In September, our key word was hustle. The women in our group are hustling to own their own homes, get degrees, run their households, care for littles learn to drive–all while regularly showing up for English classes at IRCNOCO and learning learning to thrive in their new community.
In October WE shared goals that we’ve already accomplished, which opened space for others to ask questions and celebrate each other’s successes. WE also shared new aspirations, lifting each other up with empathy and bravery.
Women’s Empowerment is about Rising Up Together: Past our barriers, towards our dreams
In November, five women from our group filled out applications to work as interpreters, teaching assistants, and preschool teachers in our local schools at our school district’s Hiring Event. Such a win—together!
The Immigrant and Refugee Center of Northern Colorado is an organization that empowers immimmigrants and refugees, connects communities, and advocates for successful integration. One part of our programming that helps do this is Women’s Empowerment. I have the privilege of joining these women as our Women’s Empowerment Coordinator.
A senior trip. A gathering of global perspectives. An opportunity to lift up other girls in their education…
For 20 days in July, my daughter, Zoe, and I had the incredible privilege of traveling to three countries, each with unique language, culture, and learning dynamics. As a Language and Culture Learning Coach, navigating new cultures is my sweet spot. On the other hand, navigating the physical world is a challenge for me, and getting lost is something I’ve learned to factor into life. This dynamic provided ample opportunity for Zoe and me to problem solve together in new places.
The overall goal of our trip was for Zoe and me to be empowered together through the joys and trials of traveling adventures—before Zoe sets out on her independent college journey. For a girl who lingered in Narnia most of her childhood, and then graduated into Harry Potter’s world, Zoe would have enrolled at Hogwart’s post high school if she could. Instead, she settled on sauntering through Parisian chateaus for her summer between high school and college. Germany was a place to meet incredible world travelers and rub shoulders with their love for language and culture and adventure. Bangladesh was a window into a world so far outside our own–a place where we could encourage the empowerment of others.
We strategically embarked on our expedition equipped with only a backpack and a carry-on—to avoid losing luggage amidst multiple strikes in various European airports. A few other essentials for our journey included a 2022 multilingual playlist and 3 painted rocks…
July 4, 2022:
In the security line at the Denver airport: It turns out, if you travel with multiple painted rocks in your carry-on, your bag WILL get searched. Before we left, we committed to a mini-mission of helping my cousin spread her Colorado rocks around the world—I channeled my inner Amelie as we ventured out to deposit a hand-painted rock in each of our three destinations.
July 5:
We landed in Paris and successfully navigated our way to our hotel. We enjoyed dinner and an evening walk… by the river, past the cathedral, through the medieval gardens.
July 7:
Lessons from today’s excursions in Paris:
Trains take longer than you think they will
Half a ballet is better than no ballet at all
Raspberry sorbet is the perfect Parisian comfort food
Rock #1: We strategically deposited the first Colorado rock in a French castle windowsill. I hope they let it stay there.
July 8:
We learned some essential French vocabulary…
Navigating trains:
Sortie = exit
Gare = station
Navigating treats:
café crème = latte
confiture de framboise = raspberry jam
fromage = cheese
Zoe and I felt so empowered as we navigated the train system together and took in all the fancy palaces, castles, and chateaus Zoe had planned for us to see.
I’m a princеss of 2022… Dancing all night, wеaring vintage dresses
(Princess, Tiphene)
July 9:
Ever since Zoe was 5 years old, she wanted to be in charge of planning parties. My husband, Steve, and I would give her a budget, help her make shopping lists, and work out the details of her vision together. At 18, her goal was a senior trip to Paris—to get castles out of her system before heading off to college. She’s been working, saving, budgeting, and planning for months.
My joy has been to accompany her in realizing her vision…
to learn to navigate new places
to problem-solve the unexpected
to figure things out even when we don’t understand the language, or the way things work
to adapt and enjoy the simple wonders of another culture
And to make amazing memories along the way
NEXT STOP: Germany—via train
July 10:
We put our train navigation skills to the ultimate test when we took 6 different trains from Paris to a small German town and met up with Steve and our SIL International colleagues. When my sweet husband met us at the final station, he quickly snatched up our carry-ons and led us to our cozy accommodations. Zoe and I gladly relinquished some of our powerful independence, and received Steve’s loving care for us on this middle stint of our journey.
After settling in, Steve and I enjoyed dinner and an evening walk together… by the river, past the village, through the forest.
July 12:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;
He makes me lie down in green pastures
The Lord is my shepherd, leads me to still waters. And He restores my soul
(Come What May, We Are Messengers)
July 13:
Rock #2: Spreading theLiebe… We delicately deposited our second Colorado rock in a German flower garden at the conference center where we gathered.
July 14:
Steve and I work with incredible, multilingual people of deep faith who live and travel all over the world. It always lifts our hearts to be together. And I’m super grateful Zoe connected with some amazing third culture teens who widen global possibilities and perspectives for her.
NEXT STOP: Zoe and I to Bangladesh.
