Woman's Hour - Family Secrets...

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

In the latest in our series of Family Secrets a listener called Helen got in touch to tell us about the discovery she made after the death of her mother and the suicide pact she kept quiet about for nearly forty years. Last week’s budget saw a series of big public spending and investment projects announced. These focused on physical infrastructure. But what of social infrastructure – the investment in people who staff social care and the support for women in and out of work as the country faces the enormous challenge of Covid 19. Jenni speaks to Professor Diane Elson of the Women’s Budget Group and Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director of Age UK.Curator, writer and lecturer Bolanle Tajudeen is the founder of Black Blossoms, a platform dedicated to spotlighting black women and black non-binary visual artists. Jenni met Bolanle recently at the Women of the World 10th anniversary festival. How has black feminism influenced the work of black female fine art artists and why do they struggle to get a platform for their work.Diana Nammi grew up in the Kurdish region of Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, playing her own part in the revolution of 1979. At the age of 17, under the new Islamic regime, she became a Pershmerga, Kurdish fighter. Twelve years on the frontline, she discusses her book ‘Girl with a Gun’.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Carolyn Abrahams Interviewed Guest: Diane Elson Interviewed Guest: Bolanle Tajudeen Reporter: Jo Morris Interviewed Guest: Diana Nammi

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 18th of March. Good morning. In today's programme, Deanna Nami's Girl With A Gun. She was raised in the Kurdish region of Iran and after the Islamic Revolution became a Kurdish fighter, spending 12 years on the front line.

Art in the age of black girl magic, Bolani Tajuddin on the artists we should know about. And another in our series of family secrets, Helen's family had lots of them. Now, it's a week since the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, delivered his budget. And it has, of course, in the last 24 hours, been somewhat overtaken by promises he's made to alleviate some of the financial problems faced as a result of the virus emergency. The budget saw a series of big public spending and investment projects focusing on physical infrastructure. But what about social infrastructure, the investment in people whose staff, social care? And then, of course, there's the question of support for women in and out of work as we face the difficulties presented by COVID-19. Well, I'm joined by Professor Diane Elson of the Women's Budget Group

and Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director of Age UK. Caroline, the government has indicated that it would address social care later this year. Was there anything you'd hoped to hear in last week's budget? Well, originally there was for sure, but I think a bit nearer the time we understood that actually the government hadn't decided quite what it wanted to do about social care yet. So therefore, for that reason, they weren't going to bring forward any measures in the budget. But of course, you know, we saw, as you say, lots of money for all sorts of other things. And our worry at that point was, well, is there going to be any left for social care?

And now, of course, we feel's we've been completely overwhelmed by events and i think a lot of people are feeling if only social care was more robust we'd be in a much better position to weather what it what is to come over the next few months then why is it so often overlooked when there's general agreement and has been for a long time it's so important. A key reason is the kind of rules that successive chancellors of the Exchequer have adopted, which said it was okay to borrow to invest in things, to fill the potholes in the roads for instance, or build new bridges, but you couldn't borrow to invest in people, you couldn't borrow to pay the wages of staff in public services and that had to be covered by tax revenue and I think they so far have stuck to those rules but they've been unwilling to grasp the implications of raising enough tax revenue to properly fund

public services and social care has been a particular Cinderella. So from what Caroline just said, it seems that was a very false economy. A very false economy, because now we're in a situation where we really could have done with a very robust system of social care so that people who are in hospital and their medical needs have now been met would be able to go home and find there was a package of social care to support them there. We're not in that situation. How concerned, Caroline, are people contacting Age UK about carers and care homes right now? I think pretty anxious is the honest truth of it. And, you know, anybody who has anything to do with the care system, you're bound to be asking yourself questions about exactly how it's going to manage

