Inspiration: Tristan Allen & Amanda Palmer

I Am Woman

Ah so the time has come to present you all with my final lady of inspiration. During the decision process for this person, I sought out to discover a woman to top them all…the saints, the sinners, the brave and the everyday heroes. Then it occurred to me that no one female is better than another. Who am I to decide who’s worthy of recognition? The criterion of inspiration differs from person to person. What I find to be inspiring could be nothing short of a nightmare to another person.

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Now, I have given you the ordinary, the extraordinary, the famous and the infamous. Women of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds have been featured over the last 10 issues and they are all of equal importance. I have tried to incorporate a variety of women to accommodate the fact that we’re all different and this feature has been a great project of mine because it’s lead me to dig deep for those who stand out to me and it’s also made me realise that you don’t have to be anything out of this world to be someone’s muse. That is by far THE most important thing I have taken from doing this, which leads me to my final female. This should be by far the most inspirational woman out of everyone featured and this is the one I want you to remember and think about.

This woman is you.

Yes you, the ordinary girl with the 9-5 Monday to Friday job. You who has a fantastic talent in something that you’re finding difficult to express or can express to people who don’t listen. You, little lady, who would rather slip into the background than be at the forefront of it all.

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The point is it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, how old you are, the colour of your skin, which sex you’d prefer to be with, what you look like and whatever other brilliant features you have that make you, you.

You’re amazing. No question, and you should be so proud of who you are or who you’re on the way to becoming because you were put on this earth for a reason. You have a purpose and you may not know what that purpose is yet but it’s there and you just have to find it.

Take risks.

Overcome fears.

Be mature.

More importantly…be immature.

Don’t suppress your inner child. Locking her up is a sin.

Look in the mirror every single day and say, “I am here for a reason. I mean something to someone.” Be your own inspiration.

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I’ve been reading this book called ‘You Can’t Afford The Luxury Of A Negative Thought’ by Peter McWilliams. I advise you to read it. It’s quite clearly written for people trapped in a mid life crises but the principals are all relevant. It basically just encourages you to live instead of just existing, and what I have taken from reading it is that if you want something, get it. Put it above everything else and make it your goal.

If you want to write a book. Do it.

If you want to be a doctor. Do it.

If you want to sky dive. Do it.

If you want to travel the world. Do it.

If you’re 100% happy with the choices you’ve made and the life you have. Live it.

Whatever religion you follow or whatever beliefs you have in the afterlife, these are uncertainties and we cannot rely on them, as much as I wish we could. There is one thing that we know for certain and that is the fact we have one shot at life. Just one. Don’t blow it. If you’re not the person you want to be, then change. If you are, then great just keep being you and do whatever makes you happy not what you think would make everyone else happy.

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If you have read my previous submissions, I am grateful but if this is the only one you’ve ever read and will ever read then I’m happy. This is the one I want you to remember because there are too many women out there who hate themselves and are wallowing in self-pity and it doesn’t sit right with me.

One thing I always remember if I’m having a particularly crappy day is that my worst day could be the best day for someone else. It instantly makes me feel grateful for the life I have been blessed with.

I will leave you with this final thought…

“Believe with all of your heart that you will do what you were made to do” –  Orison Swett Marden.

About the writer: Melody has just finished a degree in Journalism, Film and Media with a 2:1. She aspires to work with vulnerable women and children subject to domestic, and or other forms of abuse. She is an animal lover and has a small obsession with Fearne Cotton. She is a constant joker and can be found on Twitter.

Inspirational: Emily Bear

 

So this is what happens when you start composing music at three years old… This medley is amazing and give it a listen if a have a spare 6 minutes.

Until next time,

Daisy

Every Cloud…

I was in work the other day just checking the company news homepage before I was due to start my shift and something caught my eye. It was an article informing of The Daily Mail’s Inspirational Women of the Year Awards. I had a gander to see what it was all about.

The Daily Mail is running its seventh Inspirational Women of the Year Awards in association with British Gas and the Shelter charity. The award allows us simple folk to nominate any women we think deserve to be recognised which I think is a great idea because it allows “normal” people with no fame or fortune be recognised for the good that they do in the world.

