Dr Wilson Lo Health and Fitness

19/11/2025

She was just seventeen barely old enough to be called a woman when she showed the world a kind of courage that many nations can only dream of.

In February 1943, during the brutal N**i occupation of Bosnia, Lepa Svetozara Radić stood beneath a wooden gallows in the town square. She was battered from days of torture — her stomach empty, her wrists bruised, her body weakened — but her spirit was unshaken. A crowd was forced to watch as soldiers prepared to hang this teenage girl for daring to resist them.

A German officer made her one last offer:
“Give us the names of your comrades, and you will live.”

Lepa didn’t need time to think.
She didn’t beg.
She didn’t plead.

She lifted her chin, stared directly into the face of the man who held her life in his hands, and answered with a steady voice:

“I am not a traitor.
You will kill me —
but thousands will avenge me.”

The soldiers pulled the lever. The platform dropped.
But Lepa Radić did not fall into silence.
Her courage became a battle cry.

A Childhood Interrupted by War

Lepa was only fifteen when World War II exploded into her homeland. Instead of schoolbooks and dances, she was handed the harsh reality of occupation — families being dragged away, villages burned, children starving. Most adults were terrified into silence.

Lepa refused to stay silent.

She joined the resistance movement — the Yugoslav Partisans — becoming a messenger, a medic, a protector of those hunted by the N**is. She smuggled weapons under her clothes. She sheltered wounded fighters in barns. She guided women and children through forests to safety. Every mission risked her life.

And she never hesitated.

Captured — But Never Broken

In early 1943, during fierce fighting near the River Neretva, Lepa was captured while helping civilians escape. The N**is wanted information — names, locations, anything to crush the resistance. They tortured her for days.

She did not say a single word.
Not one.

Her silence was stronger than their cruelty.

So they prepared to hang her publicly — to make an example of her.

Instead, they made a martyr.
Instead, they made a legend.

A Legacy That Refuses to Die

After the war, Lepa Radić was posthumously awarded the highest honor in Yugoslavia: National Hero — the youngest woman to ever receive it. Her portrait appeared in schools. Streets and monuments were named after her. Children learned her story as a symbol of what bravery truly looks like.

But her legacy isn’t just carved into statues.
It lives in every person who refuses to bow to injustice.
In every young girl who learns that resistance has no minimum age.

Lepa Radić did not get the chance to grow old.
She never saw peace return.
She never watched her homeland rebuild.

But with a noose around her neck, she declared that even in death, she would not be conquered.

And she was right.

Her body fell.
But her courage —
and the rebellion she protected —
rose up and helped drive the N**is out of Yugoslavia.

She was seventeen.
She was fierce.
She was unbreakable.

Sometimes the strongest soldier on the battlefield
is a teenage girl
who refuses to surrender her soul.

04/11/2025

https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nrl-premiership/nrl-2025-eliesa-katoa-seizure-activity-head-knocks-medical-episode-melbourne-storm-statement-tonga-vs-new-zealand-doctors/news-story/10c68f71bf3b2ad754f6e58b981d1bce?fbclid=IwdGRzaAN2ychjbGNrA3bJNmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEexK_kyiFC8eLkF1lj9XudGUewi6GFaaWr2o3_UcG-Hn5VrPIdUrQOtVWaW6g_aem_b5mlBZlijhyEWU3Ncykoaw

NRL launch review into ‘sickening’ Tonga call as Storm reveal enforcer suffered ‘seizure’

