Some of you may recall, or may even have attended the day in May this year, when I invited women to meet Dadi Janki. It was wonderful and I just knew we had to create another. The trouble is, even though Dadi will be 90 in a few months, her diary is FULL. She jets around the world to many of the Brahma Kumaris' 7000 centres and as an incredibly wise woman and peaceful presence she is much in demand. Luckily for us, a window of opportunity opened up in November and I am working with the BKs to co-host another women's event where we can spend time with this wonderful spiritual teacher. I do encourage you to come if you can get to London. Dadi is one of the most inspirational women I have met; she is the joint-head of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, an international educational organisation in over 90 countries that is headed by women. By co-hosting this day my intention is to give as many women as possible the opportunity to spend time with Dadi - and this proves a very powerful thing to do in the company of other women. (Downloading leaflet may take a few minutes)

For the last couple of years, I have had the good fortune and privilege to collaborate with the Brahma Kumaris on a number of events: BK meditation teachers have joined me on my International Women's Day Lunch and on our the Women's Wellness Retreats at the Healthy Home. Recently I was part of a group of women who co-hosted a Women Leaders Retreat at the BK's Global Retreat Centre near Oxford. A wonderful setting for a fabulous gathering of women. Pictured here are the team who put this unusual event together: back - Koonu Goulet, EnlightenNext, BK Rosemary Turbeville- Smith, Alison Manning, EnlightenNext, Lynne Franks; front - Gina Lazenby, BK Maureen Goodman, Sister Jayanti & Dwina Gibb. Over 50 of us came together for a weekend of self-discovery, sharing and celebration with many travelling from all over the UK and from many different walks of life. We explored what leadership and power meant to us and discussed more feminine ways of interpreting these. When the group gathered excitedly on Friday evening everybody seemed to breath a sigh of relief when they saw that half of Saturday's programme was to be spent in silence. This precious time gave everyone the chance to regenerate and the rest of the programme gave us plenty of opportunity for connection and deep conversation.

September also saw the launch of a new network to empower women around the world, organised by Julia Hausermann of Rights & Humanity. Cherie Booth QC gave the opening keynote speech at the South Africa High Commission. There were a couple of hundred women there at the all-day event culminating in a gala party & fund-raising auction hosted by the SA High Commissioner HE Lindiwe Mabuza pictured here on the right with Julia and 2 brilliant south african singers, Julia Makhadzi and Sonti Mndebele. More than a dozen speakers presented the issues facing women around the world highlighting the fact that poverty has a woman's face as they are twice as likely to suffer as men. It seemed appropriate to be based at South Africa house as we learned of the wonderful work of SAWID, the South African Women in Dialogue. In the creation of a new South Africa the new democratic values of social justice have meant as much focus on non-sexism as non-racism. 32% of MPs are women and a new woman Deputy President, Phumzile-Mlambo Nqcuka, now scrutinises every minister's budget to ensure they serve women's needs. If you'd like to join this network and have some involvement or some greater understanding about how we can learn from and support disadvantaged women apply for more info from WHEN - see the side column

It seemed fitting that a couple of days after the launch of WHEN that I should sit in a room listening to first-hand reports about life following the Tsunami in Sri Lanka. A dear friend and my mentor William Spear, who taught me about ancient wisdom & feng shui throughout the 90s, has a charitable foundation and was very involved with relief work after the waves hit. He shared information about his experiences there which was deeply distressing and for me it feels more real when I learn from the people involved, rather than filtered through a news medium. I was shocked to hear that thousands of families, even now 9 months later, are still sleeping on plastic sheeting. Sri Lanka was more badly affected as 80% of its towns and cities are on the coast so they lost their infrastructure devastating their ability to organise recovery. Many women lost their fishermen husbands at sea and the stark choices they are now faced with are handing over their children to a growing number of orphanages OR prostitution. That's it! William's team organised a project called "Widows to Work" which presented a third choice. $250 will buy enough handicrafts for a woman to use and sell in order to keep her family for a year. You can donate directly to this project. William and his son are very skilled in trauma counselling and they organised play camps to help children recover from the devastating memories of losing one or more parents and siblings. Survivor's guilt was rife and William says this is something you can't "talk" away. He trained other people in his techniques and estimates that 300,000 will now have had much-needed support to adjust. Visit this website to find out about William's incredible intitiatives around the post Tsunami recovery including "New Horizons for Children".

Having a Brahma Kumaris teacher is a wonderful collabaration on the weekend retreats I have been running for women. I am very grateful to Rose Goodenough for her wonderful teaching and beautiful meditation coaching and I must share this story from our last weekend. The first part of the weekend is about finding out more of who you are so we did a session on "Finding Your Purpose". It was a short and powerful session where participants really asked deep questions and came out with an inspiring sentence that described their purpose. (Not easy in an hour but possible!) Rose then gave a talk about developing a spiritual practice and led a meditation after which she gave everyone a blessing card. As if the universe wanted to reassure us that it was indeed listening to our questions, it turned out that every person's randomly chosen card exactly reflected the key words from each different statement of purpose, be that courage, success, fun or love. It was amazing. Here is Rose flanked by BK colleague Marilyn and participant Marilyn.

When we let go of fear we can fully experience joy, our birthright. Here is a wonderful photo showing how relaxed and joyful our group is AFTER the last Women's Wellness Retreat. At the beginning of the weekend many women are much more present to what is not working in their lives and carry around the stresses of worry. After the weekend when we take another look at life and how we can manage it differently, the weights get lifted and relaxed smiles return. It doesn't matter what groups of women gather our conversations are always about struggling to cope with fast-moving change and adapting to a world that is looking different everyday. During the last weekend I shared a poem that Judy Moore emailed me after the last Women's Newsletter; it was called "We Were Made for These Times" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Beautiful and so true. We HAVE been made for these times. As Clarissa says, it is like we are ships that are meant to sail and the timbers that we are made of come from stronger trees. I love it, do read it.