over the next few weeks. There's just loads of different issues. I mean, for example, with home care, which supports absolutely hundreds of thousands of people around the country, the worry is that care workers will start to go down with the virus, almost inevitable, and there just won't be enough to go around. And then they're going to have to reallocate people. And I'm sure they'll do it the best way they possibly can. But that's, course a huge worry and then in care homes you know just as worrying but slightly different issues in the sense that again often understaffed to start with and you have people coming in and out I'm sure they'll do everything they can to keep the virus out but you know I imagine at some point it will get into some care homes where you

have a group of obviously very vulnerable older people all living together. And the government has indicated this week that it will address social care this week they've said and they now tell us they're going to be making further announcements and further spending will follow as the situation develops. How much is this seemingly renewed concern tied directly to coronavirus? Oh, I'm sure it is. But actually, I'm not so optimistic as you because what I've been hearing is talk about packages for businesses to pay the wages of workers who are employees of businesses which have closed their doors to prevent them from becoming unemployed. But I haven't heard anything signal that specifically they're going to make more money available for social care. They could easily have increased

the funding for local governments. I think this is really, really important that they should do that because the increase in the minimum wage, while it's very welcome, will mean that the costs of providing a funding local care for local governments has risen, but local governments aren't getting any more allocations to cover this. So I think there are things they could do immediately to make it easier for local government to manage the undoubted crisis that's going to be that Caroline has talked about. We need this now. They are thinking of tearing up the rulebook that's previously governed budgetary allocations. Now's the time to do it, I think, and to make a big package available immediately

for trying to deal with the social care crisis. So, Diane, what are the most immediate problems that need tackling right away when investment is made available? The most immediate one is the funding to pay staff. The increase in the minimum wage, as I said, is very welcome, but unless local governments have more money to cover the cost, they're going to not be able to provide as much care because they've got to pay the increase in the minimum wage.

That's the quick thing that can be done. More money for local government. They should do that immediately. The capacity of local government to manage this crisis is going to be on the front line, isn't it? At local level, there are going to be decisions that have to be made. They can't all be made in Whitehall. So definitely more money for local government and then I think they need to do much more to address the financial distress of people who including many care workers who will be being told to self-isolate at home because they have symptoms of the virus and it's not at all clear that they're going to get adequate funding. But the Chancellor did, Diane, make changes to ensure people off sick would be paid statutory

sick pay from day one. Why do you have concerns about the position of care workers now? The statutory sick pay is very low. Can you live on, what is it, £95 a week? So the statutory sick pay is too low, and it's far lower than in most European countries. That's something that could have been addressed immediately. And also care workers who aren't direct employees, who are subcontracted workers, who don't work full-time,

whose pay is below the minimum that you need in order to get sick pay. I don't see anything in this package for them. Caroline, the government has published new guidelines for dealing with the virus in home care and care homes. How much confidence has that given people in the sector, both workers and families who are concerned about the people in their family who need the care? I think it's definitely helped. The gap at the moment, which we hope will be filled in the next week, is the lack of any kind of advice for informal care. It's for the eight million or so informal family carers often, right across the country, often older people themselves.

And of course, in practice, if you think what goes on in real life, you know, thinking of my own situation, my mum has a living carer and she has domiciliary carers that come in and out and she has me as a part time informal carer. So all these things are mixed up. So, so you know it is quite confusing for people I think for families to know exactly what what to do and what's likely to happen and of course it is time of huge uncertainty. Diane, social care has preoccupied successive governments for I think about 20 years. Do we have a chance now to start tackling it and have an open discussion about the cost of it? I think we do, because I think there is an appetite now for new thinking about public expenditure and taxation to deal with the crisis. So I think it is a good opportunity to address the point that we will never have an adequately funded social care system

unless we address the issue of raising more taxation from wealth in particular. There's always a lot of resistance to this, but I think the crisis conditions actually give an opportunity to forge a consensus that this is the time to actually call upon people to make higher tax contributions, those that are able to, in order to fund the social services that we all need and social care and health service in particular. Professor Diane Elson and Caroline Abrahams, thank you both very much for joining us this morning. We do hope to speak to the Minister, Helen Waitley, in the next few days. And we would like to hear from you.

