Star of Venus

14/11/2025

A reminder to all of us how animals can be kind and show compassion.

14/11/2025

Sydney riders, donate a plate this Christmas 🎄

Click to 'Donate a Plate' now!

14/11/2025

A share worthy piece of history.

She was only 22 years old, standing at an open airplane door while bullets tore through the cabin—and in that moment, she made a choice that would save 359 lives, but not her own.

September 5, 1986.
Pan Am Flight 73 had just landed in Karachi for what should have been a routine refueling stop. Passengers were relaxed. Some slept. Some chatted quietly. No one was prepared for what came next.

In seconds, four armed terrorists stormed the aircraft. Screams erupted. Fear spread like wildfire.

At the front stood Neerja Bhanot, a flight purser with a warm smile, steady instincts, and a courage no training manual could ever teach. She could have frozen. She could have run. Instead, she acted.

With one urgent signal, she alerted the cockpit crew—giving the pilots just enough time to escape through an overhead hatch. That single decision prevented the hijackers from taking off, crashing the plane, or using it as a weapon.

Lives were already being saved—and the nightmare had only begun.

For 17 long hours, Neerja moved through the cabin like calm made human. She comforted children. She steadied panicked passengers. She hid American passports so hostages couldn’t be singled out and executed. She protected strangers as if they were her own family.

She never once thought of herself.

When night fell, the plane lost power. Darkness swallowed the cabin. Terror erupted. The hijackers opened fire.

Neerja was stationed at an emergency exit. The doorway to freedom was right there. She could have stepped through it and survived.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she held the door open. She pushed passengers out. She shielded the terrified with her own body. And when three small children froze in fear, unable to move, Neerja wrapped herself around them.

The bullets came.

She took them—every one—with her own body.

Neerja Bhanot did not survive that night.
But because of her, 359 others did.

Her country awarded her its highest civilian bravery honor. Her story became a film. Flight crews across the world are trained using her example. But her legacy is something deeper than medals and memory.

When the moment came to choose—her life or theirs—she chose theirs.

A 22-year-old woman who became immortal in the seconds it took to say, through tears and chaos:

“Go. I’ve got you.”

Heroism isn’t always loud.
Sometimes, it’s a young woman standing in the dark, refusing to step into safety—
because others haven’t made it there yet.

14/11/2025

Thanks for being a top engager and making it on to my weekly engagement list! 🎉 Vera Manjetny, Tracey Matheson

06/11/2025

I got over 50 reactions on my posts last week! Thanks everyone for your support! 🎉

03/11/2025

Reclaiming the parts of you that you had to abandon to be loved.

28/10/2025

Thanks for being a top engager and making it on to my engagement list! Margaret Currie, Vera Manjetny, Tracey Matheson

14/10/2025

Thanks for being a top engager and making it on to my weekly engagement list! 🎉 Em Skii, Vera Manjetny

13/10/2025

Worth the read. ❤️💚💜

Oseola McCarty was a washerwoman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She left school in the 6th grade to care for her sick grandmother. “I planned to go back,” she said, “but I was too old to be with my classmates. So I kept working.”
For decades, she washed clothes by hand—boiling, scrubbing, and ironing for families around town. She lived quietly, took the bus, and never traveled far. Every month, she saved a little. “I was consistent,” she said.
By the time she was 87, she had saved over $250,000. And in 1995, she walked into the University of Southern Mississippi—the college she once dreamed of attending—and donated $150,000 to fund scholarships for students who couldn’t afford tuition.
“I never minded work,” she explained. “But maybe I can help make it so they don’t have to work as hard as I did.”
Her only regret? “I wish I had gone back to school.”
But in giving hundreds of students the chance she never had, Oseola McCarty proved something timeless:
You don’t need millions to make a difference.
Just heart. Just consistency. Just kindness.

19/07/2025

Good advice from a longevity doctor.