in poverty and how we can change the world. I simply loved this topic. I honestly believe that there is nothing in this world as powerful as a woman who has realized her true abilities. Our society trains us to believe that we are the weak frail damsels in distress and that we need to wait to be rescued. However I believe that a woman who has realized her true potential is a force to be reckoned with indeed. Woman can shake the earth when so needed. Have you ever heard those stories about women who pick a car up when it lands on their babies? When I was a little girl my favorite movie of all time was Mulan, second only to Lion King. I loved Mulan because it was the story of a Japanese girl who stole her fathers armor and went to lead in battle, but had to disguise herself as a man because otherwise she could get in a lot of trouble for being a girl. Her strength and determination always inspired me. A couple years after my introduction to Mulan I found another female hero. It was while we were visiting a huge battle ship known as the SS Jeremiah O'Brien. It was on this trip that my mother bought me a shirt with the blazing headline of "We can do it!" with a strong and confident woman pulling up her sleeve to show bulging arm muscles and a confident smirk. Rosie the Riveter became a hero for me, as a little girl I ran around wearing her shirt hanging well below my knees. My love for Rosie grew so much that I even named my first pet dog after her. As a grew into the eighth grade and into my Rosie shirt I found another female calling to me from the ancient halls of history. I did my 8th grade report on a African American woman known as Harriet Tubman. Harriet inspired me beyond all others because she was risking her life to save the lives of others. If you don't know who she is Tubman was a conductor on the underground rail road, a secret path of hiding places swamps and houses that were a trail for escaped slaves to get out of the south. Harriet knew the rail road like the back of her hand and so she would lead freed slaves along it. She was famous for being able to escape the guards and authorities that were after her, and at one point as one of the most wanted African Americans alive. Here is my very favorite quote from Harriet. "I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other."  She continued to inspire me as I read her powerful quotes and studied the life of this outstanding woman who freed over 1,000 slaves. As I grew older I found more and more female heroes who I wished to strive to be like.  I have realized that inside each woman there is the potential and pure ability to be just like Harriet or Rosie or any number of the female heroes and icons that are alive today. We all have that within us. We just need to find it and tap into it, and then there is nothing that we can't do. Dream a dream and then make it come true. We all have the ability to be the best we can be and we have to make the choice to be that person everyday. I'm not good at it but I'm trying to be, I want to be a light in this world, I want to be like Harriet or Rosie. I want young girls to look at the girls in the rap songs and think "that's not who I want to be.. I want to be strong independent and beautiful in my own way. I don't want to be used and looked down on because of my gender. I want to be a real woman." Its so hard for the youth of today not to fall into the trap of society, but I hope and pray that they will decide to walk in the footsteps of woman who have gone down in history because of the shape of their brains and not their hips.
amen sister!
Em
"well behaved woman rarely make history"

Intro to Em.

FACE NUMBER 1

     American. It seems to be the identity of this town, and everyone in it. I'm a 17 year old American girl living in a small American town. We've got enough red necks to power the civil war for another thirty years if it started up again. Trucks. Guns. Cowboy hats. And what would a small red neck town be without its never ending supply of confederate flags? We wouldn't know. We've got tons of them. I'm not going to pretend that country music doesn't have its appeal, I love the stuff, but I'm not what one would call a redneck. Aside from red necks our town is populated with the red neck's sworn enemy, what is known as the "wangster." A wanna-be Gangster. No one in this little hick town actually belongs to a gang, but they would like everyone to think they do. Walking around with their jeans resting somewhere between the bottom of their butt and the start of their knee they walk with a swagger and a vocabulary straight out of a Lil Wayne song. They wear bandannas so they can "rep" their "gang" and yell at everyone and everything. They smoke and spit and cuss and all around have the education of a three year old and the worldly knowledge of a skunk. You can find the "wangster" lurking in its natural habitat, small side streets and abandoned alleys. They are best avoided when possible. Then, there is me. I'm Emily. I am neither red neck nor wangster. There really is not a title for what I am. I'm not a country girl but I love country music, I am not a punk but I sport their hair styles, I am not a prep but I like makeup and perfume, I'm not a nerd but I love the x box 360 and the show Big Bang Theory, I'm not a "wangster" but I sport a tough exterior, I am not in leadership but I lead, I am not a jock but I enjoy running, I am not a health freak but I like yoga and am a vegetarian, I am not a christian but I love Jesus and believe in God. There are so many things that make up Em.