If you have someone who needs care or is getting care, do let us know what sort of difficulties you're having. You can text us or, of course, you can send us an email. Now, it was at the Women of the World Festival at the Southbank Centre that Bolani Tajuddin delivered a lecture called Art in the Age of Black Girl Magic. She discussed how feminism has influenced the work of black female fine artists. She's a curator, writer, lecturer, and the founder of Black Blossoms, dedicated to promoting their work. We discussed notable black artists, their work and their struggle to get a platform. So Art in the Age of Black Girl Magic is about contemporary and historical practices by black women artists. Today, I'm specifically doing the genesis of black feminism in art.

So I'm looking at how black feminist theory intertwines with black women's art practices. How has feminism affected black female fine artists and their work? So you've got artists like Faith Ringgold who was in the cusp of black feminism and the Black Arts Movement, who've campaigned against museums like the Whitney Museum in 1971 to show more reflective artworks within their institution. So Faith Ringgold campaigned for, like, she wanted to see 50% more Black women artists in the museum. They set up groups. This has also inspired artists like Lubaina Hameed, Sonia Boyce within the Black Arts movement to also campaign for

black women within the arts and then you see it happening again now this like you've got platforms like Black Blossoms, Babes campaigning not necessarily campaigning but showcasing the work of black queer women artists. How successful were those women in the 60s and 70s in trying to make changes? I very much doubt that they achieved 50-50. Definitely not. Because it's still very difficult to find work by black female artists. Yes. They definitely weren't successful. But what they were successful at was creating careers for themselves.

And because they're excellent artists, so as much as they were campaigning for better representation within art institutions, they were still making work. They were still doing work. With all the setbacks they had, they you go to seek work by black female artists and find it difficult to find? Yes, it is quite difficult. Colonialism and slavery has erased a lot of the histories of black women around a number of fields, including art. So the earliest I found is a woman called Mary Edmonia Lewis, who was born in America in 1844. She was born a free woman in New York, and she studied in Ohio. And then she became a sculptor. She was one of the first recognized sculptors. She was half African American, half Native American, and she received prominence for her work. She went on to, with the help of abolitionists, she went on to go to Rome and she worked under a number of great artists. And then she also sort of built her own sort of legacy through her work, which combined African-American and

her Catholic beliefs. So for example there's a piece of work called Forever Free. When you look at the sculpture it has European features at the time. That's the kind of work that she would have had to make in order for it to sell, for order for it to have been classified maybe as fine art. But within that work she's talking about two African Americans who have been set free and they're rejoicing at that moment so you can go quite far back but I'm sure even though she's recognized how many other of the women who were making art at the time are not recognized and it's not even not being recognized where they're given this space where they're

allowed to make work or where they're in jobs that didn't give them the time to make the work they wanted to make. How much did things improve in the latter part of the 20th century? Because I know Sonia Boyce was I think the first woman of colour to have work bought by the Tate. Yeah, so Sonia Boyce is an amazing artist. She works across photography, paint, performance. I guess her work was bought in the 80s and now Venice Biennale is in its 59th year and she's the first black woman artist to represent Britain. I don't necessarily know if that's an improvement

or a shocking indictment on the art world itself that there's 59 years' worth of British art and no black woman has represented them. And black women have existed in Britain. What sort of work are the major galleries looking for then? At times, a lot of the artists that I talk to will talk about that major galleries like to showcase black pain, they want to showcase work that isn't necessarily reflective of the kind of work they want to make, if it doesn't have trauma, if it doesn't have, or then it goes to the complete other side and it's completely