Steve back home to Colorado. Really hoping for no unexpected overnights in Frankfurt or Istanbul or anywhere else.
Like a sunrise on the longest night,
Like a rescue coming just in time.
Yeah, you save me when I cannot see the light.
Yeah, you save me when I cannot see the light.
(Lease on Life, Andy Grammer)
July 15:
Some first moments in Bangladesh…
Intro to language and culture with Troy Uncle
Riding in an easy bike
A Hindu festival parade, viewed from our hotel
Islamic call to prayer accompanied by car horns
A welcome of marigold leis, star fruit, and colorful scarves from the girls in the Speak Up – Girls Education Program. I can’t believe we get to be here with all these sweet, smiling faces and curious giggles.
I’m so thankful for safe travels via trains, planes, buses, and easy bikes to get here.
July 16:
Bangladesh is a predominantly Islamic country. The sign in our hotel room points to the direction of Mecca so people know which way to face when they pray. In my mind, facing East and facing Mecca have always been synonymous. It has been a bit disorienting to think of Mecca as west of us here. I’ve never spent this much time east of Mecca.
July 17:
With a background in Romance Languages, decoding French signs was kind of fun. German signs were a little more of a challenge. However, once we arrived in Bangladesh, our decoding skills were of little use. The cultural differences were also striking in so many ways. We felt the opposite of the fierce independence we had honed in Paris.
It turns out that in Bangladesh when you want to walk the neighborhood, you hold hands with your hosts… across the busy streets, past the dragon fruit vendor, through the sweet shop, with new friends.
July 18:
This is the day… that the Lord has made, We will rejoice and be glad in it…
(A summer camp fave)
The girls in the villages and the dorm love singing and dancing. We’ve learned we need to have a song ready at a moment’s notice, and this one has been our go-to.
Today we were welcomed into the village and home of Dee, the girl Zoe sponsors with Speak Up for the Poor. Dee helped her mom serve us noodles and orange slices and coconut water fresh from the tree outside. As I looked around the lush green village and around the sparse room in their home, I thought: I am the farthest from home I’ve ever been.
July 19:
Rock #3 has traveled so far from its Colorado home.
When we went to visit Dee’s village for a parent meeting, we formally presented our lovingly painted rock to the girls. Then the Vice President of the student leadership team at their local schoolhouse formally received our little gift—a tangible piece of our home with them. They placed it at the head table in the school where it will likely serve as a very useful paperweight.
It was definitely a sweet spot to attend the parents’ meeting in Dee’s village. The girls are amazing, so it was fun to meet the moms who came to support their daughters’ educations—in place of child marriage. If the parents aren’t supportive, the girls will often end up getting married as a young teen. I was really proud of these moms, with limited education themselves, wanting something more for their girls. And, I felt so grateful to be there with my girl, supporting her education and wanting the best for her future.
July 20:
Today we met Lula—the girl my husband and I sponsor. We visited her village, her school, and her home. All the other girls followed from the schoolhouse. We met her parents and 4 sisters. We shared small gifts with them, and they shared fresh dates and coconut sweets with us. I love having a clearer perspective of her context, and seeing how sponsorship lifts up all the girls in the Education Program—in the villages, the dorms, the slums… I’m super grateful for this experience and all that it took for us to get here.
July 21:
I love you, you love me,
We are one big family…
(I love you, Barney)
Zoe and I have learned to teach English lessons with only a moment’s notice. Today we joined the Student Teachers from the college dorm as they taught their classes in small schoolhouses in the slum areas—full of bright-eyed learners. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you… I loved this impromptu English lesson with these cuties.
July 23:
Heading home… Our trip back to Colorado starts on an easy bike, then a bus, then 4 planes, and 30+ hours later, a final car ride to our house. We packed some extra suitcases full of letters from the Speak Up girls to take back to their sponsors in the U.S. We also loaded up on henna cones—an essential for Zoe to take to college. And we sadly said a gazillion goodbyes.
July 29:
As I am back to walking my regular neighborhood, I love how music can take me right back to a place…. When I made my multilingual playlist to accompany our epic summer adventures, I included a popular Bangla song (by searching 2022 top Bangla songs). With all the dancing that went on while we were there, Komola was one of the first songs I heard in a dance performance, and then kept hearing. Now, when this song comes up on my playlist, it takes me right back to this little village school. Sometimes I can’t believe we were even there. But the feelings and memories stirred up by this song and others are proof that it was all so real.
August 15:
One, you get one heartbeat, so, Take it seriously… This is your masterpiece, Don’t forget to dream and taste the colors In the air you breathe
(Masterpiece, Andy Grammer)
Today we moved Zoe into her college dorm: She’s ready. She’s ready to ask hard questions, explore possible dreams, taste new colors. She’s ready for home away from home, for new friends, and new levels of adulting. I’m super excited to release her into this new aspect of her masterpiece.
