Inspirational People » Group

Champion of the Australian and New Zealand bush / mountains, Dot was an amazing, strong, fit, vibrant woman.  She lived in, and loved areas close to my heart, the Blue Mountains and surrounding areas, the mountains of the South Island in New Zealand, and eventually she built a residence in my favourite Sydney suburb to live in - Wahroonga. 

Dorothy pioneered climbs on many peaks, both as a climber in general, and as a woman.  She clambered and rode through the Blue Mountains long before they were even mapped clearly.  Her adventurous spirit and never say die attitude are very inspirational, and she has inspired me to get my bike wheel fixed and get pedaling.

The fact that she continued her adventures, and education throughout her married life, and as a mother is what I liked the most, and she passed her love of nature on to her children.  She also traveled internationally, and climbed abroad, I really enjoyed reading about her, and was surprised that I hadn't heard of her before. 

Thanks to Jaydee's NannaTerri for guiding me toward another great read, about a wonderful Australian woman:  The Barefoot Bush Walker: A Remarkable Story of Adventure, Courage and Romance

Dot continued climbing until a ripe old age, unfortunately, she passed away earlier this year, this obituary in the SMH pays respect to her.

Blue Mountains; NSW Australia 

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Blue_Mountains,_Australia.jpg/800px-Blue_Mountains,_Australia.jpg)

Aoraki / Mount Cook; Sth Isl. New Zealand

(http://www.peakware.com/photos/53h.jpg)

I just read an article about a woman called Pearl Cornioley who was initially classed as not having the qualities to be a good leader during WW2. Later on in WWII she led a troop of 3000 French Resistance fighters.

I think it just goes to show that even if people think you can't do something, if in your heart and mind you believe you can do it, you can do whatever it is you want to do.

She was recommended for the Military Cross but was ineligible because she was a woman. She was offered a Civil MBE but refused it because she thought it was unjust. Later on she received a proper MBE.

One of the people who I think is really inspirational (and someone I truly admire) is Oprah Winfrey. Whether you love her or hate her, you have to admit that she turned a really horrible situation into a fantastic situation, and that's something that we should all admire.

When she was younger, she was both sexually and physically abused. But unlike a lot of people in this situation, she turned these negatives into positives to try and change the world to make it a better place.

I think it's fantastic that she is a great representation of someone from a minority group which have previously (or maybe even still, in some minds)  been opressed. It just goes to show that when you put your mind to something, you can achieve anything.

Some of the great work she has done is to highlight causes where people who may have felt alone previously, don't feel as alone when they find someone who is a guest on their show who has been (or still is) in a similar situation to theirs. These include segments on health, spirituality, personal development, money, raising awareness about abuse and paedophilia, etc. I think it's amazing in the paedophile segment that they actually managed to catch people who had a long history of sexual abuse. So it just goes to show that when people all work together for a common goal, we can all achieve something great!

There are so many wonderful women and men on Minti and online in general. Parents who appreciate life, all it has to offer and 'put it out there', share their journey in life and their experiences to help us travel on our own path through life. 

The writing of these people, (below), picks me up from sulk valley, and makes me want to climb the mountain of dreams again, jump from the top and fly. It reminds me to stop and smell the flowers along the way, and marvel at all the beauty we take for granted.

I remember to imagine the best outcomes, and dream big, for we are what we think and we are the answer to our own problems.  Ask the right questions of yourself, and you will provide yourself with better solutions than anyone else can. 

I realise that no matter what anyone else may think, it is up to us to define who we are, and the legacy we are creating. I look at that little reflection myself and see his needs are so simple, and from the simplest things he derives the greatest joy.  Life should be full of joy, and it really is simple - if we let it be.

After reading their blogs, and immersing myself in their outlook, I feel refreshed, and renewed.  I laugh, I commiserate, I sometimes shed a tear... These people aren't perfect, neither are their lives - but reading their different view of the world  is perfect tonic for me.

I have blogs bookmarked, and one of the folders, 'Balmy Blogs' contains Blogs That Make Life Better.  I have just added a new one to the list, and it is that of our new member Jen; faceitwithagrin, and also her other blog  The Comfy Place.  A life that is less than perfect; I recommend that you 'meet' this special new member, you will be enriching your life and hers.