abstract work um so yeah it's a confusing one really because you've got institutions and then you've got actual galleries that represent artists and sell the work and sometimes these are have competing sort of um ideas of what artwork by black artists is important and it's like that trying to box black artists in who are the notable artists that we should be looking out for now mikaela yawudan she's an amazing abstract artist rosa johanna udo as well she works across ceramic and performance lynette kamala who's been an artist since the 90s. She works with Callie Graffiti. She currently had a show on on Lambeth Town Hall

looking at the legacy of Olive Morris. And that's another thing really, is that the way black women artists work, they're usually trying to highlight other black women that history has erased. And that is the genesis of the black feminism in art. I was talking to Balani Tajuddin. Still to come in today's programme, Diana Nami's Girl with a Gun. She grew up in the

Kurdish region of Iran and spent 12 years on the front line as a Kurdish fighter. Earlier in the week you may have missed Glenda Jackson. She was talking about her role as Edith Sitwell in yesterday's afternoon play. If you missed the live programme you can always missed Glenda Jackson. She was talking about her role as Edith Sitwell in yesterday's afternoon play. If you miss the live programme, you can always catch up. All you have to do is download the BBC Sounds app. And if you're a fan of the Woman's Hour podcast, as I'm sure you are, you may have already spotted a special episode we made in collaboration with BBC Six Music. It's a celebration of women recorded at the Six Music Festival last weekend.

The presenter, Georgie Rogers, goes backstage with some of the women in the line-up to hear about their inspiration and their experiences of the industry, from the gender pay gap to going solo. The podcast is on BBC Sounds now, where you can also find highlights of the Sixth Music Festival. Now, for the past few weeks, we've been hearing from some of you about your family secrets. Well, today it's Helen, who got in touch to tell us about lots of secrets she had uncovered, including a suicide. Jo Morris went to meet her at her home. How did she come to find out her mother's secret?

I discovered it only after my mum's death, although I could have, if I'd have had another couple of seconds, discovered it just before she died. So my mum went into a care home in December, December the 13th, 2017. She was finding it hard to cope. She had dementia. So we moved all her stuff into the care home. And that included quite a lot of papers because she said she'd been writing her memoir. On top of the papers, there was an envelope. And while she went to the loo, I just casually picked up the envelope. I think I've got it here, actually. So the first sentence is, I am and always will not be the same, but be different, not the norm. I don't understand why I'm different.

It's not a talked about subject. It's 2017. Now, at that point, my mum then opened the door from the loo and then came back into the room. And I quickly just put the envelope back on her papers and then talked to her about different things. And what was going through your mind when you read that? Well, what I thought was that she was actually writing about the fact that she, she was different in other ways, my mum. I mean, she was, she didn't have really much of a maternal instinct. My mother would say, when I was little, she'd say, I don't do animals or children. And then there would be this sort of pause, looking up going, what about me?

And then she'd say, well, apart from my own, of course. But the gap was always very long, I felt, as a child. She was also a terrific grandmother, so I don't want to take away how lovely she was as a granny, but she wasn't a great mum, either to me or my brother. And so we didn't have a particularly close relationship so I thought aha finally my mother is recognising the fact that she you know she didn't have that maternal instinct she lacked empathy for other people and so maybe that you know in last years of her life she was thinking about that but she'll

come to talk to me about it in her own time what stopped you asking your mum about it when she came into the room well i hadn't gone on to read the rest of it and it my mother was a very closed person so this is my mum that's my mum at 30 she's very beautiful but she was a nice queen there was nothing that she loved more than a secret either. She would tell me secrets when I was little. I remember her saying one time, you know, come over here and I'll tell you a secret. I said, what's the secret?