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I was reading further into it on Monday and came across an article on one of the nominees, Claire Maitland. I had a read to see why she was nominated and I came across quite a heartfelt story.

Claire received a telephone call at 1am on August 12^th 2000 from her brother letting her know that her 14-year-old nephew had drowned. Needless to say she was devastated, I can’t begin to imagine her grief, having a nephew and a niece myself, it’s not a pleasant thought. Claire learnt that medics found her nephew, Sandy, unconscious in a lake in Canada. Unfortunately they were too late to save him.

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Claire recalls the months following his death “for months we just existed. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sandy’s accident – and the remoteness of the lake where he drowned. I thought what if the same thing had happened in Scotland? Who would have been the first to reach him, and would they have been able to help?” (The Daily Mail website 13^th September 2013).

Following on from her thoughts, Claire discovered that even though nurses and GP’s are mostly first to reach a casualty, they aren’t actually equipped with anything that could save a patients life. This news alarmed her understandably because I imagine she kept linking it back to Sandy just thinking what if…

As the months went on this sort of became a back thought, until she received a phone call from her sister Penny saying how she was unsure what to do with the rest of her life with the absence of Sandy. Claire took that opportunity to start a trust in memory of Sandy. What a fantastic way to preserve someone’s memory, and even better, Penny and Claire decided on working towards providing vital life saving equipment to on-call doctors and nurses in the regional areas of Scotland and the offshore isles.

Her words echoed to me from the article “if we could stop one family losing a loved one, it would be worth it.” Sincerity is the first word that comes to mind. Claire had put the personal back into saving lives.  However, she couldn’t have anticipated what happened next.

The Sandpiper Trust has helped to supply life-saving equipment for 2000 emergencies a year. That’s a lot of loved ones.

Claire and Penny worked with emergency doctors to design the blue Sandpiper bag which contains 50 items of vital medical equipment, such as CPS face masks, mini tracheotomy kits, airway masks and stiff neck collars.

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The success and growth of the trust has been incredible. Over the past 18 months alone there have been 3000 call-outs and a whopping £1.5 million raised. Countless lives have been saved.

To add a personal aspect to this story, Gillian McKenzie owes her life to Claire and the life saving bag because in 2012 she suffered a cardiac arrest. Her six-year-old son called her neighbour who realised she wasn’t breathing and because of the fast arrival of the GP with the Sandpiper bag, Gillian’s life was saved and she can now watch her kids grow up because of Claire.

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What’s even more amazing is that Gillian met with Claire for tea several months later to put a face to a name and the pair just cried to each other knowing what has happened has prevented what could have happened. Every cloud does have a silver lining and Claire should be deeply proud of herself because she has turned the memory of her wonderful nephew into a life saving action.

What. A. Woman.

For more info on the charity visit www.sandpipertrust.org

About the Writer: Melody has just finished a degree in Journalism, Film and Media with a 2:1. She aspires to work with vulnerable women and children subject to domestic, and or other forms of abuse. She is an animal lover and has a small obsession with Fearne Cotton. She is a constant joker and can be found on Twitter.

Inspiration: Body Shape

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Look at them! Aren’t they wonderful?!

We are always more self critical, but remember that what you may dislike about yourself, others may view as incredible! Love yourself and know that we don’t go for any body shaming here at Yellow Bunting.

Until next time,

Daisy

Inspiration: WWYD?

People are awful.

Not the best start to an inspiration post, but it’s relevant and sadly, very true.

I had no idea what What Would You Do? was until a few months ago, when a scenario from it popped up on tumblr. It was in two parts; the first was a mother shopping with her son for a Hallowe’en costume. He wanted to be a princess (Belle) but his mother was against it and other eavesdropping mums nearby tried to talk him out of it, saying that princesses were for girls and why didn’t he want to be Spiderman? The second is the same, but substitute ‘boy’ for ‘girl’ and ‘princess’ for ‘Spiderman’.

