International Women's Day: Real Life Stories!
So it was International Women's Day last Tuesday 8th March. But what do we actually know about this day dedicated to women?
International Women's Day is a world wide day celebrating the cultural, economic, social and political achievements of women. This day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.
Massive action has been taken worldwide as various groups come together to celebrate women's achievements and rally for women's equality! Every year International Women's Day (IWD) is one of the most important days of the year to:
Celebrate the achievements of women
To raise awareness on the equality of women
Support for faster gender parity
Help fundraise for women focused charities
The theme for this years International Women's Day is... #BreaktheBias
Our Queen Elisabeth
Now in my eyes the most strong and inspiring women on the planet today is our beautiful Queen Elisabeth! So that's why I'm astonished that gender equality is still an issue as we have a women, our queen in charge of our country! This remarkable women has been on the throne for like over 70 years which makes her the longest-serving monarch in history! Wow what an achievement.
Queen Elisabeth is a whopping 95 years old at the time I'm writing this post, she has been a huge part of so many points of history and is still here to tell her tale. Now when I was much younger I was very nieve and had no idea how much the Queen has actually been through over the years... until I watched the Crown on Netflix.
Since then I have so much respect and empathy for her and what she has had to take on in her life! But I really do think should I not of learnt about our monarch at school? Then I would of had a much better understanding of the hard decisions and sacrifices our Queen has had to make over the decades. Many times she has made a the hard decision of choosing the monarchy over everything and everyone else.
The Suffragettes Story
Now again I never knew about the story of the suffragette women until well in my 20's and I think its something us girls should of been made aware of in school.
Such a sad but inspiring story of fearless women who gave all their fight even their lives into the right for women to vote! I watched the film and what has always stayed with me is how strong they were and no matter what they took any punishment and stood up for what they believed in.
If you have not seen The Suffragettes film then I highly recommend it, but if your anything like me have the tissues at the ready!
Women over the years have come a long way in the sense of respect. Us mums are no longer just housewives we too pursue careers and even start our own business as well as juggling home life and some of us even do it as single mums, I mean when you of it like that we are incredible human beings right?
The Women Of Ukraine
The invasion of the Ukraine is horrifying, I did a post on the invasion last week if you would like to check that out. Watching the news in the morning and hearing Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik has sent an International Women’s Day message to her compatriots...
Congratulating the “incredible” women of her country who are “standing up and fighting”.This year, she said, Ukrainian women will be “carrying guns” as well as flowers on International Women’s Day, to “protect our country along with our men from Putin”.She praised the “incredible” Ukrainian women. “Because of you, we will win,” she said.
These women are incredibly brave and so fearless they remind me somewhat of the suffragette women. We have the fight in us and the courage to go with it and I think Putin has seriously underestimated the Ukrainian's especially the women!
Poet Nikita Gill wrote:
“Women that believe in each other can survive anything. Women who believe in each other create armies that will win kingdoms and wars.”
I totally agree with this statement and I believe if more women that believed in each other run the world then we would have no wars, but wouldn't take no bullshit either! We certainly wouldn't let a tyrant like Putin rule a country for over 20 years like he has. As Beyonce would say... "Who runs the world, girls!".
Now moving on I am going to share with you some incredible women I have come to know and some I have had the pleasure to work with, Iv even helped a few of them as they have also helped me. These women are like me and love to empower, inspire and believe in other women, coz that's how it should be right!
Shaylie Skjervem - Crypto Queen!
So this gorgeous lady is Shay girlfriend to Brendan who I become friends with years ago when we were both menbers of a crypto platform called Bitconnect. We stayed friends over the years so I naturally become good friends with his better half! Here she shares her crypto journey with Brendan!! (It's a bit of a read) Here's their incredible story:
In 2017 Bren and I had hit rock bottom for the first time after his mom passed away from cancer. All we had was our clothes, a few belongings and his little Honda Civic Si. We stayed about 4 days in a sketchy motel. We had probably $400 between the both of us in our bank accounts just to buy us a place to stay and food. I tried making the experience fun and let Bren know that we would never be this low again. We searched for a small apartment for us around Raleigh, North Carolina and viewed a handful of places to live.
We came across a beautiful apartment in a great location. I took out my savings from when I was younger and purchased our first apartment. We were beyond happy and grateful to move into a new fresh home together. We moved in with nothing but a blowup mattress, our clothes and some toiletries.
My family was super supportive and sent us money to buy kitchen utensils, dish set and food. Then my mom sent us reclining lawn chairs which we used as chairs in our living room, a ottoman and a vacuum. Which to this day we are still thankful for. We both started saving up enough money to buy a new bed, which was needed! There is nothing worse than waking up with the air mattress deflated every morning. Then we got a real couch and a dining room table with chairs. Here's what it looked like in our first apartment.