Because I always thought there was a real secret going on that nobody was telling me about. And she said, I can teach you how to not blush. I remember thinking, well, why is that important? How old were you? About seven. So she said, right, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and then think of something that's really embarrassing

and then you'd start blushing and then you'd train yourself just to make the blood just go out of your face and down your neck. And if you do it, you focus and concentrate hard enough, you can stop yourself from blushing. So even seven I thought I was fairly fairly bonkers so you read these lines on the back of an envelope thought about them briefly briefly didn't really think about it that much more and then my mum died so how long ago did your die? She died on the 21st of December 2017. So I was thinking in January, okay, I need to be thinking about my tribute to mum. And I must read that

envelope. For some reason, I remember it was a Thursday morning. And before I went to work, and I picked up the envelope, the first sentence was familiar. So it's 2017 in a little village, no one ever mentions it. I wonder how other lesbians cope. What? If I'd been asked if I was like this, I'd always try and laugh it off. But God has made me like this. I know there are others and I've had my share of others who were likewise afflicted. And then afflicted. I couldn't get past the word afflicted.

And that just felt to me the saddest words. She goes on in the note to name women that she'd had relationships with. And were they women you knew? The first person, Pascaline, I discovered later on that was somebody she was at school with. And then the next one is Gwen. And this woman had been known to me as a family friend forever. I mean, first of all, I was thinking, well, is she making it up? You know, is it actually, is this being done for dramatic effect?

I mean, that thought passed through my head. Did my father know? They were married for 54 years? Who else knew? Or maybe loads of people knew and I didn't know. I phoned my kids and each of them burst out laughing. They just think it's the coolest thing that granny was gay and would have been absolutely fine about it. What's just so painfully sad is that she couldn't talk about it and she couldn't, she felt as if she couldn't come out during her lifetime. You know, maybe she would have found somebody that she could have been happy with. I really feel lucky that Gwen was still alive when this had come out. I emailed Gwen and I got an email back from Gwen saying,

you know, my dear Helen, I've been expecting this email for all my life. Of course I'm happy to talk to you about it. Gwen cried when she heard the word afflicted because she said that's not something I ever feel about myself. In some ways the little child in me who always thought there's something going on they're not telling me was like aha I've finally found out you know this is this is what's been going on the lived experience of me and my mum I I mean, who latterly I found, especially after my brother died, to be very cold, very expressionist, very clamped down. And then this whole other side of her was such a shock. Do you think she left that envelope out for you to see?

Definitely. It was like everybody was playing, let's pretend we're happy families and we live in a big house. And we have a pony and we have a dog and we have several houses. And, you know, this is how our life is. And from the outside, we must have looked like a big, red, shiny apple, you know, all perfect. I know lots of my friends sort of really envied me, my life, and inside it was really cold and very tense. Silence was a big part of our family and not talking about things was huge. In terms of my brother and his depression, which we weren't allowed to talk about either,

there was a culture created within the family of not talking. There was one huge secret which I'd been holding, not as a secret between me and people who are close to me, but it was something that was a not talked about thing between me and my parents. I was away in America when my brother died and I didn't know what was going on for him in the last two months of his life and I just wished I got a hat and he got very isolated. How long ago did your brother die? He died at the end of February 1981. So nearly 40 years ago.

Nearly 40 years ago, yeah. My father, when he saw my brother, just immediately went into a point of denial. He said to me, it must have been a terrible accident or somebody must have broken in and killed him. David would have never done that. That was a completely closed subject for my father. That was my father's version of what had happened was there had been a terrible accident. But I came to know that wasn't what was true. And I didn't find that out until after the funeral.

So my brother was buried down in Cornwall, where we'd always spent family holidays. And it was a really awful day. The clouds were so low that you almost felt you could touch them. It was so dark and cold and the crows or ravens were flying around. And my brother's coffin was carried by six of his friends. So these were all lads in their twenties. It was an awful thing for them to go through. After the funeral, one of his friends, his best friend really, went missing and nobody knew where he'd got to. And I thought, I know where he'll be. So I went, in this village, there's a field called the Revel Field. And it's

where, you know, as kids, you'd kind of go and try your first cigarette or have a first kiss or whatever it was where the grown-ups couldn't find you really and I thought maybe he's gone down there so I walked down to the field and found his friend who was sobbing like an animal really I mean in pain he told me the story that a few days before David had died he'd come down to this village in Cornwall and they'd gone out for drinks he had quite a few drinks and then they talked about the difficult relationships they both had with their dads and my brother said he was going to take his own life. He was going to kill himself.

