Countdown to the Royal Wedding - Day 1: Five reasons why Kate Middleton will be a great Princess

In the past it has been difficult to gauge the potential of new members of the Royal Family because they all had to bow to protocol, they were taken from the same class of people (aristocrats and nobility), they behaved in the same manner beforehand, they appeared to have bland personalities that fitted in, and they toed the Royal line meticulously after that, almost like clones.

Kate Middleton appears an entirely different breed. She seems really refreshing and a person in her own right. One cannot see her disappearing behind the Royal facade because she seems pretty confident in herself: her own person. In fact, there are five outstanding things about our Kate which makes her perfect for the new role of Princess that she is about to acquire.



1. Her Personality
She is definitely the People's Princess. She smiles continuously, being happy within herself, so it is not difficult to spot when she is unhappy. She suddenly becomes very serious, her lips purse tightly together and her eyes become bland and unfocused. She clearly likes people in the easy way she treats them and the unselfconsciousness she displays when she is among them. She is most approachable, which puts others at ease and she has a natural warmth that is endearing. She is seen by the media as bringing a "refreshing informality" to the Royal Family. Kate is clearly a winner with the public already.


2. Her Family
All along one gets the feeling that Kate is very close to her family. She spends a lot of time with them, and even William is sharing their house more often too. I would hazard a guess that she is surrounded by love, affection and calm. Her mother and father seem a bulwark against the outside world, despite their fragile look, protecting her every step of the way. One doesn't have to look far to see that both she and her sister, Phillipa, are most valued and are treated that way. This means she has the necessary emotional support to be a bulwark against the rigid, and often detached barriers and structures of the Royal Family, as well as the background to give the Family a softer look in the future.

Kate Middleton's parents: Carol and Michael Middleton.


3. Her Courage
It is clear that Kate does not take any prisoners. She is very courageous in how she acts, especially her treatment of Prince William as an ordinary person. She's not overawed at all by his status, and is very keen to get on with things in her own way too. Nothing seems to phase her. In fact, she appears to be relishing the role of princess-to-be with great enthusiasm, yet without too many airs and graces. In fact, she seems so natural for the part, it's as if she was born to it!



4. Her Background
Kate Middleton's background is solidly middle-class, with a history which includes coal miners and all kinds of skilled craftsmen and women. Her links are with the ordinary people, not a single titled person among her ancestry, which makes her quite unique for a Royal Princess. That fact has endeared her to the public in a very poignant way. She is truly one of them, and they are extra proud of her achievement in crossing the great class divide.


5. Her Empathy and Awareness
Kate appears to have a great deal of empathy, both for Prince William and what he has gone through, and the people she comes in contact with. She is very aware of her environment and what is required of her and she appears to be embracing it with new vigour. Above all the qualities, her sense of awareness makes her very supportive of William and that will be hugely beneficial in the years to come when they assume more responsibilities as a senior Royal couple.



Kate is enjoying the moment that fate has carved for her, and the fact that she has been smiling through it all says a lot about her character, her confidence and her keen sense of awareness in who she is about to be and where she could take that role. She has the twin assets of seeming both ordinary and regal at the same time. She will certainly fit into the Royal Family, on one hand, but her own solid values, her extrovert personality and the love and support she has enjoyed, will ensure that she will be changing that Family as well.

Why Madonna is right to adopt another child from Malawi

(picture courtesy: www.smh.com.au)


The Save the Children Fund has added its weighty voice to the debate as to whether Madonna should adopt another child and has spoken out against her, citing the fact that children should be cared for by 'extended families in their own home community'. Yes, that is true, and lot of things should happen in our world to make it a fairer place for many orphans, poor kids and kids without any kind of future, but they do not happen because we don't live in an ideal world. Moreover, one fails to see how an adoption could be criticised which would help one little motherless girl to have the kind of life 99% of us in the world dream about. No one can put the world's ills to right by themself, but if we all did just one thing to help a child, the dramatic difference would be immediately noticeable rather than doing only what is regarded as perfect or desirable.

It takes all kinds of action to change situations like those in Africa where the need is greatest, not just one ideal approach. In this case, Save the Children has got it very wrong because of one primary factor they have overlooked in their wisdom: the emotional health of the child Madonna has already adopted, David Banda.

David is a black child who will be spending his early formative life in an all-white family. His emotional health in forming his own identity is very important and that can only be helped by having a brother or sister who REFLECTS him, his heritage, his culture and his origins. When there is no reflection of us in our community, it sets up conflicts of identity, especially where our parents are clearly different, and can often cause internal dissonance until it is resolved, most often shown in either a rejection of the self (a desire to be white, for example) or a rejection of the parent(s).