From what they chose to show, only two people were encouraging the children to dress how they wanted to. A woman and her friend had no problem with the young girl wanting to be Spiderman, telling the girl’s mother why she should let her daughter make her own choice.

Society has deemed it acceptable for girls and women to dress more masculine, so why not the other way round? Why are we not OK with seeing boys and men in skirts or dresses?

There are a whole host of WWYD? videos on YouTube, challenging the general public on race, homosexuality, religion, child abuse and sexual harassment. In every show, they show that the human race isn’t all that bad with heroes and heroines coming out in support of the little guy. There are of course, those who don’t and just go about the own business as usual, but let’s not focus on that.

Until next time,

Daisy

Inspiration: Boggle the Owl

What could be better than an advice blog in the form of an owl?

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Aside from our own wonderful Agony Aunt – nothing! Boggle the Owl is a brilliant creation who gives level headed, practical advice to those in need.

It’s always worth the while reaching out to someone when you need help. Bottling it up inside is no good for anyone, especially you. Getting  second opinion, an outside voice, anything can really turn a situation around for the better – it helps give you perspective on your troubles and worries and sometimes you just need that little voice to say that you can overcome anything life throws at you. Because you can.

I hope you’re all well and remember, if you ever need help or a shoulder to lean on, email our Aunty Rubyyy at ask.yellowbunting@yahoo.co.uk

Until next time,

Daisy

Busts 4 Justice

Hello peeps! How’s the summer treating you? Mine couldn’t be better to be honest with you! Loving my job, writing and adding to my bucket list of things I want to achieve in life. It sounds cheesy but you have one life and you should live it as full as can be which is exactly what I set out to do. Anyway, moving away from my life story and back to another dedication to another wonderful lady that graces us with her presence.

This one is a short and sweet one but the message is still there. The eighth woman (well two actually, they come as a pair) is Beckie Williams and Becky Mount. These two women are the force behind the campaign to stop high street stores like Marks and Spencer’s from charging up to £4.50 more for larger bra sizes.

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Being a larger cup herself, Beckie Williams noticed the jump in price back in 2007 and decided to write a strongly worded letter to M&S. After receiving a reply blaming on the fact that larger cup sizes means more material, both girls decided to set up a Facebook group called Busts4Justice in 2008 to spread the word and create general awareness surrounding the issue. The duo had no clue as to what was going to happen next.

Rosamund Urwin from the Evening Standard found the pair and after a few weeks of the first sparks of interest, M&S got in touch with the girls and a meeting was set up with the head of PR, head of lingerie and head of design technology in London. This meeting in Becky Mounts words “strung off lots of rubbish about how they do such good quality bras for decent prices that they had to charge extra” which is quite clearly a bunch of crap. I am a curvy size 14 jeans and if I was to buy the same pair of jeans as a smaller lady of a size 8 then we would pay the same price for them right? CORRECT.

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So, why on earth is this logic suddenly absent when applied to bras? Who knows, because it is very discriminative and quite frankly it’s rude.

After continuous effort and campaigning for change on this ‘tit tax’ Beckie Williams bought a £3.40 share in M&S to allow her to confront chairman Stuart Rose in the annual meeting of July 2009 which to her delight caused Mark and Spencer’s to release an ad announcing that they had “boobed.” Upon releasing this as, M&S stated that they would be adopting a one-price-fits-all policy.

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They explained:

“We’ve heard what our customers are telling us – that they are unhappy with the pricing on our DD-plus bras and that basically we’ve boobed. So from Saturday May 9 no matter what size you buy, the price is going to be the same. We’re not going to cut the quality though – they’ll still be made to the same high standards so you get the best support on the high street.”

Following on from the success of Busts4Justice, Beckie continues to campaign for good measuring standards and maintains a blog busts4justice.com to help big busted women everywhere find the correct fit and as she puts it herself:

“Every woman deserves to love her fit and feel good about her body: we’ll do our very best to help banish those body blues for you.”