And this friend said, I think I'm going to too. Like a pack, that's what we decided we'd do. And now he's done it. I think I'm going to have to do it too. My mind just, OK, I've going to have to do it too. My mind just... OK, then I've got to save him. I've got to... My brother's died and nobody else is going to die here, so...

And we ended up getting close and then having a relationship. And he didn't die. How long did you keep this secret from your parents? Until they died. So how long was that? 36 years. I can't tell you what a relief it's been just to talk about my brother, to talk about my mother.

It's much easier telling the truth. It's simpler because you don't have to keep thinking, what should I say to this person? Because do they know that? You know, people who feel that they have to hang on to secrets for decades. I just wish they knew what it was like on the other side when you can just go, this is what happened. Helen was talking to Joe Morris. And if you have secrets that you would like to share, do let us know. Now, Diana Nami was born and raised in the Kurdish region of Iran in the 1960s and 70s. She supported the overthrow of the Shah in the 1979 revolution.

But as Iran was taken over by Islamists, she joined the now famous Peshmerga fighting force when Kurdistan was attacked by the new regime. She details her 12 years on the front line in her book, Girl with a Gun. She now lives in the UK and is executive director of the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organization. Diana, what was life like as a child growing up in Iran as a Kurdish girl? The life as a Kurdish girl, of course, personally, I had a nice childhood within a nice family and I was a very wanted child. And at that time, I remember that being a girl, of course,

was not very nice for people and saying, you know, they used to call your family and tell them that you will have a boy as well. But my father always was very proud of me and it gave me very confidence. But being a Kurd, I remember the first day when I went to school and in the school, of course, it was as a public place. We were forbidden to speak Kurdish. So our teacher started to talk to us in Farsi, in Persian, and none of us, we were about 35 children, none of us could answer in Farsi. So she started to beat all of us and told us, this is the last time you are speaking Kurdish. Now, I know you became involved in student politics in the 70s.

How did you come to be a fighter with the Peshmerga when I grew up of course I was involved in politics and especially from the when I was in the teaching training so I involved with the political activities I I was active during turning down the Shah during the revolution. But then when the Islamic Republic come to power, of course, the first victim of the country was women and children, and they forced everyone to go home, to not work, to, you know, cover themselves. And I'm talking about force, of course. I'm talking about hanging women in the public for not wearing hijab, throwing acid on their face and legs, and slashing them in the street.

So it was the life for women. Of course, because I was a political activist, I was very much against a religious regime in Iran. And I started to organize underground activities with other women and men and young people in the city that I used to live, a small city called Bane. And then government, little by by little find out about our activities and they attempt to arrest me quite a few times. The last time when they come to arrest me,

they managed to arrest two of my friends. We were working in the underground committee together and they executed them after just a few days and they called their family and told them to pay for the bullet and take their children's body so you became as you describe it a girl with a gun yes why were you prepared to use a gun? What were you actually fighting for? You know, we fight for freedom, simply for freedom of people in Iran and especially in Kurdistan

because revolution in Kurdistan continued to be. We didn't want the Islamic regime. The Kurdistan was organized by people, by young people, by small councils in the area and in the neighborhoods and everywhere. So we run the country. We have freedom to talk. We have freedom to express our views. We will not be executed.

You know, we enjoyed that freedom, and government didn't accept that. So they attacked Kurdistan in military forces. And it was about a few months war in Iran between Kurdish people and the Iranian regime. How prepared, Diana, were you to die for your cause? I was, you know, but there are times when you have no choice. If I stayed in the city, I would be executed. So the only way we thought that we can even fight for a bit, you know, had a chance to leave was joining the Peshmerga.

