One Billion Rising

Why am I Rising?

I am Rising because there is no other option.

One in three women on our planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime – how can this even be possible in our so called civilised world?  This grotesque statistic can only be changed if we (all of us - with a conscience, with love, with humour, with dignity, with honour, with respect) stand up and refuse to accept to accept violence against women and girls as a given.

I am Rising because this statistic exists.  It is not a number made up by rabid feminists, plucked from fantasy to fool you into thinking there is a problem when there isn’t.

 It is real. 

And it is terrible.

So we must Rise Up, Walk Out, Dance and Demand an end to this violence.

I am Rising.

 

Horrors

I had to laugh at myself last night as I was getting ready for bed. 

I had been reading my book late into the night because, well, just because I couldn't stop reading it until it was finished.  It was, as I say, late (for a school night).  I switched off my light, and lay back on my pillow thinking about the book I had just finished (convincing myself that now was not the time to start the next book, no matter how much I wanted to) when I realised that my bedroom door was completely shut.  I like to leave the door slightly ajar during the week when Steve's away, so I feel more connected to the boys and any eventualities, I guess. 

So now I would have to get up to open it. 

And this is where I had to laugh.

I'm still slightly afraid of the monster under my bed.  I KNOW there is no monster under my bed, but still I have to leap out of the bed so that I land far enough away that the monster can't get me.  And then when I get back in, I have to jump (high and far) so that those monstery fingers can't curl themselves around my ankles. 

Ridiculous. 

Completely irrational.  (I'm supposed to be a grown up!!)

But there we go.  Laughing at myself, but still not taking any chances with the under bed monsters.

I remember when I was a teenager reading my way through all the Stephen Kings and Dean R. Koontz books.  Well, I was definitely coming nowhere near the dead, dark space underneath my bed in those days, and in addition, I also had to make sure that the book I was reading was closed - with something heavy resting on it - in order to prevent the horrors that I so loved to read about, from crawling out of the book and into my room.

So when my boys tell me that they are scared of something in their room, or that they can't sleep with the light off, I'm okay with that.  I will indulge the need to rid the room of monsters.  I will accept the need to sleep with lights on.  After all, who am I to judge?