Dear Women! Happy International Women’s Day!
Reblogged from Lada Ray Blog:
There are lots of beautiful holidays in the world. March 8 is one of my personal favorites. To me it’s associated with spring, smiles, and the intoxicating fragrance of tulips, delicate bells of the lily of the valley and sweetness of the mimosa flowers.
On March 8 the world celebrates the International Women’s Day. This holiday started over 100 years ago in Russia as a celebration of women’s rights and anti-war movement. Years later it became popular the world over as a holiday for women of all ages, when mothers, wives and daughters can kick back and allow themselves to be treated as pampered goddesses, letting men do the chores, bring them flowers, lavish them with massages and tickets to sold-out shows.
Find out how this holiday is celebrated in Russia and beyond from my eternally popular piece on Lada Ray Blog, combining history, reflections, memories and rare images: March 8, Happy International Women’s Day! (Note, as the International Women’s Day has been maligned and misinterpreted terribly in the US and some other Western countries, I highly recommend you read the above piece. It will put lots of things in perspective. Also read comments, in which people from various countries relay their experiences.)
To me, March 8 is the contemporary way of honoring the sacred feminine. But first and foremost, this is the holiday of the awakening of spring and the celebration of beauty and peace.
I don’t know about you, but on March 8, my house will be full of my favorite tulips, despite the dreary cold and snow piles outside. Too bad lily of the valley isn’t available in North America. But who is to say we can’t have a virtual March 8 celebration right here, on my blog!
Dear women,
I am wishing you lots of joy and flowers, love and beauty, and happy smiles this spring and always.
More than anything, I wish you PEACE. I wish you inner peace and strength to be yourself in all that life presents to you. Shine your light, love and understanding – today, the world needs it more than ever.
I also wish peace to your home, especially, if you live in an area stricken by a gruesome war.
Dear women, please enjoy all the flowers in the world!
Read full piece, and see more beautiful photos here!
Posted on March 7, 2015, in Forbidden History, Lada Ray, Russia and tagged anti-war, flowers, International Women's Day, love, March 8, nature, peace, spring, tulips, women's rights. Bookmark the permalink. 12 Comments.
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Thanks dear Lada for sharing the joy of celebrating Intl Women’s day! Perhaps the US would recognize women someday and join the rest of the world, alas our patriarchal “leaders” are too busy waging war with the world. Apparently they have forgotten the sacred feminine within. 😉 Some flowers for you!! ❤
http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/ukraine/international-women-day
http://c.tadst.com/gfx/600×400/ukraine-women-day.jpg?1
Ah the politics of love. 🙂
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🙂
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Thank you Lada for spreading such beauty for all of us to take in. Through these exquisite images, women celebrating the sacred feminine can join together regardless of their distant home countries, and different cultures, and share the common language of flowers — their song of beauty, love, joy, and vibrant life. And, perhaps they will instill in each woman’s heart a silent, fervent prayer for renewal of life and new beginnings for humankind. Mother Earth speaks to us through her flower children of promise, as She will always nurture us with the same love and care She abundantly lavishes in Her Garden.
Lily of the Valley is so Divine !! It can be grown (cultivated) in North America. I hope to grown some in a secret sheltered garden spot away from a very inquisitive nose. I was sorry to discover that Lilly of the Valley is considered poisonous to cats, although how dangerous and poisonous I’m not sure. However, with some careful tending and placement, I should be able to enjoy both the flowers and my curious cat with no potential harm coming to either one.
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What a beautiful comment, JR. Thank you. 🙂
I had no idea lily of the valley was bad for kitties. But thanks for letting me know, I’ll look into that. When I grew up we didn’t have any kitties.
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Dear Lada,
Thank you for reminding me that Women’s Day can and should be something positive!
Sadly in Sweden it is not. Sweden, next to the US, is probably the country worst poisoned by distorted feminism! Swedish society is slowly being destroyed by feminists fighting against men!
Every day in the newspaper there is at least one article about how women are being mistreated by, raped or beaten by, or discriminated against by men or by the system!
There is almost never a word about the difficulties facing males. Obviously International Men’s Day is unknown in Sweden, as according to Swedish feminists every day is “Men’s Day”!
Having a Thai wife, and one foot in Thailand, some aspects of Swedish society are becoming unbearable to me.
Well, Lada, enough of negativity from my part! Maybe you have some interesting thoughts about western distorted feminism?
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Emil, it’s a good point and an important observation you’re making here. Think I’ll do a post in reply. Stay tuned. 🙂
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I didn’t hear about International Women’s Day in rural South Korea, where I spent the week, but the women of that country reminded me very much of the Buryat women I met in Zabaikalye. They seem very strong.
Never a hint of Women’s Day in Japan, either. Thank you for celebrating it here!
Having gotten to know some very nice people in Korea, I hope the two Koreas can be reunited soon. I’ve started reading up on Korean history, and it seems more similar to Japan’s than I would have thought.
It always shocks people who have been drawn to the Orient to see the twins bicker like they do. Japan and Korea were conjoined at the hip at birth, and separated at the end of the last Ice Age. One was brought up by Mother China and Father Mongolia, and the other just got letters and seems to have been raised by sailors.
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Cute story about Japan and Korea. Twins bickering. Right, just like Ukraine and Russia. Too bad.
I also hope N and S Koreas are reunited soon… but it will only happen when US leaves them alone.
If we take the cosmic view – in the final analysis we are all ONE ;).
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A little good news here in Japan tonight: starting at 11:00 p.m. (not prime time, but not wee hours either), NHK aired an hour-long (so far) documentary on Mikhail Gorbachev’s agreement with the Reagan Administration on NATO, and how that has been violated. It is giving viewers insight into the history of eastern Europe.
It is only a minority of Japanese who will be watching, but they are the influential ones, the considerate intellectuals who can make a difference by being persuasive. We are still hearing the lies being repeated by CNN, and the talking heads on prime time show quite a negative bias toward Russia, but I see hope.
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Tanks, Patricia.
Do you know about former Japan PM ongoing visit to Crimea and its consequences?
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I have not heard about this myself, but my husband says it must be Hatoyama, and the media are bashing away at him. His father and grandfather were also proponents of peace with Russia.
I think we face a huge task in changing the public’s perception of Russia here in Japan. The NHK program last night had a hopeful start, but a disappointing end. It suddenly and illogically concluded that Russia had no reason to be upset about NATO’s encroachment–it wasn’t a real promise that had been made, and then showed pictures of Maidan in one of its happier moments, saying Ukraine only wanted freedom.
I’m reading it this way: the documentary was dubbed from English and Russian into Japanese, which means BBC or PBS. The only way you can put across the truth in those countries is to hide it behind some obligatory propaganda, and the reason this was broadcast from 11:00 was it had the propaganda. Thinking people still get the message–just like when NHK broadcast a documentary on the difficulty of getting demolitions to fall straight down, a few months after 911. Of course, it was just interesting chat, nothing to do with three very tall skyscrapers.
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Oh yes, that’s Hatoyama.
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