Grandmothers to don bonnets for a cause
Dust off those Easter bonnets, a local charity group is inviting everyone to dress in their Sunday best as they Spring Into Fashion.
The latest fashions suitable for all ages and body types will be showcased during the fundraising event set for Thursday, March 22 at 7 p.m. at the Columbus Community Centre.
Fashions are provided by Butterfly Boutique, a popular downtown clothing store.
Hosted by the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Prince George group, or G2G PG for short, this fundraiser is one of many with proceeds going to the Stephen Lewis Foundation, a national effort that helps African grandmothers raise not only their grandchildren but communities filled with orphaned children who have lost their parents to the AIDS epidemic that has virtually wiped out an entire generation.
This global outreach has inspired 75 local women to join G2G PG - you don’t technically have to be a grandmother to join the movement - and they’ve raised $21,481.26 since their start up in November 2015.
Last year’s fashion show raised $4,400 and the hope is to do the same this year. The local group has hosted golf tournaments, bring and buys, sing alongs, and wine and paint nights as well as selling handmade beaded necklaces and bracelets, in an effort to raise as much money as they can.
The Stephen Lewis Foundation began in 2003 by dedicating efforts to offer mere survival to those in need in Africa but as the initiatives gained momentum, projects have grown into human rights movements primarily led by grandmothers to encompass all women, children and men.
As of 2015, the Foundation has disbursed more than $89 million, working in partnership with more than 300 community-based organizations on more than 1,400 initiatives in Africa.
To help with these efforts, the G2G PG are offering finger foods, dessert, tea and coffee at the Spring Into Fashion event, and for purchase there will be red and white wine, sangria and a mimosa fountain is also available.
“So many people embrace the event,” Louise Ewen, a founding member of G2G PG, said. “Last year we had a table of ladies dressed in beautiful dresses who had bonnets to match their outfits. Some people get really creative - we had one lady who had a bra mounted on the top of her bonnet. It was really fun and people had some really fun ideas and seemed to really enjoy that aspect of the event as well.”
Tickets are $30 each from G2G PG members and at Butterfly Boutique, 421 Dominion St. For more information email Ann at
Something was stabbing Abby Norman from the inside.
As she took what she would later call the worst shower of her life, the college sophomore experienced a wave of excruciating abdominal pain.
It would take years for doctors to take that pain seriously. Even as her body withered, her hair turned gray and she dropped out of college because of her precarious health, Norman’s providers insisted she was imagining things.
Eventually she set out on her own investigation of her symptoms, scouring through medical literature for answers.
Ask Me About My Uterus, subtitled A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain and published by Nation Books this month, reveals Norman’s struggle for a diagnosis – endometriosis – and a meditation on how health-care providers can ignore women’s pain.
Endometriosis, in which the uterine lining grows outside the uterus, is thought to affect more than 11 per cent of American women between ages 15 and 44. Yet it’s underdiagnosed and little understood.
Women with endometriosis aren’t the only ones whose pain and other physical symptoms are underestimated by doctors. Women report more chronic pain than men, and when they report acute pain, women are more likely to be prescribed sedatives than pain medications.
Even when they do receive diagnoses, women report being dismissed as overly emotional when they insist on appropriate treatment. For years, scholars and patients have cried bias, but physical pain is often paired with a fight to be taken seriously by medical providers.
Norman, now a science writer, articulates her own struggles with clarity and calmness. She weaves in historical context about the diagnosis, treatment and perception of women in medicine, from the myth of “hysteria” to cultural perceptions about women’s pain tolerance and propensity for “female troubles.”
In a way, Ask Me About My Uterus is an extension of Norman’s terrible shower - a torrent of disconcerting information about the continued struggle to understand and value women’s bodies.
Norman hopes to use that information to destroy misconceptions and pave the road for change.
“It is my sincerest hope,” she writes, “that some of what is in this book will no longer be applicable by the time it’s in your hands.”