A moment that changed me: last night a Polish DJ saved my life | Rae Earl

The world is full of interesting phobias. Consecotaleophobia, for example, is the terror of chopsticks. Aulophobiacs are scared of flutes. But the irrational fear of my youth – “fear of dying in Peterborough” – has yet to be recognised.

As a teenager, Peterborough was the furthest I could usually make it in the world. It was 15 minutes from my home and I knew I would die there. Nuclear war. Heart attack. Burst appendix. The cause changed but the fear didn’t. I could list a million ways to kick the bucket. All intricately thought out and very, very real. Platform 5 of Peterborough station was the sum of all fears.

Chronic anxiety made me mainly housebound. I tried to move on. I lasted five days at Essex University. They had a special freshers’ week showing of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. That was a portent of doom. I couldn’t cope. I wore the same clothes for nearly a week and took the world’s most half-arsed overdose – four co-codamol. I didn’t want to live. I didn’t want to die either.

I returned home a failure. I did some work, but not much. While my mates were raving in Ko Samui my daily routine was based around watching This Morning.

Then my best friend Mort told me that Unesco wanted people to go and teach in summer schools in eastern Europe. Would I like to go with her? I said yes. I was terrified, but at least I’d be terrified with my best mate. I knew I had to do something with my unexpected “year off” so we went to Świdnica in south-west Poland.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show: ‘I got out of bed and taught the Poles the Hokey Cokey and the Time Warp.’
Photograph: Allstar/20TH CENTURY FOX/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

There are places in the world where we just fit and our skill set is appreciated. For me that was Poland in 1991. It had just emerged from behind the iron curtain. British pop was revered. I taught English by showing tapes of the BBC series The Rock ‘n’ Roll Years. MTV Europe was pumped in. One girl, transfixed by Paula Abdul’s hit Rush Rush, would dance vigorously, intensely, to it every night. This was a place I could understand. One student asked me to transcribe the song Why? by Bronski Beat. I did it word for word. I was useful. I was having a great time. We partied every night. We had Polish vodka with a buffalo label and a piece of long grass in it. I got drunk. I got very drunk.

I hit my head. I blacked out. I started to die. Yeah, the joke was on me. Finally I’d found a place I could vaguely cope with (there had been panic attacks that Mort had fended off) and now I was definitely dying.

An ambulance that resembled a converted Volvo estate came to pick me up. I made my verbal will, told Mort she could have my vinyl, and went to hospital.

There wasn’t much of a wait at Polish casualty. There were three other people and some bats fluttering merrily in the corner. I don’t think the bats were there for treatment. I remember thinking they probably had rabies though. If brain damage didn’t get me, incurable diseases would. A doctor who looked like a cross between Clark Gable and Gomez from The Addams Family appeared with perfect English. He was snarky yet sweet – an adorable combination. He examined me thoroughly, suggested possible mild concussion, told me to lay off the booze and prescribed bed rest for a few days. I went back to the school to die. I knew he was wrong.

As every minute passed and I remained conscious, a strange, new concept entered my mind. Perhaps I wasn’t going to die and my brain was wrong. Perhaps the next time my head did decide to go into red-alert mode I could remind it of this moment – of the moment I didn’t die in Poland.

‘Back home in Britain, Bryan Adams was still No1, but the world had changed entirely. I had not died.’ Photograph: Sinead Lynch/AFP

I got out of bed and taught the Poles the Hokey Cokey and the Time Warp. They taught me exquisite folk dances. Eventually it was time to leave. One of my students gave me a one zloty coin. At the time there were 18,600 zlotys to the pound. It literally had no economic worth but she told me it was lucky and she wouldn’t forget what I’d taught her (mainly song lyrics).

Back home in Britain, Bryan Adams was still No1, but the world had changed entirely. I had not died. I had managed to do something good. For the first time ever, anxiety had not won. I walked to Morrisons in bare feet. I hadn’t spoken to my mum in weeks. You had to book an international phone call in Poland in those days. My mum looked almost pleased to see me. Things would definitely never be the same again.

Nearly 26 years later there is a one Zloty 1990 coin on a bracelet that is permanently around my wrist. It reminds me of three things – of a best friend who has always understood, of the kindness of strangers who saw me at my worst and tried to help and of the first time I truly told my brain it was talking utter bollocks.

• Rae Earl’s latest book, #Help: My Cat’s a Vlogging Superstar, is published in March

A moment that changed me: last night a Polish DJ saved my life | Rae Earl

Polish abortion law protesters march against proposed restrictions

Polish women have gathered in cities across the country to protest against a proposal to ban abortions in cases where foetuses are badly damaged or have no chance of survival after birth.