If you feel like some more embracing reading, try some of our long term members - just in case you have found them already.

jenlemen - for her beautiful blogs and art work

tracey - lovely blogs and fantastic photography

janicepovey - this woman is minti personified

marglr - paints glorious pictures of nature with her words

Frontier - a great dad who stepped up to the plate

Izzy - down to earth, someone who is easy to relate to

There are so many marvellous Minti Mums and Dads, however these people have 'some sort of wonderful' and I personally find them inspirational, and full of light.

 

She's was an Aussie and you can read about her here

Sara was the face for breast cancer for years - until her passing in 2005...

She also wrote three books the one that impacted upon me was her book “From Strength to Strength” which was awarded with Australian Book of the Year title....

Sara Henderson's story helped me when I lost my own husband and I found a strength in her that I was able to use for myself....she is and was an Aussie Icon..

Ok, that's me for today...

She isn't well known (to most people I know anyway) but Bessie Coleman was the first black woman to become a pilot. She was also the most popular stunt flier in her day.

I always wanted to get my pilots licence and read about Bessie Coleman years ago....anyway, she's one woman that stood out to me - and one that stood out and became an inspiration to many black women and people...

Ok, so I'm not black...actually I'm lilly white but hey - I was inspired!!

You can read more about here

Cheers

Lavinia

Do the inspirational people have to be famous, or can they be er... non-famous people in our lives or people that you've heard of?

Born in NZ in 1912, Nancy spent most of her childhood and early teenage years on Sydney's Lower North Shore.  Nancy was a rebel, and a beautiful one at that!  She ran away from home at 16 to become a nurse, then upon receiving money from her Aunt she embarked on a journey to England.  Later she became a freelance journalist in France, before marrying Henry Fiocca in 1930 and joining the French Resistance in 1940.


Nancy Wake - Paris 1932

Nancy is a true heroine... She was clever, resourceful, feisty, strong, smart and a simply amazing woman.  She suffered personal tragedy, and showed great physical strength and aptitude.  I admire her greatly, please check these links from The New Zealand Edge, and diggerhistory for more information about her. 

Code-named the "White Mouse" by the Gestapo, Nancy Wake is one of the most decorated women of the Second World War. She received the George Medal, 1939–45 Star, France and Germany Star, Defence Medal, British War Medal 1939–45, French Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, French Croix de Guerre with Star and two Palms, US Medal for Freedom with Palm and French Medaille de la Resistance for her courageous endeavours. Wakes' medals are on display in the Second World War gallery at the Australian War Memorial.

There have been movies made about her story, and books, I particularly enjoyed Australian journalist Peter Fitzsimons, Nancy Wake: A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine, published by Harper Collins, 2001.  I read it at a time when I thought that the world was rather bleak; this helped to put things in perspective and motivate me.


Nancy Wake - London 2003

She is a shining example of someone who took action to fight for what she believed in and put it all on the line; she sure makes the world a better place.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who learned she had been expected to be a boy. So intent were her parents on having a son that she had to wait a week after her birth to receive a name, the Honorable Diana Frances Spencer. Two older sisters and the brother who eventually arrived had royal godparents, but her father and mother picked commoners — rich ones, certainly, but untitled nevertheless — to swear their faith for her at the baptismal font.

Her first memory was of plastic, a warm synthetic smell touched off by sunlight on her stroller. She also remembered visits to the churchyard grave of the child her parents conceived just before her, a boy who lived barely 10 hours. Had he survived, she often wondered, would she have existed? Or would her mother, having produced a male heir, have left her husband for another man sooner than she actually did, breaking up the family before Diana could be born? She wished she were her oldest sister, the firstborn, the star of the family: smart, extroverted, unafraid to greet their hated stepmother with an insolent burp. At nine, Diana would bravely declare that she would marry only once — and only for love — and never, never divorce. But even as she said that, she stared out, as she would often do, from beneath her bangs, never quite looking anyone in the eye. For her parents, once in love, were no longer.

Once upon another time this little girl would grow up and fall in love and marry a prince and grow so happy for such a splendid moment that the whole world paused to marvel and rejoice with her, falling in love with Diana in love. The sunshine of her shy smile outshone royalty. she became the most famous woman on earth. But she learned quickly that though she had become a princess and borne her husband an heir, she could never truly become his queen. And when she died, suddenly, the day after the 36th anniversary of her christening, the world, still in love, stopped for a very long moment to grieve.