Beckie Williams on busts4justice.com

What an absolutely fantastic achievement for both her and Becky Mount. They found a problem but instead of complaining about it and not doing anything to change it, they spent 11 months building their case to prove M&S were in the wrong. It may seem like a small achievement in comparison with the other women I have written about for this feature, but somehow I feel this one is more personal. These two wonderful women created a united front and success was achieved to allow big-busted women everywhere to feel happy and not have to fork out more for having wonderful curves. It’s unacceptable to have to pay punishment for something that they should be proud of. I have a relatively small chest, but I am all for the message behind the campaign…

Women come in all shapes and sizes, but the bottom line is that we are all worthy of equal treatment and our unique attributes shouldn’t be punished; they should be celebrated.

If you are a proud big-busted woman, visit Beckie’s blog she has some great ideas and advice to share.

About the writer: Melody has just finished a degree in Journalism, Film and Media with a 2:1. She aspires to work with vulnerable women and children subject to domestic, and or other forms of abuse. She is an animal lover and has a small obsession with Fearne Cotton. She is a constant joker and can be found on Twitter.

Inspiration: Love Your Body

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Start loving yourself! (If you haven’t already.) You are a wonderful human being, capable of so much, entitled to good days and bad days without having to justify yourself, able to dress how you want, fragile, strong, independent and glorious.

If you’re unused to loving yourself, start off small by saying to yourself, “Hey you know what? My hair looks pretty damn good today!” Focus on the positives and gradually build and build until you can scream at the top of your lungs, “I AM AMAZING!” Because you really are.

Until next time,

Daisy

JK Rowling

Hi guys hope everyone is enjoying the heat wave (if there is one where you are!) Personally I am loving it we haven’t had this great of a summer since at least 2010. Although I have to say that my wardrobe is heavily equipped with clothes for the traditional British summers we have, so needless to say I’m mostly boiling but loving the heat. Anyway, lets get back in touch with my choice of inspirational women of our time. Now as we are nearing a close to this feature (boo) I have decided to go with a personal favourite this week, for reasons that are linked to myself. If you are a book lover then great but if you are not I hope you find some inspiration from this entry. This weeks inspiring woman is the great J K Rowling…

Most of you know who J K Rowling is even if you aren’t into books all of you would have at least heard her name. She is quite clearly one of the most well known women of our time. However, I can probably guess that a lot of us have only ever known her to have given birth to the wonderful world of Harry Potter. Does anyone actually know her story before her fame and fortune?

I will put my hands up and openly say I knew very little of her before writing this article and it was only a Spotify advert that caused the curiosity to bubble.

Joanne Rowling was born on 31^st July 1965 in Gloucestershire, England and grew up with her younger sister, Dianne in their family home in Tutshill. Rowling sparked great interest for writing at a very young age. She is known to have written short fantasy stories to read to her sister and grew up idolising the likes of Jessica Milford. Joanne had a pretty run of the mill upbringing, which included the rebellious teenage phase of finding one’s feet and she then proceeded onto attend university to study French and Classics in Exeter.

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After graduating, Rowling moved to Manchester with a boyfriend and it was on a four hour delayed train trip from Manchester to London that she first thought about Harry. She recalls what happened on her website:

“I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, and the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head. I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one… I did not have a functioning pen with me, but I do think that this was probably a good thing. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. Perhaps, if I had slowed down the ideas to capture them on paper, I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen). I began to write ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ that very evening, although those first few pages bear no resemblance to anything in the finished book.”

I’m a great believer of fate, as I have stated many times before and I also believe that our brains are at their most imaginative when we were idle. If it wasn’t for her delayed train and the fact she was probably bored out of her mind, then maybe Harry would never have entered the forefront of her mind. It’s stories like this that just continue to enforce the way I like to see life; everything happens for a reason and even though the reason may not be apparent immediately, it will make sense one day. That’s how I look at her train journey, she was meant to live this life.

