Listener Week: Ukrainian women soldiers, Long lost families, Strong women, Refugees, Eating Alone

Published: Aug. 22, 2023, 10:14 a.m.

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For listener week, you, our listeners, decide what we cover on the programme.

Listener Liz got in touch to say she wanted to know more about the women fighting on the front line in Ukraine. Nuala McGovern is joined by BBC journalist and reporter Olga Malchevska, whose home in Kyiv was bombed at the start of the war. She\\u2019s been back to Ukraine to meet three women who are fighting for their country \\u2013 we\\u2019ll hear from one of them who was severely injured when the car she was in drove over a landmine.

As a child Julie De\\u2019Ath always wished she had an older brother, \\u2018an easy pass to get a boyfriend\\u2019, she said. Two years ago at the age of 67, she finally got one when she received a message on Facebook from a man claiming to be that brother. Her mother had given birth to a baby boy in the 1940s but being unmarried at the time, gave him up for adoption. It was a secret her mother took to her grave. Julie contacted Woman\\u2019s Hour as part of Listener week to share her story for the first time. We also speak to her long-lost half-brother, Tom, and to Miriam Silver, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, who specialises in parenting and children who have been adopted.\\xa0

Victorian strongwoman Vulcana was known for her jaw-dropping feats of strength and her breathtaking beauty. Listener Eric suggested her story to us. He asked that we talk to author Rebecca F John, whose historical novel, Vulcana, fictionalises her life. She tells Nuala about the remarkable, and trailblazing, performer. Plus, Sam Taylor, Britain\\u2019s Strongest Woman 2020, tells us what it\\u2019s like being a modern-day strongwoman.

Franceska Murati is a 27-year-old businesswoman and this year\\u2019s Miss London. But there\\u2019s more to this beauty queen that meets the eye. At 4 years old, she arrived in the UK alongside her parents and older sister. They had escaped war-torn Kosovo, smuggling themselves on the back of a lorry. She shares her story.

It\\u2019s something we\\u2019ve all probably done at one point or another - eating alone. Whether that\\u2019s taking yourself out to a restaurant you\\u2019ve always wanted to go to, grabbing a meal while you\\u2019re on a solo trip, or cooking for just yourself at home. But despite how common eating alone is - given that in 2022 the Office of National Statistics showed almost one in three households in the UK were people living alone - some might say there\\u2019s still a stigma around it. So how do we get around it? Nuala talks to Woman\\u2019s Hour listener Julia Georgallis and food writer Clare Finney.

Presenter: Nuala McGovern\\nProducer: Kirsty Starkey

00:00 Opener\\n01:34 Ukraine Female Soldiers\\n16:08 Long Lost Family\\n30:05 Strong Women\\t\\n39:19 Franceska Murati\\n49:42 Eating Alone

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