Benazir Bhutto: In Today's News

This morning I talked with a woman who didn't know Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. In fact, didn't even know who Bhutto was. It surprised me because the stay-at-home mom is an intelligent woman. After we talked, I realized how many of you, my readers, are like her. You are busily going about your lives and not paying so much attention to politics. So, since I think it's important that you know something about Bhutto and why she is important to you, even in death, I'm telling you a little about her.

Benazir Bhutto grew up in a culture and a religion that doesn't honor women or democracy. When she was young, Bhutto's father told her to study the lives of strong women like Joan of Arc and Indira Gandhi. She did, and learned. She found victory in the way she broke through barriers and rose to prominence as a Muslim woman.

She lived in the United States during the hippy era of the early 1970's. She attended Harvard when she was just sixteen; her nickname was Pinky. She saw the freedom the American people had to protest their government and to voice dissenting opinions without being killed. She fell in love with democracy.

Later she lived in England and attended Oxford. She didn't plan to be in politics. However, her father was prime minister and was Pakistan's most democratized leader. He later founded the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). He was hanged in 1979 and, reportedly, Bhutto's life was never the same.

Over the years, Bhutto became known as a shrewed, flawed, and complicated woman - like many of us. She was a controversial politician, the first woman elected prime minister in the modern Muslim world. She was twice elected and twice driven from office, allegedly for corruption. Until last October, she lived in exile in England where she was raising her three children, products of a 1987 arranged marriage.

Earlier this year, Bhutto decided to return to Pakistan. She was on a mission to save her country. On the day Bhutto returned, she lived through her first assassination attempt. There were others. When the Today Show's Ann Curry interviewed her this past October, she asked Bhutto why she kept putting herself at risk. Bhutto explained that she and her supporters in Pakistan "believe in a cause. We want to save Pakistan and we think we can save it by saving democracy." She also believed, "Terrorists can dictate the agenda...by threatening violence, they can take over nations and destroy the quality of life...I have a choice to keep silent...and to allow the extremists to keep doing what they are doing, or I have a choice to stand up and say 'this is wrong.' I've taken the second choice." When Curry asked her if she regretted her decision, she said "everybody has to die sometime," but she hoped to live long enough to see her children marry and to enjoy her grandchildren. She didn't.

According to terrorism expert Eric Margolis, who was once Bhutto’s security adviser and later her friend said [in a Newsnet interview] that he will remember Bhutto as a woman of great inner strength, intelligence, self-reliance and “a remarkable woman” who “went through some hellish times." That could describe a lot of us, couldn't it?

You see, readers, Benazir Bhutto had her good and bad qualities. So do each of us. Yet, she wanted for herself many of the same mundane things that most of us want. At the same time, she held strong beliefs and did what many of us don't do, she spoke out against those things that she thought were wrong.

My "Bhutto Challenge" to you is to find something that you feel passionate about and speak up. Maybe you hate the way many ads treat women as though they are objects, or maybe you don't like how some friends/relatives/coworkers make you feel used and unappreciated. It can be something global or something personal, but choose to speak about it and change it in your world. When you do, your actions will have a ripple effect that will positively impact others in your life. Appreciate your courage and count your victory. Keep doing it and watch the victories add up.

In victory,
Annmarie

WAKE UP TO YOUR VICTORY!

It happens to all of us: We act unconsciously and don’t pay serious attention to the stuff that’s going on around us. There are a few reasons, including these:

• We’re really busy.
• We focus on accommodating everyone else in our life, BUT we don’t expect to be accommodated in return…so we get overwhelmed
• We get lulled into the security of what’s familiar (even when it’s not secure)
• We’re afraid that if admit we aren’t happy or are dissatisfied with what’s happening, we would want to change it…and change usually neither easy nor comfortable

Sound familiar? Of course it does. We all choose unconscious living sometimes.

Yet when we aren’t paying attention, we could be sabotaging our efforts and, as a result, cheating ourselves out of personal victory. Sometimes we might even be putting ourselves in danger.

This isn’t something new. I hear lots of stories that prove it, including this one about a woman I’ll call Tori:

Tori was married for over twenty years. It hadn’t been happy, almost from the beginning. Yet Tori had two children, felt stuck and stayed. She had more support for staying than for leaving, including a strong religious upbringing that said you had to stay married no matter what and a family that supported that philosophy. Both created a lot of guilt whenever Tori thought about getting a divorce.

Tori struggled to control her emotions as she told me her story, leading me through the steps she took to leave. She said she didn’t want anything from the house that had been her mental and emotional prison for so many years. So when she moved into a tiny apartment, she took only a bed and a small television. She got a job. With the support of her friends, who gave her furniture, food and even some money, Tori slowly got on her feet.

When I asked her what finally gave her the courage and the “push” to finally leave, Tori gave me a steely stair and said, “I woke up.”

