Save Sally Obermeder

Last Thursday I attended a fundraiser for a woman who is both a friend and an inspiration. Her name is Sally Obermeder. Some may know her as the stunning Today Tonight Entertainment reporter, others might remember her as a presenter on Sydney Weekender but this story, the one she is living is the one you'll remember from now on.

In a celebration of her life and in a bid to keep her living; her friend and my boss Sarah Stinson, Executive Producer of The Morning Show organized a fundraiser to help Sally raise enough money to fight as best she could to beat cancer.

Sally's story is almost unfathomable. After years of trying to have a baby, Sally finally resorted to IVF treatments to help her on her way. After years of struggle, she fell pregnant and then the day before she gave birth to baby Anabelle, the unthinkable happened.  She was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.

For the eight months that followed (she’s through four months now) she would undergo gruelling chemotherapy, radiotherapy and is considering a double mastectomy. She describes chemotherapy as “beyond brutal” and days after her debilitating and crippling chemotherapy she is unable to mother her newborn baby.

With funds rapidly diminishing, in one of the grandest gestures of love I've ever seen, Sarah Stinson organized a fundraiser. Over 500 guests joined together to celebrate Sally. Guests sent love positivity and importantly, funds to launch her on her way to better health.

This was love in the most flamboyant display I'd ever seen. Sally was surrounded by her husband Marcus, her sister, and her colleagues and even shared company with strangers who were moved by her story.

Marcus held his beautiful wife closely, showing her how striking she still is. She has a smile that lights up a room, a spirit that fills your heart with so much love and a will that would inspire the weakest of souls to keep going. In her speech, she thanked him for his unconditional love. Saying “if I hasn't married you, I would have married you again.”

There was not a dry eye in the room.

The love there was real, was intense and  was healing, I wish it could have been in the medical sense.

Sally in her thank you speech wept as the club lights in the Beresford went up and she saw over 500 faces cheering her on.

“I just want to say thank you because while Chemotherapy is what heals my illness, it’s your love that heals my soul,” she said.

Her grief was profound and for a night - it was shared by a room full of open hearts and thankfully open wallets.

You can read more about Sally’s battle at these links.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/love-flows-for-today-tonight-reporter-sally-obermeder/story-e6frewz0-1226281010116

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/insider/sally-obermeder-is-simply-inspirational-writes-ros-reines/story-e6frewt9-1226281495595

http://aww.ninemsn.com.au/news/newsstories/8392043/new-mum-sally-obermeders-breast-cancer-battle

While every week I write about love, this week I encourage you to show it by donating to one of the most important causes I’ve ever supported. Sally deserves the best chance of survival and you can help by donating at this link.

You wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone, but you can help heal it by donating generously and helping Sally reach her target. It will help her pay for her treatments and give her the best chance at surviving for her newborn baby, Anabelle.

everydayhero.com.au/sallyo

Love them or leave them?

A few weeks ago a friend and I caught up. It felt like an age since we last spoke and we had much to catch up on. She shared stories of love that came, love that left and love that she thought was lost. Hers was a story of forbidden love. As archaic as it may seem, she couldn't marry a man who was beneath her in education. This wasn't her choice. She was moving interstate and her family was utterly opposed to her pairing with a man with seemingly lesser intelligence. He said he was prepared to fight for her, she wasn't so sure of her love.

She knew she'd never been made to feel as desirable as she felt with him. She knew nobody had ever shown her that compassion or that kindness but when she didn't rebel against her parents’ wishes, he disappeared, not a single battle was fought. He just left. She would wonder for now if she made the right decision but would rest securely in the fact that the right thing at the wrong time is still the wrong thing.

Being religious she knew that God would never punish her for being obedient to her parents. Honouring their wishes was all she knew. That would be enough for the time being.

The thing she was missing was that if he was expecting her to fight for his love against all odds, he would have to fight for her love too. He didn't. She didn't and Jason Derulo released a song about doing it.

Both instances got me thinking at what point in a relationship does someone decide to fight for the love that exists and when do you decide that it's ok to throw in the towel?

The issue is too broad for me to cover all instances of relationships (and frankly I don’t have the brainpower to do it today), but I’m talking about the intermediate stages of dating or infatuation.

