Women making waves

By Janine Ritterrath

You lived in the Mentawais for five years. As a woman alone in a quite male dominated, isolated place, what did this time do to you? In what way do you think it has changed you as a person?

It opened me up. All of me. Made me trust myself and know what I was capable of. Skills, instincts, senses that I had never used in such a way. And that came from having no communications, living in nature with the local people and being 100% reliant on me. It made me question everything, face who I really was, which, naturally included my fears. It was like going along an assembly line in reverse, being taken apart, and, then going forwards through it and coming out truly whole but a different version. But it definitely wasn’t a linear experience! Haha. My understanding of what it is to be a woman anywhere in the world deepened, as did my compassion for girls and women worldwide.

Read the interview here.