The 4th Rock:
We left three Colorado Rocks in each of the countries we traversed. The 4th rock is the rock we brought home—the one I lifted from the railroad tracks outside the slum areas of Khulna. I had searched in each village we visited in Bangladesh, but with the hard-packed dirt trails covered in jungle plant debris and mud puddles left over from recent rain showers, loose stones were hard to come by—and the girls thought it was strange that I kept digging around in the dirt with my fingers! Rock #4 will become part of our Thanksgiving Rock collection—a tangible reminder of gratitude for our epic 2022 adventures.
Over the years I have found great inner strength from incredible people who have lifted me upwards. Afterall, lifting each other up is a privilege of loving and being loved. But even with all the inner and outer strength of many hands, some things must rise up—beyond what we are capable of lifting.
Em-Power-Ment Requires a Power Source
And I’ll rise up, I’ll rise like the day
I’ll rise up, I’ll rise unafraid,
I’ll rise up, And I’ll do it a thousand times again…
Andra Day
This song has been a quarantine anthem. It played during multiple montages of nurses and doctors relentlessly fighting for the lives of others when the pandemic began. It was playing when I fell off my ripstick and decided to get back up again. It played as I walked my neighborhood during cloudy times, wondering why I was hesitant to start up Women’s Empowerment again, after potentially putting women at risk of COVID-19.
It played during Lent of 2021 as I thought of Jesus rising up and doing it again every Easter—thousands of times—as we celebrate such empowerment. He claimed agency over laying down and raising up his own life—a divine power source.
RISE UP:
My third lesson in being empowered is learning to imagine things that are beyond us. Daring to speak our dreams out loud. This requires external power sources.
I’ll rise like the day…Semantically speaking, a day can’t rise itself. It’s not the agent of rising. It needs to be risen up.
Get back up and invite the women you know. Don’t give up on this important journey of Women’s Empowerment.
Be lifted up. Invite these sisters courageously into your vulnerable spaces of fear and falling and failure. Sip tea together and talk about the dreams we had as little girls, and the goals we persist in, and the visions we have of our futures.
Women’s Empowerment has been resurrected. I invited my friends of varying languages and religious backgrounds—women who have invited me into their vulnerable places where I’ve had the privilege of lifting them up towards their goals. This was a vulnerable place for me. I can’t succeed at Women’s Empowerment without women who show up. I needed my sisters to come. And they did. And it has been so worth the risk of failing and trying again.
We must continually get ourselves up and lift each other up in order to imagine collectively rising up. I shift often between reliable running shoes for persevering towards things that are important, to cozy slippers in merciful spaces, to badass boots for fighting injustice. Because getting up, lifting up and rising up all require different things—and as empowered women, we learn, some more awkwardly than others, to wear them all.
I was still sore about potentially putting women at risk of COVID-19 instead of figuring out how to empower them. So, I dove into another challenge with just the right amount of overwhelming and satisfying. I was learning to be a Community Navigator at our local Immigrant and Refugee Center.
I loved those words. I really wanted to grasp the essence of community. And I was already a horrible navigator of physical streets, but the thought of learning how to help resettling refugees navigate my beloved community felt like the perfect challenge.
Turns out Part Time Community Navigatoris the perfect journey of learning to live for the sake of others. Hours of filling out forms that will hopefully remove just one of a gazillion impossible barriers that newcomers face as they bravely transition to a new world, in a new language, with limited resources. Turns out delving into the vulnerable circumstances of people’s lives, loved ones, and longings in order to fill out spaces on a form felt something like washing other people’s feet.
As a person who slips comfortably into a place of mercy, justice feels difficult to maneuver around in. This is precisely why I owned sparkly combat boots—to embrace a new aspect of myself. In this new navigator role I was barely scratching the surface of understanding injustice and privilege as I listened repeatedly to the monotonous melodies of WAITING ON HOLD with one government office or another on behalf of a client and their specific need. And every time a client got one step closer to their goal, I would lift my hands up in a celebratory cheer. Turns out that mercy, grace, and kindness towards someone facing injustice can really split a heart wide open. And when that happens, boundaries and zoning areas of comfort and capacity explode into beautiful chaos.
Turns out that:
Mercy pairs with justice.
Gentleness is a form of harnessed power.
Grace pours out of abundance.
I was learning to lift others up. I was learning to celebrate the big and small wins of many courageous people who welcomed me into their vulnerable spaces.
LIFT UP:
My second lesson in being empowered is learning to help someone else reach their goals. And… inviting others into reaching my own—the things we can’t do just on our own. Carrying each other’s heavy loads, together.
Example: My friends and I carried the couch up the stairs.
My friends and I are the agents in this sentence. The couch was acted upon. My friends and I used our strength and decision-making skills to complete a goal together. That’s agency, and heavy lifting. That involves me putting down my own important stuff for a moment so I can put all my strength into lifting something that requires many hands.
Strength is limited. We can’t do heavy lifting alone or for long. We need to know that lifting is getting us somewhere—that there’s an end goal.
On My Mind 