Breakups are not new news but the frequency of them these days is, so what would we make you stay? Is the short term pain for long term gain worth it or should everything come up roses before you accept a lifetime pairing with a person? I think there's only one thing you need to be sure of before you enter the battlefield; that being the potential for love between you both.

For my friend being unsure of her love was the first alarm bell that it was not worth fighting for. But what of cold feet? Honestly, I don’t think it exists.

In relationships I’ve known of and that have lasted there has never been the smallest inkling that the relationship was temporary. Neither party ever fought with the intention nor the option of leaving, neither party ever believed they couldn’t recover from an argument and none of them ever threatened it. If you are with someone for life, you don’t contemplate a life without them and when leaving is an option that you’re comfortable with (particularly in the early stages of dating), then that’s exactly the time to go.

The stories of striving and struggle for love that I’ve enjoyed and believed in most are when a man has found and fought for the woman he is taken by. When loving her was the only emotion he cared for, when losing her was unfathomable, when winning her love was the only ending contemplated and when in the end he did.

What I’ve seen in instances where he has worked for her love first is a love greater in capacity returned to the man than he imagined could ever be given to him. I know of a guy who hoped for my friend’s love for his entire youth. He never thought he could get her love. When he did, she called herself the lucky one. She had a man, who knew what he wanted, went after it and spent a lifetime grateful for having won – that was exactly what she wanted in the end too.

I know many feminists would be in a head-spin about me making women sound like a game to be won, but I actually believe that a man that knows a woman’s worth, would always fight regardless of the rejections for her heart and that is a feminist thought in itself. It is not passivity or submission, it is acknowledgement of your worth and acceptance that you are worth the battle.

We may live in an age where women share many freedoms and within those freedoms is a choice to fight for the man you love, but in my friend’s case and many of yours, I’d only ever encourage a sister to fight, if she was fought for first….

Power, Passion and Pain on Valentine's Day.

The Grammy awards were held two nights ago and a song that stands as one of the greatest ballads of this generation, won its singer, Adele the greatest gong in the music industry. After her album, ‘21’ was named album of the year she thanked a "rubbish relationship" for inspiration.  Her lyrics, laced with power, passion and pain shared in universal human experience and made her lyrics send tremors in the hearts of the torn and emotionally tarnished globally.  

I can’t write a blog about passion and pain without giving Whitney Houston a mention. Before Adele, she was the musical great whose music we all blasted, whose love we all related to, whose voice echoed in our minds and hearts and who wrote with passion, sung with power and shared her pain in a public forum. It almost appears that one cannot have extreme success without extreme pain; in life and in love..

The rawest of emotions spark the strongest of responses and the truest of feelings shared, inspire the greatest of human connections.

This is my valentine’s day musing. While many may be mourning their single status (congratulations to those who aren’t today), the rest of us should take consolation in the fact that relationships are difficult – one of life’s greatest struggles and the longevity of a relationship, is one of life’s greatest successes. You don’t want to be in one unless you’re prepared for the long-suffering nature of it.

A few weeks ago, I watched the movie that is getting rave reviews among Oscar big-wigs for its portrayal of reality, ‘The Descendants.’ As George Clooney’s character bids farewell to his dying wife, he says a few poignant words that have since, lingered in my memory.

 “Goodbye my joy, goodbye my pain, goodbye my love, goodbye my friend goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.”

Love struck me as one of the most paradoxical emotions or states of being that you could experience. You could love, but you’d have moments of hatred, you could give, when you only wanted to take and had nothing left to give. You would share, when you only wanted to be left alone. You would fight, even when you had no energy to keep going. You would stay, when it would be easier to leave, you would give your heart, even at the risk of it being broken.

That love is the rarest kind and that’s the one we singles are waiting for. It’s also what you taken people should be experiencing.

Someone like Adele felt broken. Opportunity didn’t knock so she created a door while she was waiting for her next great love. Look to the lessons you’ve learned, the realisation of your capacity to love and seek relationships or opportunities that will evaporate your bitterness and encourage your growth. She did and it paid off massively!

 Someone like Whitney let her love break her. The difference between the two icons of passion, power and pain, were that one searched for someone to complete her, when that love only depleted her and the other realised she didn't need someone to complete her, she just needed someone to accept her completely (and then wrote an award winning song about it).

