Celia Lashlie - gone but never forgotten.

I suspect that many people in New Zealand have been feeling slightly discombobulated this week with the out-of-the-blue news that Celia Lashlie was fighting pancreatic cancer - and then the news following so hard on its heels that the cancer had won.
I choose my words carefully - I am certain that she was fighting to the end because that's the sort of woman she seemed to be.
I only met her a couple of times, at conferences where she was the keynote speaker and I was a lowly workshop host.  She spoke for an hour each time, eloquent, passionate, forthright and caring.  And although the conferences were close together, and the topic was the same, her speech was different each time.  She clearly had some key points that she wanted to make, but seemed to speak from the heart as if each occasion was the first upon which she had decided to bring the topic up.
It was clearly Celia the person we were listening to rather than a slick, polished public persona - she spoke to the room full of teachers as if she were with friends at home - and I must confess to some delight at the surprised faces the first time she dropped an f-bomb in the middle of a sentence.  She spoke honestly, without fudging any issues and in such a matter-of-fact way about some truly appalling situations, and you just had to take notice of her message.
I had read her book on raising boys, and brought many of those insights to my roles as parent of teenage boys and as a teacher of pre-teens.  But hearing her speak made it all make so much more sense.
Her incredible sense of outrage at the way society deals with some issues, and her unwavering faith in the basic goodness of human nature all resonated with me.  The compassion and humanity she brought to all aspects of her life and work shone through her words.
She leaves some very big shoes to fill in the field of social justice.  She is a tough act to follow, but we need to hope that somebody does.  The vulnerable and the disenfranchised need another champion.  Our politicians and pundits need somebody to tell it like it is and keep them honest.  Our troubled teens need a beacon to light their way towards the adulthood they deserve.
Celia Lashlie.  Gone but never forgotten.