And of course, we were in the war and we were defending ourselves. So Peshmerga means that you are sacrificing yourself for your community, for your family, for people around you. And I was ready to do so. What did your parents make of what you, and I know your sister was involved too, what you were doing?

My parents, of course, for them, like every family, they were very sad, very upset. And my father loved us and they wanted us to stay at home. But I think they knew the situation was unbearable. And if we stayed at home, we would be executed. So for them, they had to accept that it was the only choice we had. Why eventually did you decide to leave the Peshmerga and indeed your home and come to the UK? When I, of course, after 12 years being in the front line

and involved in very war and especially my part of the work was talking to villagers and peoples in the city and raising awareness about women's rights and human rights according to the human law, not according to the Iranian law. So we have been in the war for 12 years, and Iranian regime little by little took control over the cities and villages and pushed us toward the Iraqi board, Iraqi inside Iraqi Kurdistan. And there, of course, Saddam was in power and we have been there conditional to not criticize them. And when Halabja has been chemical bombardment in Halabja by Saddam regime, we criticized them. And they then chemical bombarded our bases in Iraq,

in Boteh, and we lost 37 of our friends. But then the first war in 1991, the American war started, and we criticized the war. In the party that I was in, we had two different views. One was pro-war, pro-American war, and the other one, which I was part of that, were against the war. So why, Diana, when you came to the UK in 1995, did you set up the Iranian Kurdish Women's Rights Organization in this country? Of course. I think when I came here, my own interpreter was killed in an honor killing cases. And I remember I called police with the help of a friend and they told me that honor killing is your culture. We have to respect that. Otherwise, you will call us racist. I am talking about 18 years ago and I was very shocked. And I thought that this is something seriously wrong here. A woman has been killed and police describe it as

a culture. And in my opinion, it was a crime, not a culture. And I thought I have to set up an organization to help women like my interpreter and to raise awareness for police and other organizations and to make sure that on a killing and other form of violence like child marriage, like forced marriage, female genital mutilation, they are considered as a crime. I was talking to Deanna Nami and her book is called Girl with a Gun. Lots of response from you on the discussion about the budget 2020 and provision of money for care. Leonardo said in an email, I want to thank all the care workers going about their work with kindness and their constant efficiency. My quadriplegic husband has care workers coming into our home. The majority, although not all, are European workers. I have no doubt that some visiting their home countries will not be able to return to the UK and those in

the UK will at some stage maybe have to self-isolate. In addition to zero-hours contracts, they will not currently receive sick pay. I'm asking the government not to forget about us. By us, I mean service providers and service users. I'm concerned about what will happen in our household if I become ill and our social care system breaks down. And Jean sent an email and said, My 100-year-old mother lives in local authority sheltered housing, not a care home. My husband and I are both in isolation, as is my daughter. We have no other family. There are no arrangements to get food to my mum.

She is housebound and needs walking aids to move around very short distances. And then on family secrets, Alison wrote to us on Twitter. She said, I was really moved by the interview and it reminded me of my favourite, if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember. And it was Mark Twain who said that. Now do join us tomorrow for Thursday's programme when we'll be discussing a new book called This Lovely City. lovely city. Among the passengers arriving in London on the Empire Windrush is a jazz musician, Laurie, who makes his home in South London and falls in love with Evie, the girl next door. That's tomorrow, two minutes past 10. Join me if you can. Until then, bye-bye. Around the world, there are people quietly achieving extraordinary things do you know one of them do you know any of them is there an unsung hero in your life someone who deserves recognition

tell us all about them on bbcwellandservice.com inspirations they could end up in the finals of the bbc inspirations awards we're taking nominations until the 9th of April at 12 hours GMT. The terms and privacy notice are on our website. BBC Inspirations. Inspirations Awards. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now.