true beauty.

a couple of nights ago i went to the baltimore screening of christy turlington-burns' documentaty 'no woman, no cry'...a film all about global maternal mortality.

did you know that every minute a woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth???? it's appalling. 

women are literally dying to give life in our world. 

i have to admit that i was a little star struck by christy. it's just that, even from my seat in the back of the auditorium, her skin was glowing! to be fair, though, she included some home videos in the documentary of moments during her own pregnancies that were not so model-worthy. of course this makes me love her even more.

she's very well-spoken and seems extremely bright; there is literally a calm, humble aura that exudes from the woman. 

another thing i love about her? 
she's currently a fellow master's in public health student at columbia.
what else? she's half salvadoran. 
yeah.

and the film! the film was beautiful and moving. it followed four women from all over the world--a maasai tribe in tanzania, a slum in bangladesh, a hospital in guatemala, and a prenatal clinic for uninsured women in florida--and chronicled their struggle to remain healthy and survive childbirth. i shed tears, was reminded of why work to improve the health of disadvantaged women and children is so important & necessary, and left dreaming of being christy's part-time nanny (to her two darling children with actor ed burns, of course) while working my way up to being her executive assistant. we'd travel the world, work tirelessly, and then decompress over wine as she regaled me with stories of her days working the runways.

she seems really wonderful and i think we could be friends. 

bottom line: she made a film to be the voice of all those women who do not have the power to speak for themselves. 
what's not to love?


see it whenever you can...and maybe by then, if all goes according to plan, i'll be a resident of manhattan, caring for the turlington-burns kiddos.

photo credit: not mine, taken by jhpiego, the baltimore organization that sponsored the event.