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Google is celebrating International Women's Day 2012 with a Doodle today - a day which offers individuals around the globe a chance to highlight not only the struggle of female empowerment in such areas as the Middle East, but to also celebrate our femininity with all the freedoms of expression we're so lucky to have in the West.I'm currently up at the BFI Southbank in London to watch some films dealing with women's issues, and during the day some friends and I will be taking part in the Oxfam Get Together on International Women's Day, so I'll be keeping this post brief - but firmly rooted in my favourite subject - love.
Which leads me to the point I want to make: I kind of see the news of a massive sun explosion coinciding with Women's Day as a divine analogy. Solar explosions create geomagnetic storms that batter at the Earth's protective magnetic field against harmful radiation. And women in a very real sense are the protective shield of our humanity - men should be made aware of that when they try to batter on this shield, because they're really hurting themselves in the long run.
I'd like to see it as reminder for us to keep the grand scale of things - the bigger picture of love I like to talk about - in our minds, too, for when the world starts to shake we all cling to love for the hope it brings.
And what we should focus on more than ever for this day is the humanity in women. It's when we embrace our femininity we're reminded that it's the differences in our lives that enhance us.
Love is the bridge that crosses divides, and women are nature's bridge builders. This is the real power of women, in our inexhaustible capacity to forge bonds with our men, our children, and our families - and in this way to connect the world closer together.
We already have all the necessary tools needed to empower ourselves with the strength of love.
Those tools are inside you. They're inside all us. Even the boys :)
Yours in love,