     I live with my mother and father and brother. I have a golden retriever named Lilo, and when it comes down to it she's my best friend. I don't have many friends, possible because of my stand offish attitude or my take me as I am mentality or because I have a hard time relating to anyone in this town. I have friends yes, and I love them all, but I don't have a  best friend per say, or friends who spend the night every weekend. The biggest reason for this in my opinion is my views on life, as a woman who was very close to me once said "Our only reason for being here is to light the world" I believe I am here to help my fellow human beings. I am determined to make the most of myself when I am young so that I will be better equipped to help others later in life "knowledge is power" and so knowledge I seek. I had my grade school education at a Waldorf school, and it was the best education I could get. My parents paid a lot of money for me to have that education and I am so grateful that they did. Right off the bat I was taught to be artistic and kind. I learned how to garden before I had homework, I was taught to run long distances and hike and explore the world around me before I was taught to sit still in a class room all day long. I was taught to think for myself, and to stand apart from my peers when they do something I do not want to do. I learned so many valuable life lessons. When I got to high school however I found it to be quit the opposite. My parents no longer had to pay the big bucks to send me to school, this education was just as high quality and more informative than Waldorf had been and it was being handed to me on a silver platter, all expense paid education. Every child here was having chances thrown at them, they could be anything they wanted to be. Anything. All they had to do was take the opportunities being offered and work hard, and their dreams would come true. Its a child's dream right? Could you imagine telling a starving child in Africa that this was it? They could have an education for free! They could be anything they wanted to be! It would be a dream come true. However those children don't get those opportunities, millions of children all over the world would kill for what we were being handed in that school, but they couldn't. It was all us. Somehow we were the lucky ones. Somehow we had been given this gift.. and it was being thrown away. When I reached high school with all this in mind I was shocked at what was going on. Where I thought we would be learning we had to listen to the other students gossip and yell, and where the teacher should be teaching she was sending people to the office and trying to stop the mayhem. No progress was made because the students wouldn't let it. It was more important to get up on the latest gossip than get an education, and parties were the talk of the town while your supposed to be reading your assignments. I soon easily forgot my ideals and fell into the lure of gossip and fighting and distracting. I found myself in sophomore year with a popular boyfriend and good grades. That's when I made my fatal mistake.. that's when it all went downhill.. I broke up with him. I made the horrible blunder of breaking up with a popular boy. That was it, my life was ruined. I was alone now, no popular boyfriend to keep me safe. Although my friends did their best to aid me there was nothing they could do. People I didn't even know were screaming at me, calling me horrible names, I was a virgin yet I kept hearing about what a "whore" I was and about how I was a lesbian C word. I couldn't get away from it. There was nothing I could do. It went on and on and I crashed into depression and eventually had to be removed from the school to keep my own sanity. I went into Independent study. I had no idea what a God send it would turn out to be. Soon after my departure from my former high school my family went to Guatemala where I came face to face with my ideals, to change the world. To help others. I have been striving ever sense that trip to be the best I can be, I have taken a hand in helping the community and will be graduating a year early from school. I have won state for my speeches and am being sent to state again. I have no interest in drugs or parties or drinking, my passions lie in advocacy and change. High school had a scarring impact on my life as I'm sure it has for many people, fortunately I was able to find my passion and have been saved. I know what I'm here for and I know what I need to do. I have a cause and that cause is what keeps me going. I believe everyone was put on this earth for a reason and I have found mine. I have created this blog as a way to get my thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams into writing. And so here goes.

Em

"hear me now of thou cruel and unbearable world, thou are baste and debauched as can be, and a knight with her banners all bravely unfurled, now hurls down her gauntlet to thee."