Many wore black, a symbol of mourning for the feared loss of reproductive rights, as they took to the streets of Warsaw, Gdańsk, Łódź, Wroclaw, Poznań and other cities and towns across the predominantly Roman Catholic nation of 38 million.

“Girls just want to have fundamental rights,” one banner proclaimed.

The protests on Monday follow a similar round of street demonstrations in early October, a reaction to a proposal for an even more restrictive law which would have banned abortion in all cases, including rape, and imposed prison sentences of up to five years on women and doctors involved in terminating pregnancies.

Massive so-called “black protests” forced lawmakers to abandon that proposal.

The women, joined by many men, have returned to the streets in response to a new proposal by Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of the ruling Law and Justice party. Earlier this month, he said his party wants to ensure that even pregnancies involving a child “certain to die, very deformed, still end up in a birth, so that the child can be baptised, buried, have a name”.

In the weeks since the first round of protests, the grassroots movement advocating abortion rights has increased its demands. Those who turned out on Monday also called for better sex education and easier access to birth control while also demanding that the influential Roman Catholic church end its “interference” in political life and public education.

Clashes broke out between abortion rights supporters and anti-abortion activists outside a metro station in central Warsaw where demands were laid out in a petition that a steady stream of people lined up to sign.

“We want to live in a secular society,” said Agata Rybka, a 24-year-old student of biotechnology at Warsaw University who had volunteered to oversee the petition signing. “Right now religious issues dominate public discourse and we don’t like it.”

Poland already has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, with terminations only allowed in cases of rape, when the foetus is irreparably damaged and when the woman’s life or health is in peril.

The new proposal would not amount to a total ban, and would still allow abortion in cases of rape or if the woman’s life or health is in danger.

Dorota Szumilak, a 44-year-old financial analyst, signed the petition, explaining that she did so because she saw in the abortion ban proposal an attempt to restrict women’s rights more broadly. A Lutheran, she said she feels discriminated against in a society where the Catholic church runs religion classes in the schools and is now supporting further restrictions on abortion.

“The role of the church is now too strong,” she said.

She was with a friend, Malgorzata Brendel, 53, who said the attempts to tighten the abortion law had prompted her to become one of a growing number of Poles who are now formally leaving the Catholic church.

Polish abortion law protesters march against proposed restrictions

This victory on abortion has empowered Polish women. We’ll never be the same | Krystyna Kacpura

They call us Nazis and say that we are no better than Hitler because we think a woman should have be able to choose whether she gives birth to a seriously sick child – but we are used to such comparisons. They say these things about us because they are frightened. The government of Poland did not expect such huge protests against its proposed ban on abortion. In the last week, 7 million women were on strike all over Poland to protest against the draconian law and pushed the government to back down.

In Warsaw our protests, involving over 30,000 people, locked the city down. I was trembling at the sight of all these women. I have worked in reproductive rights in Poland for 25 years, and we used to be happy if 200 women attended our protests.

At first politicians ignored us, then they enraged us with their words. The foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, said: “Let them have fun. They should go ahead if they think there are no bigger problems in Poland … We expect serious debate on questions of life, death and birth. We do not expect happenings, dressing in costumes and creating artificial problems.”

These words mobilised even more women. I have never seen such huge protests. Something snapped in Polish women; we are empowered and we won’t stop. The protests were so spontaneous: with barely a few days’ notice thousands of women were walking out of work, and if they couldn’t get the day off, many told me, they said to their bosses they would not return because they could not work alongside people who did not believe in their rights.

Poland signals U-turn on total abortion ban after protests

On Saturday, at one of the protests, I gave a speech to the crowd that was directed at Polish gynaecologists. “Where are you?” I asked. “Why don’t you care about your patients? We need to rely on you, but instead we are afraid of you. We are afraid of your ‘conscientious objections’, we are afraid that you won’t tell us the truth when you are examining us or giving us blood-test results. Break your silence. We are your patients and we need you to support our health.”

Afterwards I received several anonymous messages from gynaecologists telling me that they will help Polish women, promising that they will work in their regions to tell the ruling party the truth about the real threat to women’s health if a ban on abortion was passed. I have been seeking this kind of support for years, there are maybe five or 10 doctors in the whole of Poland who will speak out for women’s rights, so for me this was a personal victory.

Although the Catholic church is seemingly silent in Poland, we know it was the bishops who also rejected the stop abortion law, despite helping to instigate it in the first place. They are threatened, and now they say they “don’t want women to be punished”. Women make up the majority of the people who attend mass, who give money. Many people have left the church lately.

