I have always found it important to have people to look up to in life, to inspire me and to prove that living your life in a real and beneficial way is possible. Here are just some of the people that are examples of this to me.....
Dolly Parton 
Dolly has been my lifelong inspiration. Like most of the people I admire she has chosen to live her life without giving in to society's demands or preconceptions. Everything she does in routed in a deep spirituality and a desire to help the community from which she came. She looks like a dumb blonde, but has proved appearances can be deceptive. She is a strong-willed, savvy, witty woman. She never takes herself, or her life too seriously. She has maintained a marriage which has allowed her to live her dreams but remain in lifelong partnership with one person. She writes heart-wrenching songs and can play numerous musical instruments. She is over 60 and still enjoying every moment.......
Some of my favorite videos and songs:
Travelin' Thru
Coat of Many Colours
A Gorgeous Tribute
Gillian Anderson
I admire Gilly for her constant battle to find peace and stability in her life. If you read interviews with her over the years you can see that she ping pongs constantly between trying to find happiness in the way society dictates you should - husband, child, work, money and trying to create a life for herself that brings her personal fullfilment and I think we are all, to some extent, on that journey. She gets obsessed with certain spiritual teachings for a while and then does things which go completely against them! She is tireless campaigner for the charities she believes in, a stunning actress and unbelievably kind and appreaciative to her fans. I admire her because she admits she is on a journey to discover who she is and what she wants and she doesn't claim to know everything yet...but she does know that the journey is important.....
A Video Tribute
On Graham Norton
On Ellen Degeneres
Germaine Greer
Ah Germaine, Germaine! I'm glad that admiring someone doesn't mean that you need to agree with everything they say because Germaine Greer says some things which I would oppose to my dying day! I love her because it was her book 'The Whole Woman' that woke me up to the fact that equality is still a myth, especially when you look beyond the western world and that to ignore the plight of women the world over is to betray what it is to be female.
Germaine is such an intelligent, controversial fearless woman. She is has a beauty which comes from complete self acceptance and strength and even if you disagree with what she is saying you are compelled to listen. We need more people like Prof. Germaine Greer, people who raise issues, challenge conventions and wake up the young!
Detailed Information
Embedding is Disabled on this video (Germaine Greer on Question Time), but you can watch it here
I love this painting of Germaine Greer by Paula Rego. Sometimes I will go into the National Portrait Gallery just to look at it. There's something about the image that shows the beauty, wisdom and self knowledge that comes with age and self acceptance.
'Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?' - Germaine Greer
'There have been women in the past far more daring than we would need to be now, who ventured all and gained a little, but survived after all.' - Germaine Greer
“The older woman's love is not love of herself, nor of herself mirrored in a lover's eyes, nor is it corrupted by need. It is a feeling of tenderness so still and deep and warm that it gilds every grass blade and blesses every fly. It includes the ones who have a claim on it, and a great deal else besides. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.” - Germaine Greer
Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed. - Germaine Greer
