Spontaneous Planning

Story 1: Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai was born in Pakistan, where she grew up loving books and learning. She was only 11 years old when she started blogging for the BBC about life under the Taliban, who had banned girls from going to school. She became a vocal advocate for girls’ education, despite the threats and violence she faced. She survived the attack and was taken to the UK for treatment. She continued her activism and became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. She also founded the Malala Fund, a global organization that supports girls’ education and empowerment. Malala is a brave woman who risked her life for her right to learn and inspire others.

Story 2: Marie Curie
Marie Curie was born in Poland, where she faced discrimination and poverty as a woman and a scientist. She moved to France to pursue her studies and met her husband, Pierre Curie, who shared her passion for physics and chemistry. Together, they discovered two new elements, polonium and radium, and coined the term radioactivity. They also developed the first X-ray machines, which were used to save lives during World War I. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in different fields. She also became the first woman to be a professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Marie Curie was a brave woman who broke barriers and advanced science and medicine.

Story 3: Rosa Parks
She became a civil rights activist, fighting for equality and justice. She also inspired other movements and leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Freedom Riders. Rosa Parks was a brave woman who stood up for her dignity and changed history.

Powered by Microsoft Copilot. 😊

Now for my stories…inspired by amazing women I have had the privilege to meet during my life.

Story 4: Japan
She was a young girl who fell in love with an American soldier while he was stationed in Yokohama. She married him and moved to USA. Several years later she found herself in a foreign land, imprisoned in her house, with a small child and without her passport, which her husband took away from her. Abused, scared and alone, nobody to comfy in and nowhere to go. Luckily she had a nice neighbor who noticed something was wrong. One day, while her husband was at work, the neighbor came to her house and offered her help. She took her purse, grabbed her child and ran out of the house in her slippers. She stayed with her child in a shelter until their papers got cleared and could travel back to Japan. Once back in Japan, she filed for divorce. 15 years later, she is happily married again. Her second husband is kind and loving to both her and her daughter. She has a job at a big company and is progressing in her career. She loves to travel with her husband and daughter, discovering new corners of the world. She is happy.

Story 5: Canada
She was a young girl growing up in Iran. Education was becoming more and more challenging. Her parents wanted to give her equal opportunity in life like her brothers so they made a hard choice to send her to Canada when she was 16 years old. She started her life from scratch, alone in a foreign land, very far away from her family. Many obstacles came along the way: family, finances, health, love,…but she fought through them all. 15 years later she is a successful software engineer, working for some of the biggest companies in Canada, she owns a house and a car, she is independent, calm, handling bravely any challenge that comes her way, and always with a touch of humor to it.

Story 6: Spain
She was a young Spanish woman, successful in her career in the IT world, who travelled and moved around the world. She was financially well off and led a very full life, however something did not feel quite right in her heart. One day she decided to leave her career, go off the grid, without a plan to ever come back to the corporate world. She did not listen to friends and family who were puzzled by her choice, convincing her to “get back in the game”. 5 years later she is still living a free-spirited life, she found love and embarked on a completely new creative professional adventure, outside of any comfort zone she might have had. She does not know what the future will bring, and she is happier than ever.

Story 7: Croatia
The last story is dedicated to the two most impressive women I have met: my grandmother and my next door neighbor.

My grandmother was born in a small village next to Imotski in the southern part of Croatia in the 1920’. She lost her parents when she was a child and was left an orphan alongside her sister. She only managed to finish four grades of elementary school before she had to start working. Her sister and she cleaned homes and were barely getting by. Then one day one of the sons of a wealthy local family noticed her. He fell madly in love with her and pursued her for a long time, until she finally agreed to marry him. His family was opposed to the marriage and treated her very cruelly for many years, especially his sister. It also did not help the situation that she had several miscarriages and it took a long time for the first child to come, putting even more pressure and bullying on her. But she stuck through it because she loved my grandfather. At last they got three kids, a house in the village that my grandfather built, land, cattle and chicken, and the family settled down. However, post-war economy was tough and finally my grandfather had to go to Germany to work in order to sustain the family. My grandmother was left with three kids to raise, a big land and farm animals to take care of on her own. She never complained though, because they still had a good life. On top of that she had to take care of her sister, who was a single working Mom, something out of the world for people in those days. The kids eventually moved out to the bigger cities, two out of three got university degrees, and settled with their families. My grandfather came back from Germany, retired, only to fall very sick and die after five years of struggle. So my grandmother was left alone again with her sister to live through the rest of her retirement in the home she lived and maintained for so long. She had many medical issues of her own but this never brought down her spirit. She was known by everyone in the village and neighboring towns and villages. People used to visit her all the time, to seek for advice, help or just to talk. They used to say she was more famous than the Pope. Even my grandfather’s sister, the one who hated my grandmother back in the early days, came to stay with her often because she did not have any other family left, and my grandmother always took her in, no resentment. She still took care of her sister, who would come every day to watch Mexican soap opera at noon and have lunch. Her sister could not read so my grandmother used to read out loud the subtitles. Seeing the two of them watch soap opera was the sweetest thing. Even when her sister passed away she still continued to read all the subtitles out loud. She also took care of a neighbor with intellectual disability and a very rough life, who came to her house five time a day for advice or just companionship. She loved all her nine grandchildren very much, and we all loved her back even more. She was my favorite person to have coffee with (I still have one of her coffee cups with me), or just to sit and talk. She gave the most original advices: e.g., when I had a long distance boyfriend, she was appalled by it and told me I should have one boyfriend in each city, not wait for this one. She lived on her own and took care of herself and the house until almost the very end. She was truly a remarkable woman, ahead of her time.

My next door neighbor in Zagreb was a lady who moved in to the building at the same time as us, when I was three years old. She was originally from the northern part of Croatia but moved to Zagreb for work when she was very young. Even though she had marriage proposals, she knew what she wanted (and it was not any of the men proposing) and in the end she did not get married. She worked in a factory her whole life and lived as a single woman in Zagreb. She managed to get her own apartment and she lived a good life, always independent and happy. She had many friends and also brothers and nephews who loved her. When we all moved in to our building, she became our third grandmother and has remained so ever since. She is part of all our family events, and we are part of all events in her life. She stops by to see my Mom on a regular basis, and whenever we are home we always stop by to see her. She always has some cookies, rakija and interesting life stories to share. Her love for life is contagious. We live on the fourth floor without an elevator and she has been climbing up and down the stairs several times daily for the past 35 years, never once complaining. She has been celebrating birthdays with big parties in her home ever since I´ve known her. Last month she celebrated her 94th birthday, again with friends, family and live music. She always says that once she dies she wants to be buried with a photo of general Tito (she is a big Yugoslavia nostalgic). This will be a sad day.

Amazing women are all around us. Happy International Women´s Day!