Rise & Shine - Empowerment & Control
I’m into self empowerment, are you? What choice do we have? Victimhood? Languishing in fear waiting for some saviour to come and pull us out of the shit? I got news for you babes, no one’s coming. But guess what, you got you. You are responsible for you. For the food you eat, for the thoughts you think, for the choices you make. I grew up seeing dis-empowerment everywhere. Thoroughly working class, I was born into Thatcher’s government at a time when a man could still legally rape his wife; oppression was woven into my childhood. The disdain our current prime minister has openly displayed towards people like myself and family of origin was real – I felt it. The absence of self worth and self esteem, the disbelief that we deserved more from Life and could be more in Life hung around, blanketing my childhood like a stinking smog. After all, aren’t we but the sons and daughters of men ‘likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless?’ (Boris Johnson, 1995). ...