Everything’s Connected

Amazing women (and other fascinating things), just keep popping out of the woodwork. Well, actually, out of the internet, to be more precise. That’s where I found Sophie Nicholls and, along with her, some interesting links.

I came across Sophie’s email address at Lots of Big Ideas, which I’d found while doing some research related to www.amazingwomenrock.com. So I emailed her. And she emailed back.

Sophie is:

a poet, teacher and researcher in the field of creative writing for personal development, health and well-being. She’s the recipient of an Arvon Jerwood Poetry Award and was the first person to gain a doctorate in the unique Creative Writing and Personal Development programme at the University of Sussex.

How cool is that? Almost as cool as Sophie’s website, an online oasis that makes you feel good just being there. As a practicing hypnotherapist, making people feel good is what Sophie is all about. And her site clearly reflects that. Perfect!

(BTW, she gives all the credit for the site to her partner and web consultant Tom. See his awesome site at www.everythingability.com)

Sophie is the driving force behind Lots of Big Ideas (LOBI), a blog that aims to counter media distortions of asylum issues through stories about why people end up leaving their homes and loved ones to seek asylum in strange and often unwelcoming places.

LOBI reminded me of the story Kamyar told me about a friend who was stuck, for a long time, with her family, in a refugee camp while trying to emigrate to Canada, my home country.

At LOBI, I also found links to:

• The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (MF), a registered charity, and the only organisation in the UK dedicated solely to the treatment of torture survivors. (Reading through the MF site brought to mind J.K. Rowling’s Harvard speech in which she speaks about her experiences working at Amnesty International, also a LOBI link of course.)

• Global Voices, a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

• The community weblog of Persian students in the UK, brought me back to Kamyar (Iranian by birth and surely destined forever to be a student of life), and his emigrating friend. (I wonder where she is now?)

Is it a coincidence that Global Voices is linked to Harvard, which for me will now always make me think of J.K. Rowling and her speech?

And how synchronistic is it that when I went to the Berkman Center site, the lead topic today is: Iranian parliament moving toward death penalty for blogging on certain topics? Or that THAT link led me to an article about the torture and imprisonment of Iranian bloggers? And that a link at the bottom of that article took me back to Global Voices?

Thank God, the universe and the angels for amazing women everywhere – wonderful in and of themselves, but also a rich source of equally amazing links and connections.