Our daughter had a crisis of identity when she was between 12 and 13 years old. Though she had very loving parents (a black mother and a Sikh father), she was one of very few mixed race children at her grammar school which had a 98% white intake. The result of that, being virtually invisible in her school and feeling undervalued, was that she wanted to be white. It didn't matter what confidence, love or appreciation we gave her, the peer group she mixed with were all white and she felt unreflected and an outsider. She wanted so much to belong that being white, in her eyes, was the only way she could do it. She became introspective, uncommunicative and withdrawn for a few anxious months. Her confused state reflected itself in her writing which gradually revealed her problem. "Why did I have to be born black when all my friends are white?", she once wrote. It was a terribly tragic time for our family as we were unsure how to deal with this low self-image. yet we were very successful professionals and role models to her. We managed to bring her through those doubts and she resolved her identity and self-esteem in her own way by the time she was 15. However people underestimate the effects on children of being minorities in majority communities, the perceived lack of value, significance and self-reflection that haunt their routine lives, especially when all they see are white peers reflected in books, the media, as heroes and as the ones who matter.

That new addition to Madonna's family will do far more for David's sense of self and value than anything else Madonna could offer him. Both he and the new child will be reinforced by one another, just as his white sisters reinforce each other. Save the Children might want children to be supported in an ideal way, but this is not an ideal world. This is a cruel world where too many of our kids are suffering. One less child to suffer has got to be our aim, not the perfect manner in which it is done. As long as a child is not being exploited anything else to help them has got to be encouraged.

Madonna is doing the right thing for the wellbeing of her whole family and I wish her well in her aim.

How Madonna and Guy Have Fallen Victim to The Greatest Cause of Stress in Life: Relationships

(photo: www.charlotteobserver.com)

Madonna and Guy Ritchie have announced their divorce after much denial. The Daily Mirror gleefully claims to be ahead of the 'competition' in knowing that they were about to break up. But what is there to be smug about when any relationship breaks? The pain is probably even more because everything is played out on the public stage, robbing them of the privacy other members of the public take for granted. So the couple are likely to focus, initially, on how they are a perceived than on the real issues they need to sort out. There will now follow a severe time of stress for them, especially where young children are involved - and there are three in this case.

Stress affects everyone to some degree, but severe stress is a feeling of being unable to cope and is a reaction to excessive demands and pressures made upon the individual. It is most likely to be maintained by a feeling of personal rejection, insignificance and worthlessness. If it was an amicable mutual split, then the stress won't be too much.However, if one of them wanted the split more than the other, that's where the main problem will lie: dealing with that sense of rejection, and that could be pretty stressful. Stress robs you of your good looks, your disposition, your health, your youthfulness, and can even take your life. It is particularly unpleasant and harmful when pressures build up or are prolonged indefinitely; when we are unable to control the demands placed upon us, when we are constantly anxious, and when support is not there when we need it.

Most of the focus has been on reducing stress in the workplace. However, what has escaped everyone’s notice is the lethal level of stress caused by simply moving between relationships, especially where the desire for a break is not mutual, or where one is stuck in a relationship which makes one or both parties feel impotent, unhappy or simply miserable. These situations occur on a regular basis, often taken for granted as a necessary part of life, yet causing incalculable emotional damage in their wake.


Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
With many relationships lasting only between six months and a year, most people can expect some additional resulting trauma on at least three to four occasions in their lifetime. These are problems which most people try to avoid without ever quite succeeding, because the mere notion of expecting relationships to fail ensures that they do, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Stress from a break-up is thus the worst kind of stress because it contains personal rejection, momentary insecurity and loss of status/esteem for at least one party, not to mention the financial costs which may be attached. Yet it has been underestimated in its effects and overlooked by government provisions.

When we feel rejected, controlled or unappreciated, everything else in our lives pales into insignificance because we lose our sense of belonging, joy and worth. This affects whatever we do until we feel better. Bereavement of any kind and moving house might come top of the list of any stress-inducing activities, but being stuck in an unwanted relationship, which affects at least 20 per cent of couples, or being momentarily rejected by a partner, should go right to the top of that list because of the ongoing consequences they have for everyone involved.

Madonna and Guy are going to need all the emotional support they can have over the next few months because being a celebrity does not make them immune from the effects of a break-up. In fact, that actually makes them more exposed to its consequences as they come under increasing scrutiny.