Why did so many mourn her so, and why do they mourn her still? Was it because the feats and foibles of British royalty have always been such an integral part of the world's story — and because Diana acted out the latest chapters in Britain's thousand-year-old soap opera with such compelling charisma, with such a facility for manipulation and melodrama? Was it just that: the flawed heroine vanishes, and we are bereft of narrative? Or was it because her unexpected end gave emotional resonance to the profuse and sometimes conflicting details of her intensely scrutinized life, uncovering omens through tragic retrospective, inchoate but nevertheless consoling proofs of destiny and meaning? Or perhaps all of that is not quite the heart of the grieving. Perhaps the mourning was over something simple yet profound, something cosmic yet common...

What cannot be denied is that in the beginning there was majesty, that fascinating natural resource of her homeland, a country celebrated by its greatest bard as "this England ... this teeming womb of royal kings, fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth." Still, majesty is a concept that requires re-enchantment every generation or so — and in this time the spell was Diana.

Her mother-in-law, the Queen, had once worked the magic. Elizabeth had continued the task thrust upon her father, purging the dynasty of the scandal that had threatened to ruin it, brought on by her irresponsible playboy of an uncle, who shirked duty and gave up the throne for a forbidden marriage. Elizabeth furthered the reconstruction of the Windsors by making the clan work, making it the inspiring exemplar of ideal family life, albeit one adorned with crowns and tiaras. Elizabeth would serve. She would persevere. She would be dutiful. She would obey.

And then came Diana, the girl chosen to refresh the line, to bear its heirs, to be the new smiling face of the family. Despite the stately filigree Elizabeth had embroidered onto the Windsor facade, Diana found the dynasty dysfunctional, uncertain of its work, in truth more a firm than a family. Diana tried to serve. she tried to persevere. She tried to be dutiful. But in the end, she would not obey.

This disastrous turn of events nevertheless failed to dissipate popular fascination with the British royals. Indeed, it intrigued the world even more. For was this not to be expected of the line that had leavened history with domestic dramas both delicious and dolorous? Henry VIII and his six wives; the rivalry of a Virgin Queen and her all too lusty Scots cousin; the madness of George III and the cupidity of his sons; Victoria and the brood she produced to rival the Hapsburgs, marrying, marrying,marrying all over Europe.

Diana's catastrophic dalliance with the Windsors reverberated with history. It seemed as if the marriage and bitter divorce of Charles and Diana were inevitable evolutionary steps in the centuries-long intercourse between the Spencers and the Crown. For not only did the Spencers trace their descent from the same kings the Windsors claimed as ancestors, but in the 17th century alone, four of Diana's forebears were royal mistresses: Charles II was linked to three Spencer women, his brother James II to one. In the 18th century, Georgiana Spencer, the daughter of the first Earl of Spencer, scandalized the country not only with her many infidelities but also with her affair with the Prince of Wales, who may have been the father of one of her children. The same pathetic prince, after being abandoned by Georgiana, would pursue her sister Henrietta, who spurned him amid a comic seduction. In this century, a Prince of Wales again paid court to a Diana forebear: Lady Cynthia Hamilton, who chose instead to become the wife of the seventh Earl of Spencer and thus Diana's grandmother. The prince eventually turned to the American divorcee Wallis Simpson — and had to give up his throne for the woman he loved. What if Lady Cynthia had married the prince? The more cogent question is: Should not her decision have served as warning to her granddaughter to avoid a royal marriage?

History and its omens hovered around the marriage of Charles and Diana like uninvited guests bearing ill tidings. Tradition called for a wedding in Westminster Abbey. But Charles did not want to marry in Westminster, preferring St. Paul's Cathedral. He pointed out that a royal marriage had once been celebrated in the old St. Paul's: in the 16th century, Arthur, Prince of Wales, had married his Spanish bride Catherine there. It was an acceptable precedent — but an unfortunate one. Arthur died before the marriage was consummated, and Catherine, a prize because she was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was eventually wed to the new English heir, becoming the unhappy first of Henry VIII's six wives.

As for Diana, she wanted to avoid Westminster for reasons of personal history: her parents were married there in 1954. At that wedding, the Bishop of Norwich told the couple, "You are making an addition to the hoe life of your country on which, above all others, our national life depends." It turned out to be a blessing without efficacy. Indeed, the opposite was visited upon the Spencers. Diana wanted no part of that unintended curse. And so Charles and Diana were married in St. Paul's — in the end, a futile dodge.