‘In Warsaw our protests, involving over 30,000 people, locked the city down. I have worked in reproductive rights in Poland for 25 years, and we used to be happy if 200 women attended our protests.’ Photograph: Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images

The rejection of the proposed law, which would make all abortions illegal – even in cases of rape or when the woman’s life is at risk, with prison terms of up to five years for women seeking abortion and doctors who perform them – is only a small victory in the ongoing battle for women’s reproductive rights. We are expecting the church and the ruling party to prepare a compromise which would allow abortion when a woman has been raped, or there is a direct threat to her life, but they will seek to withdraw access to legal abortion if the fetus is damaged.

We want women to be free to make a decision on whether she gives birth to a seriously sick child herself. It is her right to choose, and if she does choose to have the child we advocate that she should be supported economically and psychologically, but all women should not be pushed to give birth in such circumstances because the politicians have ruled it so.

Women make up the majority of the people who attend mass, who give money. Many people have left the church lately

At the protests I spoke to many women and girls, young and old, and talked to them about how we are second-class citizens in our country. That the existing law is restrictive on paper, but even more so in practice. We don’t have adequate sex education, we don’t have access to modern contraception and we barely have access to legal abortion. In southern Poland nearly all doctors have signed conscientious objections making access to legal abortion all but impossible.

So our fight must continue. There is such solidarity among Polish women right now that we will take our fight to the European level and find a space to seek protection under EU law. We have international backing, and I have never been so proud of all the empowered, European, Polish women. We will never be the same again.

This victory on abortion has empowered Polish women. We’ll never be the same | Krystyna Kacpura

Polish government signals U-turn on total abortion ban

A proposed total abortion ban in Poland will not be implemented, a member of the government has said, describing mass protests against the ban as a lesson in humility for the country’s leadership.

Jarosław Gowin, the minister of science and higher education, said on Wednesday that the protests by women have “caused us to think and taught us humility”.

The comments appear to indicate that Poland’s conservative leadership will withhold support from the highly unpopular proposal to ban abortions, even in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.

The rightwing government, led by the Law and Justice party, is also under international pressure not to move forward with the plan, with a debate scheduled for Wednesday in the European parliament on the situation of women in Poland.

Poland already outlaws abortions, with exceptions made only for rape, incest, badly damaged foetuses or if the mother’s life is at risk. In practice, though, some doctors refuse to perform even legal abortions, citing moral objections.

Polish women seeking abortions typically go to Germany or other neighbouring countries to get them or order abortion pills online.

Also on Wednesday, the Senate speaker, Stanisław Karczewski, said Poland’s upper house of parliament would not initiate work on a bill that would further restrict Poland’s abortion law.

Karczewski said senators would wait to see what the more powerful lower house of parliament would do. However, he voiced support for a ban on abortions of foetuses with Down’s syndrome, something currently allowed.

“They are wonderful children, very much loved by their parents, very loving parents, bringing a lot of warmth and a lot of love into a home. I am a great opponent of killing such children,” Karczewski said.

An anti-abortion initiative gathered 450,000 signatures in support of the total abortion ban. A parliamentary commission is now analysing it. Politicians voted against considering a separate initiative for a more liberal abortion law.

The matter has led to mass protests, the largest on Monday when thousands of women turned out dressed in black. Many also boycotted work and classes.

Polish government signals U-turn on total abortion ban

Polish women strike over planned abortion ban

Women wearing black clothes and waving black flags are demonstrating across Poland, boycotting their jobs and classes as part of a nationwide strike in protest against a new law that would in effect ban abortion.

Many men also took part in demonstrations on the streets of Warsaw, Gdańsk and elsewhere across the largely Catholic nation.

Thousands of people protested on Saturday in front of the parliament in Warsaw. Women were wearing black in a sign of mourning for the feared loss of reproductive rights; they have also warned that some women will die if the proposal passes as it stands now.

Poland already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, with terminations legally permitted only when there is severe foetal abnormality, when there is a grave threat to the health of the mother, or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

But the new law would criminalise all terminations, with women punishable with up to five years in prison. Doctors found to have assisted with a termination would also be liable for prosecution and a prison term.

Critics say that even a woman who suffers a miscarriage could be under criminal suspicion, and that doctors might be put off conducting routine procedures on pregnant women for fear of being accused of facilitating a termination.

Although a ban has received public support from elements within the Catholic church and Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS), neither initiated the proposals. They were drafted by hardline conservative advocacy group Ordo Iuris and submitted by the Stop Abortion coalition as a “citizens’ initiative” – a petition considered by parliament once it has received more than 100,000 signatures.