30/10/2025

She watched 146 women burn to death because factory owners locked the exits.
Twelve years later, she became the most powerful woman in America.
As a girl, Frances Perkins couldn't understand why good people lived in poverty.
Her father said the poor were lazy or weak.
Frances, even then, knew that couldn't be true.
At Mount Holyoke College, she studied physics—safe, respectable, appropriate for a young woman. Then came a class trip that changed everything. Her professor took students to tour factories along the Connecticut River.
Frances saw exhausted girls younger than herself bent over machines in rooms with no windows, no ventilation, no exits. Twelve-hour shifts. Six-day weeks. Fingers lost to machinery. Lungs destroyed by cotton dust.
She realized knowledge meant nothing if it didn't help people live with dignity.
She abandoned the safe path—marriage to a suitable man, teaching piano to rich children. Instead, she earned a master's degree at Columbia University in economics and sociology, writing her thesis on malnutrition in Hell's Kitchen.
Her family was horrified. Nice girls didn't study poverty. They certainly didn't live in settlement houses with immigrants.
Frances didn't care what nice girls did.
By 1910, she was Executive Secretary of the New York Consumers League, investigating factories, documenting violations, pushing for reform. Clean bakeries. Safe exits. Maximum working hours. She testified before legislative committees, a young woman in a tailored suit telling powerful men their factories were killing people.
They hated her. She didn't stop.
Then came March 25, 1911.
Frances was having tea with friends in Washington Square when she heard the fire bells. She followed the smoke to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory—ten stories of flame and screaming.
She stood on the street and watched young women jump from ninth-floor windows because the factory owners had locked the doors to prevent "theft" and "unauthorized breaks." Their bodies hit the pavement like thunder. Again and again and again.
146 workers died. Most were immigrant women and girls. Some as young as 14. They'd been making shirtwaists—the fashionable blouses wealthy women wore to demonstrate their modernity and independence.
Frances watched them burn so rich women could look progressive.
She made herself a promise that day: Their deaths will not be in vain.

Within weeks, Frances was appointed to the committee investigating the fire. She didn't just write a report. She rewrote New York's labor laws from the ground up.
Fire exits—unlocked, accessible, clearly marked.
Maximum occupancy limits.
Sprinkler systems.
Regular safety inspections.
54-hour maximum workweek.
One day off per week.
The factory owners fought every provision. They called it "government overreach." They said it would destroy business. They said workers were trying to get something for nothing.
Frances responded with photographs of the Triangle dead. With testimony from survivors. With cold economic data showing that safe workplaces were more productive, not less.
New York passed the laws. Other states followed. Within a decade, American workplaces had been transformed—not completely, not perfectly, but irreversibly.
And Frances Perkins became the most hated woman in industrial America.
Business groups called her a communist. Newspapers mocked her as an "old maid" meddling in men's affairs. (She'd married late, to an economist who suffered from mental illness—a fact she kept private to protect him from institutionalization.)
She absorbed the hatred and kept working.

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt—newly elected president facing the Great Depression—asked Frances to join his Cabinet as Secretary of Labor.
She was 53 years old. No woman had ever served in a presidential Cabinet. The idea was considered radical, possibly unconstitutional, definitely improper.
Frances said she'd do it—but only on her terms.
She handed Roosevelt a list of demands:

A 40-hour workweek
A minimum wage
Abolition of child labor
Unemployment insurance
Old-age pensions

Roosevelt looked at the list. "You know this is impossible."
"Then find someone else," Frances said.
Roosevelt appointed her anyway.
For twelve years—longer than any other Labor Secretary in history—Frances Perkins fought for those "impossible" demands. And she won most of them.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: 40-hour workweek, minimum wage, child labor restrictions.
The Social Security Act of 1935: old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, support for dependent children.
The laws weren't perfect. They excluded agricultural and domestic workers—a compromise Frances hated but accepted to get anything passed. Those exclusions meant most Black workers weren't covered, a racial injustice that wouldn't be corrected for decades.
But millions of workers—mostly white, yes, but millions nonetheless—gained protections that had never existed before.
Frances was never satisfied. She wanted more. She fought for universal healthcare (failed). She fought for broader coverage (partially succeeded). She fought against every senator and congressman who tried to water down protections.
They called her pushy. Difficult. Unwomanly.
She wore the same black dress and tricorn hat to every public appearance—a uniform that said I'm not here to be decorative. I'm here to work.