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Rowling said that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was started that very same day and on a negative note, the December of the same her, Joanne tragically lost her mother to a ten year battle with multiple sclerosis and it was this deep loss that she felt that affected her to write about Harry’s parental loss in much more detail because she could vouch for how he would have felt. It could arguably be said that Rowling also lost both parents because she has no contact with her father after sharing a strained relationship with her during her youth. As I write this, I am finding more awe for her because she has taken so much from her personal life to apply to Harry and to be a good writer, I think a lot of the emotion has to come from tragic memories you’d rather forget…

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After this great loss, Rowling moved to Portugal to teach English in night school, whilst focusing on writing during the day. She met and married Jorge Arantes with whom she shares a daughter Jessica Isabel Rowling who was born in 1993. They separated just 13 months later and there is speculation over domestic abuse, but whether it is true or not is unknown. Rowling and her daughter moved back to the UK in Edinburgh near her sister, and felt the weight of failure upon her shoulders. She had no job, no partner and a child to provide for.

Some would see this as the beginning of the spiral into a black abyss of depression and to pull yourself up from the bottom and dust yourself of would seem impossible at this stage. It is so hard to find positives in life when you feel like a failure but this stage in Joanne’s life was nothing to stop what was about to happen. She views this era of her life as one of freedom:

“Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”– J K Rowling, The Fringe Benefits of Failure, Harvard Commencement 2008.

 

She has a way with words and just reading extracts from The Fringe Benefits of Failure has created a little fire inside that I can be capable of anything…we all can.

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After leaving Portugal she was diagnosed with depression and it was this feeling that provided the origin of the Dementors in Harry Potter. Do you see what I’m trying to say? She has an outstanding capability to apply herself to her work and it’s incredibly admirable to witness. Rowling committed to writing the first Harry Potter in many cafés around Edinburgh, anywhere that she could get her baby daughter to fall asleep. The manuscript of the first book was finished in 1995 and was subsequently rejected by 12 publishers (I bet they are regretting that now!) and after a year, she was finally given a chance by Barry Cunningham, editor from Bloomsbury. The best part of this is that a lot of the decision was down to 8-year-old Alice Newton, the daughter of the Bloomsbury chairman, who was given the first chapter to test and apparently begged for more. Although this was all positive, there was little money to be made from children’s books but Rowling was awarded an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to continue her writing.

In the summer of 1997, The Philosopher’s Stone was published in an initial 1,000 copies and today these are valued between £16,000 and £25,000! Several months later, the book won several awards and then an American auction was held for the rights to publish the novel, which was won for $105,000. This was the beginning of the rest of J K Rowling’s life.

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The following books were published from 1998 up until 2007 and the last book was the fastest selling book of all time. During completing the last book, Rowling allowed herself to be filmed for a documentary for ITV, which included a revisit to her old flat and she was reduced to tears stating that this was “really where I turned my life around completely.” It is known that the last chapter of the last book was written in the early 1990’s before the others had begun. She knew where the story was heading and that’s why for me it has worked so well, because she had a clear idea of how to get there.

Following on from the success of Harry Potter, J K Rowling has remarried and had another two children. She continues to write and dedicates a lot of her time to charitable organisations such as the Volant Charitable Trust, Lumos, which were both set up by her and she also supports Comic Relief, Gingerbread, Fund for Children, Young People in Crisis, and contributes a lot of money and support for research and treatment for multiple sclerosis and many other charities. She stated “I think you have a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently.” (A Fond Look Back at Harry, USA Today 2007).

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This is one story of a woman’s journey from rags to riches. She did it all on her own, without marrying someone rich. All of her success has been because of her talent, her determination and most of all her strength. She is absolutely wonderful woman to look up to and she allowed people my age to grow up alongside Harry Potter. I remember being absolutely captivated by the first book when I was just in primary school, and felt the same towards every book that followed in the series. J K Rowling opened up the imaginations of all kids my age and I continued to love the series through the films, and after watching the last one, I felt deeply nostalgic that this era of my life had ended but also deeply grateful that I had the honour of being a part of this world. So from my part, I would just like to say a massive thank you to J K Rowling for bringing happiness to me through the pages of a book.

About the writer: Melody has just finished a degree in Journalism, Film and Media with a 2:1. She aspires to work with vulnerable women and children subject to domestic, and or other forms of abuse. She is an animal lover and has a small obsession with Fearne Cotton. She is a constant joker and can be found on Twitter.