Life Changing Times

This goes a long way to summing it up for me 🙂

We’re a long way from equality or even equity, but also, I’m a long way from my youth when I was raised that women stayed quiet and did all the household work.

In my work, since forever, I have had to compete in endless ‘whose dick is bigger’ contests – somewhat tragically, pretty much always winning. Surrounded by ex or current military types, cynical journalists, burnt out aid workers…myself included at times in that category.

I remember once in 1993 in Medjugorje, a religious town near Mostar in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where apparently the Virgin Mary had appeared some years before. Locals believed they were protected from the war raging just down the road in Mostar because of her protection. Whereas they were actually protected because the Catholic religious leaders had made a deal with the Serbian military, who agreed to keep them safe if they refused entry to Muslims fleeing the slaughter in Mostar.

But that’s a whole other story. A lot of aid workers and journalists gathered in Medjugorje because it was safe, often after having traveled in and out of Mostar. And the stories would begin in the evenings, often based on the above-mentioned principle of penis size competition. I hated it. With a passion. Knowing my friends down the road were dying, while these people spent their evenings talking about how brave they were.

And in the spirit of my t-shirt pictured above, gifted to me some nearly 30 years later, I stormed up to a table of these idiots and shouted ‘You are never nearly killed or nearly pregnant – you either are or aren’t, for fucks sake!!!’ It worked, at least for that one evening.