LITMIR.BIZ

      During this time, I learned a vast amount about our complex world. I was able to do hard things, big things, and work with exceptional people from all backgrounds.

      I met poor and vulnerable women in India, South Africa and Kenya and got to see the female power that helped give them the energy to start businesses to earn money for food and clothing . . . similar women, although with different skin colours, all over the world.

      One day in Swaziland, the little mountain kingdom that lies in the blue haze of the southeastern corner of South Africa, I stood in front of a self-help women’s group where all – yes, all – of the women showed traces of abuse. It was so common in the village that no one reacted to a black eye, or even a broken arm. The women came with bowed heads to the self-help group that we supported, and they left with backs that were a little straighter than before. I didn’t even have words in my vocabulary to describe the struggle in their lives, the sorrow for those who became infected with HIV when their men had returned from working in the mines of South Africa.

      It was huge and mind-opening to see all this. One day I was talking to donors at the world’s largest banks, and the next day I would meet with the world’s most vulnerable people. I got to see everything – all the great and wonderful things, all the fighting spirit but also the vulnerability and awfulness. All in the same week. I learned an incredible amount and gained perspective, and things fell into place.

      But it took a hard toll on my body – all these constant long trips that were often taken in the middle of the night, on a plane to or from Asia or Africa, as the only woman and sometimes the only European. I visited airports in cities that I barely knew existed just a few years before.

      On a midnight flight between Chennai and Doha, I met Indian guest workers who were on their way to Qatar to build roads and football stadiums. One man told me that they were treated almost like cattle and worked under extremely hard conditions. Several of his comrades had died in workplace accidents. Their eyes were desperate, their bodies sunken. I will never forget that night.

      In this context it felt a little shameful to think about my own body, so I stopped thinking about it. I didn’t have time to think about it either, and with irregular meals and sporadic exercise, life began to wear me down. But just like with those oxygen masks – if you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t help anyone else either.

      My first back strain came just like that, after three weeks of travel. I couldn’t get out of bed for three days. A few years later, I had constant back pain. I walked around with little pillows to tuck behind my back when I sat and wrote. There were little wedge-shaped pillows in my bag, a manifestation of my new old-lady life. Not that I had anything against old ladies – just the opposite. But I was only fifty-two, after all. What would the rest of my life be like?

      And exercise? It had dissipated, turned into an unengaged, unconstructed kind of activity.

      ‘What was I going to do here?’ I might ask myself when I arrived at the gym and drifted around randomly among the machines. A little cycling here, some weights there. It wasn’t a catastrophe by any means. It just wasn’t me anymore.

      It was simply as if a grey fog had draped itself over my life. The children were getting older, and a couple of them had already moved away from home. It was empty. Who was I now, without children at home?

      Sometimes the thought came to me that life would never be really sunny again. Was it menopause? Or was it that I couldn’t move the way I used to anymore, now that my back had begun giving me trouble? The kids? I looked for explanations and had a hard time expressing what was missing. I just had a general feeling of malaise and depression.

      That’s how my life was starting to go.