While it was difficult to gauge strike participation in small towns and rural areas, which tend to be more conservative, participation in the cities appeared to be significant on Monday morning.

A large crowd gathered in central Warsaw and people were also out on the streets in other cities.

The private news broadcaster TVN24, with some of its own presenters in black, showed images of establishments joining the strike, including a restaurant in Wrocław that closed to let female employees participate and a museum in Krakow where none of the women showed up to work.

In Częstochowa, perhaps the most Catholic city in the overwhelmingly Catholic nation, the city hall reported that 60% of female workers had not turned up to work.

Pro-choice activists called for the strike, or “national absence campaign”, after the Polish parliament voted on 23 September for Stop Abortion’s proposals to be scrutinised by a parliamentary committee. Women were encouraged to take a day off work and domestic tasks and gather for meetings or demonstrations, to donate blood or do charity work.

Many Polish women say they are sick of deals being cut over their fundamental reproductive and human rights, which they argue threaten both their safety and their dignity.

“A lot of women and girls in this country have felt that they don’t have any power, that they are not equal, that they don’t have the right to an opinion,” said Magda Staroszczyk, a strike coordinator, over the weekend. “This is a chance for us to be seen, and to be heard.”

Organisers cite an assault on women’s reproductive rights that goes beyond Stop Abortion’s proposed ban. A separate, PiS-sponsored bill restricting IVF, which would make it illegal to freeze embryos and allow women to fertilise only one embryo at a time, was also passed to the parliamentary committee stage in September.

Monday’s protest was inspired by an all-out strike more than 40 years ago by the women of Iceland, when 90% of women refused to work, cook, or look after their children for a day in October 1975.

The intensity of the so-called “black protests” has proved tricky for PiS, which presents itself as the guardian of traditional values in a country beset by liberal notions of multiculturalism, relaxed social mores and restrictive political correctness, but which remains mindful of the risks of alienating mainstream public opinion.

The party’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, has suggested that the government might accept a compromise whereby terminations carried out because of foetal abnormalities would be banned, but terminations of pregnancies as a result of rape or incest would still be permitted.

Associated Press contributed to this report

Polish women strike over planned abortion ban

Borscht the Purple Polish Soup: Can’t Beat Beets for Wholesome Comfort Food

I adore Borscht.  It aids that I grew up with my tiny Polish Grandma Rudonich creating us all the “ole country” favorites including Pierogies, Galumpkes (Stuffed Cabbage) and my favored as a kid was her purple soup.  And it turns out that the scrumptious and colorful soup comes with a powerhouse of dietary advantages as properly. Beets are identified to be great for:

• Heart Wellness – lowers your cholesterol and triglyceride ranges


• Pregnancy Enhance – substantial B-nutritional vitamins help establishing child as effectively as assist safeguard against the condition neural tube defect


• Colon Cancer Preventative – due to the betacyaninis


• Lung support – vitamin C material can aid asthma patient to better manage their condition as effectively as the higher levels of beta-carotene enhance


• Eye Well being – Due to their large vitamin A articles, beets can slow or fully avert the formation of cataracts


• Increases intercourse hormones –high levels of the mineral boron, which can substantially improve the production of sexual hormones in your body


• Improves the wellness of your muscle groups, nerves and immune method – due to large levels of magnesium and potassium


• Reduce the risk of strokes – higher in potassium

Polish Borscht

2 leeks (or one medium onion)

2 carrots

two stalks of celery

two cloves garlic

1 Tbsp olive oil

four beets (medium sized), natural if you can (or 1 16oz can/jar)

4 cups of water

1 bay leaf

one tsp sugar

After soup is cooked and blended Add:

1 Tbs chopped fresh dill (or 1 tsp dried)

one Tbsp lemon juice

½ – 1 tsp horseradish to taste

one/two cup Sour Cream

Clean the leeks, carrots and celery and chop. Saute in your soup pot the greens in olive oil with the garlic just until fragrant. Scrub the beets and chop off the two the ends. Do not peel. Add every little thing except the dill, lemon juice, horseradish and sour cream and deliver to a boil. Simmer for 45 minutes.  Scoop out the beets and peel. Using a blender, puree the beets and soup broth/greens or use an immersion blender. Put the smooth soup back into the pot and include remaining substances.  Can be served sizzling or chilled.

Enjoy and Healthful Blessings,

Sandy

Advisable Resource: Artwork of Polish Cooking

Healthy Residing Site

Healthier Residing Shop

Borscht the Purple Polish Soup: Can’t Beat Beets for Wholesome Comfort Food