To Tori, “waking up” meant that she finally decided she deserved better than living an unhappy existence with an abusive man. It’s the exact same thing Lilly told me happened for her during our interview for her chapter in my book, Victorious Woman! Lilly admitted she danced around the truth for a long time, and made excuse after excuse for the abusive behavior she tolerated. However, once she “woke up,” there was no going back. She had to take action. Lilly’s story in Victorious Woman! touches many women who are in marriages that include physical, verbal or emotional abuse.

If you are one of those women, now is the best time to WAKE UP! You can make your life different. Lilly, Tori and hundreds of other women have woken up to the true feelings and are living better, happier and healthier lives.

If you are living with domestic abuse, here are three things you can do today:
1 – Get emotional support by calling a domestic abuse hotline. Talk to someone anonymously and tell them your story.
2 – Compile resources. There is an agency right in your neighborhood. Find them. Call and learn what resources are available to you. These can include help with logistics, safe houses, help in getting a job and more.
3 – Make a plan. The sooner you have a plan, the sooner you will develop the confidence to leave.

Maybe you aren’t living in an abusive marriage, but you are unhappy with the way your life is going. You want more and better. You believe you deserve it. WAKE UP!

Once you WAKE UP and decide what you want instead of what you have, the steps are pretty much the same: get emotional support, compile resources and make a plan.

By the way, Tori’s story has a happy ending. Actually, it’s more like a happy middle. Today, she is blissfully remarried and a doting grandmother. She still gets fluttery when she talks about her spouse of nearly ten years. Tori’s only regret is that she didn’t wake up sooner. She says her life is better now than she ever could have imagined during those years. Tori’s looking forward to retiring and enjoying good times with her sweetie, children, grandkids and friends.

Victory doesn’t just come at the end of a long road. For you and me, and just as it was for Tori and Lilly, it is in the moment when you WAKE UP and decide to make a change. The first step of any journey is the hardest, but without it, nothing else happens. You can do it. As this year is ending, WAKE UP and you’ll find something better in the New Year.

©CopyrightAnnmarieKelly2007. All Rights Reserved.

Annmarie Kelly is offering two great teleseminars starting in January. Read more about them at http://www.victoriouswoman.com/tseminars.htm. Also, if you are in the greater Philadelphia area, you can join one of Annmarie Kelly’s Victory Teams that are now forming. There’s more information at http://www.victoriouswoman.com/vteams.htm

Freakonomics of Domestic Violence

Economics is about incentives, according to the authors of Freakonomics. I think about that whenever something happens in my life or in the news. Incentives were what Rafael Robb, a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, must have been waiting for all year. ‘Tis the season.

Last December, Ellen Robb was viciously beaten to death. The damage was so devastating that, initially, police thought she had been shot in the face. All year Robb denied any involvement with the murder. He claimed the murder was the result of a home invasion and he was innocent. However, he was the primary suspect and was arrested.

This month, District Attorney Bruce Castor gave Rafael Robb an early Christmas present. Castor allowed Robb to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter instead of first degree murder. Robb finally confessed. Earlier this week, Robb told a judge that he “just lost it” when the couple – who were separated but still living together – got into an argument over their daughter. He bashed Ellen Robb’s head and face repeatedly with an exercise bar.

As a result of the deal, Robb is likely to get away with as little as 4-6 years in prison versus life. I’m sure the economics expert understood the incentive. The fifty-seven year old man will be out of jail just around the time he can retire and collect social security.

There are a lot of women on Philadelphia’s Main Line who are not only angry, but frightened. Bruce Castor has sent a frightening message to men: if you lose your temper, commit intimate homicide and are willing to confess, you can avoid a long and revealing trial, get a deal and serve less jail time than some crooks.

Domestic violence isn’t just for the poor or the uneducated. Behind the doors of many upscale suburban homes, there are countless incidents of domestic abuse. Money and power buy pretty things, but they also often support controlling behaviors. The greatest fear of people with controlling behaviors is not having control. When they feel someone else is ignoring them or getting control, they are easily incensed and their anger escalates easily and quickly. Shortly before her murder, Ellen Robb had supposedly just gotten an apartment, was moving out and beginning divorce proceedings.

Ironically, just a few weeks ago, DA Bruce Castor received an award from Laurel House, an emergency domestic violence shelter in the Philadelphia suburbs. It wasn’t the first such award for Castor. I was there and I was impressed by Castor. Now I’m confused…and asking what happened to Castor’s supposedly strong position against domestic violence.

There is no justification for domestic abuse. A fit of rage is a demonstration of terrible behavior and is often a sample of what a controlling person uses to gain and keep control over someone else. Murder is taking a life. It shouldn’t be bargained away. Makes me wonder about the Freakonomics of it.