When Roosevelt died in 1945, Frances resigned. She'd been in the Cabinet for twelve years—the longest-serving Labor Secretary in American history, male or female.
She could have retired wealthy and celebrated. Instead, she taught labor history at Cornell, writing and lecturing until her death in 1965 at age 85.
Most people don't remember her name.
But every time you get paid overtime, that's Frances Perkins.
Every time a workplace has a clearly marked fire exit, that's Frances Perkins.
Every time someone collects Social Security or unemployment insurance, that's Frances Perkins.
Every weekend you have off, that's Frances Perkins.
She stood on a street in 1911 and watched 146 women die because profit mattered more than human life.
And she spent the next fifty years making sure that would never be true again—at least not legally, not without consequence, not without someone powerful enough to fight back.
She didn't just witness injustice. She built the architecture that made justice possible.
Her father said the poor were lazy or weak.
Frances proved that poverty was a policy choice—and policy could be changed.
She was the first woman in a presidential Cabinet. But that's not why she mattered.
She mattered because she looked at burning women and said never again—and then spent her life making that promise real.
Most people don't know her name.
But every person who's ever received a paycheck with overtime pay, every child who went to school instead of a factory, every elderly person who retired with dignity—they're living in the world Frances Perkins built.
One fire. 146 deaths. Fifty years of fighting.
And a country that learned, slowly and incompletely but irreversibly, that workers are human beings who deserve to live.

27/10/2025

In 1961, at only 19 years old, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland made a decision that would change her life forever.
She joined the Freedom Riders, a group of Black and white activists who openly defied racial segregation on buses across the American South.
She was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and when she refused to pay bail, she was sent to Parchman Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison, for two months.

A tiny cell.
A striped uniform.
Humiliating searches.
Total isolation.
Even though she was white, she endured the same brutal treatment as the Black activists. And that was precisely what drew national attention:
a young Southern woman who consciously chose to stand on the right side of history.

When she was released, she didn’t turn back.
She did something that seemed unthinkable at the time: she became the first white student at Tougaloo College, a historically Black university in the heart of Mississippi.
There she met Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and Anne Moody.
There she became the secretary of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), one of the most active organizations in the civil rights movement.

Her presence did not go unnoticed.
She was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan, assaulted, and disowned by her own family, who saw her as a traitor.

In May 1963, Joan joined the Woolworth’s sit-in in Jackson.
She was insulted, beaten, and smeared with ketchup and sugar by a furious crowd shouting “white n****r.”
The images of that day spread across the United States.
Her face — calm, dignified, unflinching — became the symbol of a struggle far greater than herself.

A few weeks later, she marched on Washington.
And when the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young Black girls, Joan picked up a piece of shattered glass from the scene.
She still keeps it today — a living memory of an injustice never forgotten.

Throughout the 1960s, she took part in over thirty demonstrations.
She survived persecution, insults, and silence.
Later, she worked at the Smithsonian, at the Department of Justice, and finally became a teacher.
In every classroom, she taught not only grammar — but courage and conscience.

In her later years, she founded the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation.
Its mission? To teach young people that activism is not an opinion — it’s an action.
Today, at 84, Joan still stands tall —
proud, unbroken,
a living symbol of what it means to challenge your time, pay the highest price… and never regret it.

Story inspired by real historical events, with some narrative elements drawn from biographical sources and oral testimonies.