Our paychecks combined we were just able to afford our $1000 rent a month plus $300 in utilities. We didn't have much to spend on fun things to do or things we wanted for our place. We both were SICK of the 9-5 job and it wasn't getting us anywhere! Just living paycheck to paycheck was not our cup of tea and hated what we did for a living. Bren was looking up online, "How to make money from home." He came across Bitcoin on some ad on Facebook & was intrigued. So he did some research on this digital cryptocurrency & had a really good feeling about it. So he ended up charging $1200 on his credit card & took the risk! It was the first time we ever invested in anything! lol We ended up getting into a bitcoin trading company and started making some good profit...in the beginning.
Ended up scamming us, but at least we made our investment back and started to invest into some other coins along the way. We learned from it and began to do some more research on how to earn more bitcoin. We started doing online marketing and started building our portfolio and began seeing serious results, which ended up helping us make more than what we were making at our 9-5 grind.
In 2018 we both started the Crypto Influence journey & quit our 9-5 jobs!! We were so excited and nervous, but we know we could do this full time. We saved up enough money and got out of Raleigh (thank goodness!!) and we moved 2 hours to the beach into a 2 bedroom apartment with our black bombay kitty, Bear. We were living the beach life for a few months which was a great time, until we got news that a Hurricane was headed our way. Bren and I had already planned a trip back home to North Dakota as the Hurricane was already on its way and there was nothing we could do.
We had no updates about how our place was when we were gone. The streets were flooded and we weren't able to get back to our apartment for at least a week or 2. We got a call from our landlord saying we need to come back to our place asap to get our stuff so they could fix the damage. We got there and it was another HUGE nightmare.. All our hard work of saving up to buy furniture items and new things were destroyed. All we could save was our clothes and a few sentimental items.
We stayed with Bren's step-dad's until we could get back on our feet which we are very grateful for him taking us in when we were down and out once again. This only drove up harder to making this lifestyle a reality to live back on our own terms and start traveling. So we were back to where we started, but not as bad. I told Bren we should look into getting a camper since we don't have many belongings. He thought I was a bit crazy. We ended up getting a cheap camper and fixed it up which Fema helped us buy for only $2,200. It was a piece of sh*t, but we fixed it up and made it our little home. It was different, but we actually fell in love with the place and being able to live a more minimal lifestyle, cost of living was very low & we can have the freedom lifestyle that we wanted! It ended up being a blessing in a disguise.
We moved back to the beach and continued our crypto journey helping others in the crypto space. We took our first trip together across the pond to Tenerife, Spain and later a trip to Arizona for Christmas, doing what we do best.. Making it an adventure! After a year of saving up crypto profits in 2019 we sold our fixer upper and upgraded to a 2020 Coachman Spirit Travel Trailer. The feeling of having a nice place again was very rewarding. We traveled to Barcelona, Spain and I tell you, that place is unbelievably beautiful with a ton of history, great places to eat and many things to do. I highly recommend putting it on ur bucket list. Then later that year we took a trip to Key West, Florida, which then again another top place of ours that we really loved & the best part was that we live full-time on crypto & everything we buy is because of Bren investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. 2020 came and we talked about wanting to travel the United States with our camper so we were on the hunt for a pickup to pull the camper. Bren had always wanted a GMC Denali so we found a BEAUTIFUL 2018 GMC Sierra 2500 Denali and took it home with us. We also sold his first vehicle a 2015 Honda Civic SI. He was a bit sad leaving the car we had a lot of history and experiences in but it was for the best, like come on its his dream truck! We had to get it.
About a week from us about to leave our campsite in Hubert, North Carolina, there were friends who convinced us to stay. Guess it wasn't the right time to leave for us. We made a trip up to North Dakota again and drove 24 hours there in the truck to spend time with my family, which they got to meet Bear for the first time. We had a great journey in ND and when we got back, we moved to another campground and upgraded to a Tiny Home. We also built a 8x8 shed building, laid gravel around the place, and bought decor to make the place feel like home.
In 2021 we got the opportunity to get an all exclusive free trip to Cancun with a Gold & Silver company. We diversify our investments like everyone should. I had received news that my dad was diagnosed with cancer during the summer so again packed up a bunch of clothes, bear and of course our jet-ski and drove back to North Dakota to help my dad. During the 3 months we were there Bren experienced the farm life. We raised 28 chickens and 6 ducks, 4 kittens and planted a huge vegetable garden with my dad. I drove my dad an hour to his appointments and back 5 times a week for about 8 weeks. We spent time at a small lake in Minnesota with my mom and step dad.
We enjoyed most of our