Eve Ensler Kicks Off our VDAY Celebration

Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler has been an inspiration to me for over a decade. As a poet her work is moving, intelligent and inspired. In honor of her work for women and girls all over the world, I chose her to kick off of our VDAY celebration. This blog post is for the girl inside all of us. May tomorrow be even better than today.

A letter to all the girls in the world from my grateful heart. 
Dear One, 
You are the future. Within you is planted the seed of promise. 
Open your heart and let who you are be your guide. 
The world needs your light, your vision, your uniqueness. 
Know that there is an inherent power inside of you that can encompass the world with love. 
Believe in yourself! Know that being "just" a girl makes you our most inspired teacher. We need your wisdom. 
Bless you Dear One. Thank you for reminding us of where our true power resides…
with the girl that lives inside us all. 
I love you, Aurora

(The first video is an excerpt from the second video.) 

She shares her poem titled "I Am An Emotional Creature". It is uplifting, honest, inspiring, beautiful, full of possibilities…all things GIRL.

I Love, Love, Love being a girl! I AM, and emotional creature!

In honor of VDAY, the world and the girl I ask you to take 20 minutes and watch this TED talk by Eve Ensler. In this passionate talk, she declares that there is a girl cell in us all -- a cell that we have all been taught to suppress. She tells heartfelt stories of girls around the world who have overcome shocking adversity and violence to reveal the astonishing strength of being a girl.

These are some of my favorite quotes from her talk.

"Being a girl is so powerful that we have had to train the whole world not to be that."

"Bullets are actually hardened tears."

"The verb that has been enforced on girls is the verb to please. Girls are trained to please. I want to change the verb. I want us all to change the verb. I want the verb to be educate or activate or engage or confront or defy or create." 

"I Love, Love, Love being a girl! I AM, and emotional creature!"
~ Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler in Feminist Magazine

About Eve Ensler from TED Bio
Eve Ensler created the ground-breaking "Vagina Monologues," whose success propelled her to found V-Day -- a movement to end violence against women and girls everywhere.

Why you should listen to her:
Inspired by intimate conversations with friends, Eve Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues. The play recounts tender, funny, gripping and horrifying stories she gathered from hundreds of women about their bodies, their sexual experiences, and yes, their vaginas. Since its first staging in 1996, it has been translated into more than 45 languages, performed in more than 120 countries and re-created as an HBO film. 

The Vagina Monologues' success allowed Ensler to create V-Day, a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls, which has so far raised $85 million to prevent violence and protect abused women. In February 2011, Ensler received the Isabelle Stephenson Tony Award for her philanthropic work. Ensler has also drawn praise for The Good Body, a play that cuts to women's obsession with their appearance, and her film What I Want My Words to Do to You, which portrays a writing group she leads at a correctional facility for women. Today, she continues to find new projects and push the envelope. Her latest play, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, hit the New York Times bestseller list and just wrapped a workshop production in Johannesburg -- nest stop is Paris and then Berkeley in June 2012.
"Eve is bringing women back, she's giving us our souls back."
Glenn Close

You can find more information about my Women's Empowerment Organization at:
Website http://www.empowerment.ws/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/EmpowermentWS?ref=hl

Thank you for honoring the feminine. Wishing you peace. Thank you for visiting.
POI

Celebrating VDAY!

VDAY 2-14- is a global movement to end violence against women and girls. VDAY is an opportunity for women and those that love them to stand together, celebrate women and girls and at the same time demand an end to the violence against women and girls worldwide. 

VDAY has a vision of bringing the world together through song and dance in hopes of strengthening the feminine and raising awareness to her plight. Far too many females of all ages worldwide fall victim to abuse, violence and neglect. But we are many and together we can find the strength, courage and compassion to find our voice and open our arms wide enough to embrace the world. 

There will be events this year all over the world. You can look for local Los Angeles listing on our EMPOWERMENT.WS website under Programs/Events. You can also check out the VDAY website for more info and listing of events worldwide. If events aren't your thing, I encourage you to find a way to celebrate your own version of VDAY. You can write a poem, dance, connect with girlfriends, celebrate with your mothers and daughters. It doesn't matter what you do. What matters is that you give yourself an opportunity to make your voice stronger and to feel the connection.

Woman is the vessel 

that brings forth life. 

She is the continuum 

of the past to the present 

the farmer of the future. 

She plants the seeds 

that will grow the world. 

She is our mother, 

our sister, 

our friend. 

Because she is, 

we are. 

~Aurora Ferrer

SISTERS WON'T YOU RISE?

VDAY: A global movement to end violence against women and girls

One Billion Rising Website: http://www.onebillionrising.org
VDAY Website: http://www.vday.org/home
VDAY Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/vdayorg?feature=watch
VDAY on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vday

About
RISE, RELEASE, and DANCE to demand justice and end impunity! Visit onebillionrising.org for more info.
Mission
To end violence against women and girls worldwide.
Company Overview
V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), and sex slavery.

Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues, A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer, Any One Of Us: Words From Prison, screenings of V-Day's documentary Until The Violence Stops, and the PBS documentary What I Want My Words To Do To You, Spotlight Teach-Ins and V-Men workshops, to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities. In 2012, over 5,800 V-Day benefit events took place produced by volunteer activists in the U.S. and around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls.

Aurora's Women's Empowerment Program
Intellectual Body ~ Physical Body ~ Emotional Body ~ Spiritual Body
Aurora's Women’s Empowerment is a unique women’s self-defense program that views the mind, body, emotions and spirit as equally important components to develop for personal growth and physical safety. Thank you for visiting and for honoring the feminine. 

For more information about our Women's Empowerment Organization:
Websitehttp://www.empowerment.ws/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/EmpowermentWS