The personal history of Diana before the Windsors was, of course, a premonition of the life of Diana the princess. In 1982, the year after the royal wedding, the journalist Penny Junor was almost apologetic about writing the biography of a 20-year-old "who has spent 19 of those years in almost total obscurity." What kind of life could possibly be told? And yet the details she related then possess a fatalistic glow now, hinting at the troubled Diana who would emerge over the next 15 years. While admiring of its subject, Junor's book nevertheless draws attention to Diana's imperfect virtues. "Diana was a compulsive washer," Junor wrote matter-of-factly, before cataloging how, in boarding school, Diana would not let a day go by without bathing, no matter how late it was, sneaking into the bathroom after lights were out even though it was strictly forbidden by the school, which allowed the girls to shower only three times a week. "She also had a compulsion for washing clothes" — and did more washing than any other student at school When she had time to visit her sisters, Diana would do their laundry too. After her marriage, she would write to an ex-nanny saying, "I do get annoyed at not being able to do my washing and general ironing." At nine years old, she was dusting the nursery to keep a less than thorough nanny out of trouble when her father came to check the room. Goodness may explain some of this fastidiousness. But only some. After all, this girl became the woman who admitted to bulimia and a regular program of colonic irrigation.

The child Diana, like the adult princess, had a capacity for drama and a penchant to seek comeuppance — locking a hated nanny in a room where she would not be discovered till evening, throwing the underclothes of an au pair onto the roof of the house and watching with glee as the items were rescued. She was an indifferent student: she froze at exams, was terrible at French, even did badly at needlework. But her limitations would serve her well. A penchant for popular culture and romance novels cultivated what many would later praise as her "common touch," her ability to talk to ordinary people about things they cared about. In school she was recognized as a do-gooder and received seldom-awarded prizes for helpfulness. As a teenager, she learned quickly that loving children was not the same as being able to care for them. She took her training as a kindergarten teacher very seriously.

She was aware of how things failed to work — even things inspired by love. The infidelities and disappointments that befell her family were proof enough. Her mother lost custody of her children because the court saw fit to punish her for adultery. Her father chose to marry a woman his children detested. Diana knew what it was like to be six years old and unable to explain to her friends why her mother was no longer around, how even her most courageous front could snap in a fit of anger. She knew what it was to be caught crying in secret. But she wanted to get family right. And when, one day, her prince came, she believed she had her opportunity, risked all, stumbled into the very nightmare she had sought to escape — and lost.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." that declaration comes down to us from the magisterial heights of Tolstoy. But it is a false one. The happy family is a protean myth, shifting shape with the fashion of the times. The reality is that every unhappy family is alike. And, alas, unhappy families abound, trapped in cycles of aspiration and disappointment, of love and loss. The most augustly unhappy family in the world thus becomes a spectacular mirror for us all.

That is what is at the heart of our grief: simpler and yet more profound than a fascination with splendor; cosmic and yet as close to us as our parents, our brothers, our sisters, our children. In the ruins of Diana's life, we see the shadows and anxieties of the lives we are trying to build together — as husbands, as wives, as sons, as daughters. We shudder over our sorrow for Diana as if we were caught in paroxysms of self-pity. In embarrassment, we deny. In truth, we recognize.

Gerard Manley Hopkins voiced the emotion perfectly: Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed ...
It is the plight we were born for. It is ourselves we mourn for.

This is 1 woman i totally adore and will never forget and i remember her death too she died while i was on holiday with my parents many were gutted by her death she was such a loving woman i will enever forget her

Luv Emz xxx

Born into a poor immigrant family, Anne survived her own tragic childhood and near blindness to become the teacher, mentor and companion to Helen Keller.  I remember reading this book soon after finishing my first Helen Keller book.  It was harder for me to understand, I cried and cried on behalf of Anne and the injustices she suffered as a child.

When her brother died, she was virtually alone in the world, and I don't know what motivated her and drove her to become the person she was.  She seemed to possess some inner strength, and belief in herself that we must all have, but need to discover and use.  In some ways I believe that she was braver than Helen, for she didn't have the support of a family as Helen did. 

This information is again from the American Foundation for the Blind, and Women In History (Living vignettes of notable women in U.S. history).