Listography: 5 Inspirational Women

In honour of International Women's Day tomorrow (8th March) this week's Listography is 5 Inspirational Women.

1. Henrietta Szold 1860 - 1945 (I wrote about her and my direct connection to her here.)

2. Candi O'Reilly who blogs at Looking For Blue Sky. You can find her here. I could write more but I want you to read her own words.

3. Meryl Streep. She's achieved the greatest accolades in the film industry, she's a skilled and versatile actress, she's kept her family out of the media, she's always conducted herself with the utmost integrity and dignity, she supports causes with intelligence and discretion, she's not self obsessed with her own beauty, ..... Is that enough?

4. J.K. Rowling (who doesn't look dissimilar to Meryl Streep). Also for her dignity and intelligence, common sense and humility, and for sitting down and doing what so many of us dreamed of but never managed to get started.
.
5. Irena Sendler 1910 - 2008

Irena Sendler is one of the 24,811 Righteous Among The Nations honoured at Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Memorial Museum) in Jerusalem. Irena helped to smuggle 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and furnish them with false identity papers.

Irena's story spoke to me because my mother's family left Warsaw for London in the 1880s. If they'd not had the get up and go to get up and go, those children could have been my mother and her brother. However, I could have chosen any one of the thousands of women who put their own lives at risk to save Jews from Hitler during the Second World War. You can read more stories here.

Linking up with  Listography at Kate Takes 5.