26/10/2025

30,000 people packed the Astrodome to watch a 55-year-old man try to prove women couldn't compete—she destroyed him on live TV. September 20, 1973. The Houston Astrodome was sold out. Not for a rock concert or a football game—for a tennis match. But this wasn't just any match. Bobby Riggs, a 55-year-old former world No. 1 tennis champion, had spent months running his mouth. He called himself a "male chauvinist pig" and insisted no female player—not even the best in the world—could beat him, even at his age. It wasn't just trash talk. It was a public campaign to belittle women's sports at a crucial moment. Title IX had just passed the year before (1972), guaranteeing women equal opportunities in athletics. Women's professional sports were fighting for legitimacy, funding, and respect. And Bobby Riggs was trying to prove they didn't deserve any of it. Earlier that year, he'd beaten Margaret Court, one of the best female players in the world, 6-2, 6-1. The press called it the "Mother's Day Massacre." Riggs' victory seemed to validate his claims, and the backlash against women's sports intensified. That's when Billie Jean King stepped up. At 29 years old, she was at the peak of her career—and she understood exactly what was at stake. This wasn't about one tennis match. If she lost, it would be used as "proof" that women didn't belong in professional sports. It could undermine Title IX. It could set back the entire women's movement. The pressure was crushing. But Billie Jean King didn't back down. The spectacle was enormous. Riggs entered the Astrodome on a rickshaw pulled by women in costumes he called "Bobby's Bosom Buddies." King entered carried on a gold litter by shirtless male athletes from Rice University—a pointed response to his showmanship.90 million people worldwide tuned in to watch. It was the most-watched tennis match in history at that time. The stakes were clear: if Riggs won, women's sports would be humiliated on the world's biggest stage. If King won, she'd prove that women athletes deserved respect, investment, and equal treatment. And then she played. Billie Jean King didn't just beat Bobby Riggs. She dominated him.6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Straight sets. She was faster, smarter, and stronger. She outmaneuvered him, wore him down, and never let him control the match. When it was over, 30,000 people erupted. Women around the world cried and cheered. It wasn't just a tennis victory—it was vindication. Billie Jean King had carried the weight of an entire movement on her shoulders, and she'd won. The impact was immediate and lasting. Support for women's sports surged. Title IX funding strengthened. Young girls watching that match saw proof that they belonged in athletics. Professional women's tennis gained legitimacy and investment. Billie Jean King became more than a tennis champion. She became a global symbol of gender equality, proving that talent and determination weren't defined by gender—and that outdated beliefs about women's "limitations" were exactly that: outdated. Bobby Riggs later admitted he'd underestimated her. But the world never made that mistake again. Today, September 20, 1973 stands as one of the most important moments in sports history—not because of athletic records, but because one woman refused to let a bully define what women could achieve. Billie Jean King didn't just win a match. She changed the game.

17/09/2025

We are one but we are many and from all the lands on earth we come, we share a dream and sing with one voice, I am you are we are Australian 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

13/09/2025

Congratulations Canberra Dragon Dance, winner of the ACT Multicultural Arts, Media or Culture Award! 🐲 👏

Canberra Dragon Dance performs traditional Chinese Lion Dance, Dragon Dance, and percussion across the ACT.

Dr Lo said: “When I first started Canberra Dragon Dance in 2017 the aim was to perform dragon dance 3-4 times a year at festivals across Canberra. That first year we performed 32 times, and it increased to 50 the next year and now about 70 times a year!”

He continued: “I grew up in Canberra. I was born in Hong Kong and moved here when I was four years old, and back then we had a phone book, and I could tell that there were only five Chinese families in the whole of Canberra! So, things have changed a lot. And I love the way that Canberrans really embrace customs from other parts of the world.”

Canberra Dragon Dance bring cultural celebration into everyday places, offering many performances at little to no cost for organisations such as Pegasus Riding for the Disabled and Club Kalina. 🥰

29/08/2025

Sometimes we carry childhood wounds about our parents.
They yelled. They didn’t always give enough attention. They swatted us on the back of the head. Didn’t buy the toy we wanted. Fought in front of us. Maybe they didn’t say “I love you” as often as we needed — and yes, a therapist can tell you: you weren’t loved enough.

But how could a therapist know the details? The little things we might not even remember?

I think back to when I came home on break from college with my 8-month-old daughter. She was a restless sleeper, waking and crying at night. I’d already gotten used to it. Rock her, soothe her, repeat.

That very first night, my dad quietly showed me a “life hack,” as people say now. He brought in a rug and a pillow, laid them next to the baby’s crib, and said:
“We’ll take turns sleeping right here on the floor. It’s easier. You don’t have to jump out of bed all night. Or maybe I’ll just do it myself. It’s good for my back anyway.”

Then he casually added: “I actually slept this way for a year when you were little. Your mom was in med school full-time, I was working at the psychiatric hospital and pulling shifts on the ambulance. And every night I slept on the floor by your crib. Easier to get up fast when you cried. Safer that way.”

I never knew. He never said. Nobody told me. He didn’t swear his love, didn’t make speeches, didn’t declare: I never slept! I sacrificed everything for you!

He just… slept on the floor. And was ready to do it again for his granddaughter. Because in his mind, how else could it be? That was love.

