Of women & their resilience

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 27

Using Kintsugi — a famous Japanese art based on the concept of putting together broken pieces of pottery with gold dust or lacquer to create beautiful art work — as a metaphor, author and entrepreneur Ritu Sharma has come up with a book ‘The New Woman’ with 33 inspiring stories of women from across the world.

Ritu, who is also the founder of UK-based non-profit organisation Kaushalya, hails from Amritsar.

“These are no ordinary stories but stories which could change your life — 33 women spread across five continents, who have undergone transformation through adversity. We came across these stories through our organisation’s initiative for women empowerment and met women fighting mental health issues, domestic abuse, manipulation and drug abuse among other things,” she shared.

Ritu had been collecting and collating stories from women around the world for this new book. She feels the book can become a support system for anyone, who needs help and has been facing similar situation.

“I believe many women go through similar challenges and still feel that they are the only ones. In our cognitive isolation, we tend to treat these experiences as unique and novel and that is how gender-based discrimination becomes normalised in our society. By sharing these stories, we are not only exposing what is done to women on a regular basis, but also creating an awareness that we do not have to keep repeating the narrative. Change is possible and so is happiness.”

She said the book also aims to remove any shame, guilt or embarrassment attached to any woman-related issue in this world. “We also intend to translate the book in different languages for women across the world with an objective to reach out to women everywhere in the world, especially because the authors are from across the world,” she said.

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