Iconic Woman
The Iconic Woman Project was initiated to disseminate health-related information that effects women and girls not regularly reported or analyzed by the mainstream press.
The purpose of Iconic Woman is to Activate more Inconvenient Women.
Women who —
Ask Questions
Demand Answers
Verify Answers with an Independent Source
Make informed decisions
Pro-actively participate in their personal health and wellbeing
Contributors
H. Sandra Chevalier-Batik
Iconic Woman Research Analyst and Web Content Developer
I have come to describe myself as an accidental feminist. As a leading edge boomer, I ignored the early feminist movement as irrelevant and concentrate on my career as print production manager. For the next twenty years, I played hardball with the boys of the publication industry. By the mid-eighties, I had left the corporate world to start my own training and consulting business. In the fall of 1988, I was approached by a group a women business owners. They were in the process of forming The Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce, the first Women’s Chamber of Commerce in the country and they asked me to serve as President. As part of our educational outreach, the Colorado Woman’s Chamber of Commerce set up an Educational Foundation that awarded a full (4-year) Business Degree scholarship every year. The scholarships were awarded through the University of Denver. To this day, is the CWCC initiative of which I am most proud. Additionally, I served as a Minority and Women’s’ Business Development Circuit Rider for the Colorado Small Business Development Center (SBDC). I helped SBA clients develop business plans, helped qualify start-up and emerging enterprises for SBA funding and offered procurement support for those business wishing to pursue government contracting.
For my work in the small business development, I was awarded the SBA Region VIII, M/WBE Procurement Advocate Award, and the SBA Advocate of the Year Award for Women in Business and recognized, with the other leaders of the Minority Women’s Chamber Coalition, as the 690th Point of Light by President George H. Bush and the Point of Light Foundation.
By 2002, done with public life, I had happily settled into research, writing and teaching — no more crusades. Through a mutual acquaintance, I was referred to Leslie Botha. She needed a writer to take her existing “Holy Hormones Honey!” training materials and get them ready for publication. Leslie had been working in the Women’s Health field for decades. She was, and is, fiercely passionate about her work. As I listened in rapt attention, she explained cycles — how feminine hormone and lunar cycles are interrelated — how energy moves through our bodies, like the tides rhythmically touching the shore and how to be healthy, women have to work with her feminine energy not against it. Leslie explained how women who have lost touch with their nature cycles, unknowingly damage their health; and her preliminary research showed that women were being misdiagnosed, improperly medicated and subjected to unnecessary operations, all to fix ill-defined “female problems”.
That got my attention.
A stone pragmatist, at first I though the relational lunar cycle stuff was a bit “woo-woo”; but as a business owner I understood the ramifications — loss of productivity and increased health care costs. When I was 42, my doctors told me they had to yank my uterus. I figured so what, its like an appendix, I don’t need it. I was sick of feeling sick. It never occurred to me that there might be viable options to a complete hysterectomy; or that there might be serious repercussions to my overall health resulting from such radical surgery.
After years of considering personal health issues irrelevant in relationship to meeting a production schedule, bringing a project in on time and within budget, Leslie stopped me dead in my tracks.
Cycles are Mother Nature’s production schedules. The project is life-long, vibrant health. Discomfort and pain, the price we pay for being overdrawn in our energy account. Disease is the penalty for not keeping to our natural schedule. Unnecessary medication and medical procedures the constant threat to budget over-runs.
At first, wasn’t sure I would be an appropriate writing partner for Leslie. She’s like the great earth mother, full of love, wisdom, compassion and caring. I’m more a, “So what’s the bottom line?” person. We will look at the same issue from two entirely different points of view. Leslie’s concerned as to how a health practice will effect the body, and spirit of a woman. I tend to analyze the economic impact, not only to the woman, but society as a whole. As I analyzed the research, I came to the conclusion that the lunar cycle theory was definitely, Not, Woo-Woo; and what Leslie Botha is trying to accomplish is nothing less that change the world, as we know it. How western medicine has treated women’s bodies’ boarders on criminal negligence. Sadly, through lack of alternative information, women have become complicit in the travesty we call modern medical treatment.
I finally have a relevant rational for activist feminism — the health of daughters, our grand daughters, and ourselves. It is imperative that we understand all of the cycles in our lives. Women must be pro-active in all aspects of their wellness. Education and the willingness to ask questions and demand answers is a start.
The Making of an Inconvenient Woman —
I am a professional researcher and analyst, and I’ve earned a reputation for taking highly complex subjects and presenting them in easily understood modules, that put readers at ease and ready to tackle unfamiliar material. I’ve made my living studying technical data, and developing reports, articles, press releases, training materials and web content. Tracking through statistical data, and oblique cross-references to find the relevant connections is my passion.
I love clearly delineating the magic questions of knowledge: Who, What, Why, When, Where and for How Much, Paid to Whom.
My life lessons — Question everything. Trust, but personally verify, and just because it worked for some one else, does not mean it will be good for your situation. Oh yes, and most doctors and drug companies have still not figured out that women are not small men.
When ever possible, I site the sources for the information I share in The Inconvenient Woman™ Blog and invite you to use the information as a jumping off point for your own research.