Not every parent said out loud, “I love you.” Back then, it wasn’t the norm. Instead, they showed it in details: saving the best piece of food for us, spending their last dollars on a pair of nice shoes, running out in the middle of the night for medicine, sitting up through sickness, sleeping on a rug by the crib.

So yes, if a therapist can help us heal, that’s good. But if not, maybe we need to remember the little things before we conclude we “weren’t loved.”

Because love often is the details — the kind we don’t always notice, or even remember.

— Anna Kiryanova

17/05/2025

My son Andrew will never get married. He won’t have children, won’t drive a car, and won’t experience many of the things we consider normal, even taken for granted…
But he is happy. And he is healthy.
And that, to me, is all that matters.

When a stranger responds to him with a smile, my whole day lights up. When a girl gives him a kind look, joy bursts not only on his face but through every movement of his body.

It doesn’t take much to be deeply human.

Here is the story:

During a party held at a school for children with special needs, the father of one of the students gave a moving speech that stayed in the hearts of everyone present.

After thanking the school and the staff who work with dedication and heart, he shared a reflection:

"When nothing disturbs the balance of nature, the natural order of things reveals itself in all its harmony."

Then he added, with a trembling voice:

"But my son Herbert doesn’t learn like the others. He doesn’t understand like they do.
So… where is the natural order of things in his case?"

Silence fell over the room.

The father continued:

"I believe that when a child like Herbert is born, with a physical or mental disability, the world is given a rare opportunity: the chance to show the true essence of the human spirit.
And that essence is revealed in how others receive and treat him."

Then he shared a memory:

One day, he was walking with Herbert near a field where some boys were playing soccer. Herbert looked and asked:

— Dad, do you think they’ll let me play with them?

The father knew that, in most cases, the answer would be “no.”
But he also knew that, if they said yes, that simple gesture would give his son a priceless sense of belonging and dignity.

So he timidly approached one of the boys and, without expecting much, asked if Herbert could join the game. The boy looked at his friends, hesitated for a moment, then said:

— We’re losing 3 to 0, there are ten minutes left… Sure, let him come. We’ll let him take a penalty kick.

Herbert ran to the bench with a huge smile. He put on the team jersey while his father, eyes brimming with tears, watched with a full heart.

For the rest of the game, Herbert stayed on the sidelines, beaming.
The boys slowly began to understand what the father saw: his son had been accepted.

Then, in the final minute, Herbert’s team earned a penalty kick.
The boy who had first welcomed him turned to the father and nodded:

— It’s his turn.

Herbert approached the penalty spot with uncertain steps, ball in hand.

The goalkeeper understood right away. He stood between the posts… and then slowly dove to one side, leaving the goal wide open.

Herbert kicked softly. The ball rolled slowly across the line.
Goal.

His teammates erupted in cheers.
They lifted him in the air, hugged him, celebrated him as if he had just scored the winning goal in the World Cup final.

The father ended, his voice broken with emotion:

“That day, a group of boys made a choice…
not to win a game,
but to give the world a lesson in kindness, humanity, and love.”

Herbert didn’t see the next summer. He passed away that winter.

But he never forgot that for one day, he was a hero.

And his father never forgot coming home that night, watching Herbert’s mother hold him in her arms, crying with joy, as he told her about the most beautiful goal of his life.

A reflection on this message:

Every day, we share dozens of jokes, videos, and frivolous content without thinking twice.
But when we come across a story that brings meaning, value, and beauty… we hesitate.

We wonder: Who can I send this to?
Who will truly understand it?

Know that the person who sent you this message believes in you.
They believe that you, too, can be a link in this chain of humanity.

Because each day gives us countless opportunities to restore some order, empathy, and warmth to the world.

As a great man once said:

"A society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members."

17/11/2024

After the news that a school banned a child with autism from participating in a school trip I feel the need to write this. There are boys and girls that no one invites to birthdays for example. There are kids who want to belong to a team but don't get selected because it's more important to win than include these kids. Children with special needs are not weird or strange, they just want what everyone else wants: to be accepted!! 😡Can I ask a question??. Is anyone willing to copy and paste this post on their wall without sharing, like I did for a friend? they also need full love and support.🙏🏽❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️