This Valentine’s day, look how you can grow from the experiences that hurt you, never stop believing that love will come but know that when it does, it will rock your world (not always positively). The road won’t be easy – it will be paved with problems, but the trials will be worth it for a lifetime threaded with power and passion that somehow nullifies the pain it often causes.

Look for love to be everything but don’t feel like nothing when it doesn’t work out. Let love change you for the better and if it diminishes your spirit (like Whitney) then escape before it destroys your soul.

I’m all for commercialism and extravagant displays of love and affection, but we all should take note that in that bouquet of roses are stems full of thorns and the hard work put in to that relationship is deserving of that recognition (today and always).

This year, don’t  be jealous of people that have love, be happy that they’ve found it and be all ears to how they’ve managed to sustain it. I’ll be blasting Whitney and Adele in the meantime. I’m such a cliché.

Have We Flirted Enough Yet?

I've written before about being trapped in the friendship box seats, looking on to the love game between your dream beau and somebody else (who is not you). It takes trial and a whole lot of error to work out how to keep yourself out of the sidelines and on the playing field when it comes to a meeting of minds and hearts on the field of (dating) dreams.

This problem is one that we're all faced with at some point in our lives and having been placed on team friend one too many times (involuntarily), we women often wonder - how much flirting it will take for our hearts to beat to the same drum?

What is it about a woman that stirs a guy to see her as girlfriend material and how long before that thought materializes into you asking her out?

If you are flirty by nature with all of your friends, you'll either wind up friendless fast or future girlfriends will envy the friendships you have and your friendships or relationship will cease to exist! Rule #1 Be selective or your words will soon mean nothing.

My issue with that is how are you supposed to tell the difference between flirtation and friendship if there's a one size fits all approach? This was the cry of a friend who is trying to read a friend of hers.

He went as far as saying he wanted to kiss her but when confronted with the possibility of a relationship he cowered away from commitment. Kick him to the kerb I say. Rule #2  Ask for all or accept nothing. You can’t flirt and not be prepared to follow through. Somebody always gets hurt.

I have one mate who said if he was interested in a girl he asked her out. Period! No excuses, no confusion … (maybe for him) - but there's always confusion somewhere! He was a serial flirt. He never hesitated to tell a girl when she looked good, he didn't mind a contemplative chat on her good qualities, He didn't mind dissing her exes, lunch or dinner dates were on him and he paid close attention to everything she said. He was a dream and the idea of him was nirvana - he never asked her out. They were never more than friends. She would always wonder why.

I'm generally a flirty person too. So I understand the adrenalin rush you can get from a flirtatious chat but I believe it's the frequency of it with the same person that can cause the confusion.

We live in an age where everyone is wearing the pants so with women sending just as many mixed signals as our male counterparts, it's no wonder the world is sleeping around unattached - everyone's just as puzzled as each other on what the opposite sex wants, but most (aside from my small community) agree on the physical.

What women want long-term are answers! We want clarity! We want you to cut to the chase and we want you to take chances! If you're interested make a move rather than be perfect, omnipresent and unattainable to us.

The fact is most girls will find it difficult to sustain a boy to girl friendship with a guy if they are attracted to him so by all means pursue friendship with the opposite sex but don't blur the lines unless you want your girl friend to become your girlfriend. Girls are to friendship as boys are to relationship.  If this was clear there'd be nothing to decipher.

If the water appears murky, it's best not to swim in it but of course then I'd have no blogging material and we'd all have less to chat about. Have we flirted enough yet? Absolutely not – but gosh I’d love some answers.

The problem according to Steve Harvey (author of novel and soon to be released film, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man) is that when it comes to relationships women can’t figure men out because they don’t understand the way guys think about love and sex. The easiest way to learn is to step away from your female cliques and head to the men for the dispensation of matter-of-fact advice.

Men enlighten us? When do you flirt for flirting’s sake and when is your flirtation in pursuit of a relationship?

This week I simply do not have the answers…. Sorry girls there are always firsts

Till the blokes who read this decide to share the inner workings of their minds, ladies keep swimming and men keep fishing but flirt with limits, choose your fish, bait her, catch her, keep her. Women in the meantime add Steve Harvey’s book to your reading list and please TELL ME EVERYTHING!