ripstick

RISE UP: Women’s Empowerment Lesson 3

~ Georgia Coats ~ 6 Comments

I have been on a significant journey towards understanding Women’s Empowerment within me:

🌀 Lesson 1: the self discipline to GET UP—even when it’s hard

🌀 Lesson 2: the love to LIFT UP

🌀 Lesson 3: the power to RISE UP

This is my third lesson…

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.

As Easter 2022 gets closer, I’m pondering an empowered Jesus who conquered the impossible barrier of death. Though in myself I am limited, I don’t have to accept a timid spirit.  Rather, I’m growing in my embrace of a Spirit that has the power to rise up, the love to lift up, and the self-discipline to get up—a thousand times again for the things that matter.

The whisper to my spirit is clear…

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.  

Rise up.  Dare to form bonds of friendship and speak impossible dreams out loud.

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.

GET UP: Women’s Empowerment Lesson 1

~ Georgia Coats ~ 6 Comments

I have been on a significant journey towards understanding Women’s Empowerment within me:

🌀 Lesson 1: the self discipline to GET UP—even when it’s hard

🌀 Lesson 2: the love to LIFT UP

🌀 Lesson 3: the power to RISE UP

This is my first lesson…

“Will you consider heading up our Women’s Empowerment group?”  

That was the question the Director of our local Immigrant and Refugee Center asked me, at a safe distance across her office, during the unprecedented pandemical summer of 2020.  

YES! and That’s CRAZY! and I have no idea what that means… all mixed into my teary-eyed, masked-face, foggy-glasses response.  What an awkward impression to make in an important work meeting—I couldn’t see clearly.  Feeling isolated during quarantine, my heart craved significance and being a part of things that are bigger than me, so I agreed to ponder her proposal. Contemplation for me usually involves key words, root words, related words—word clouds storming around in my brain.  I went home and scribbled empower across a blank page in my imagination and began to storm.

Empowered Women are Power-full

I don’t see myself as powerless, but I haven’t yet embraced powerful as one of the things that I am either. Attempting badass, I decided to lace up my thick-soled combat boots, and I’m still trying to break in the stiff fit.  I waffle between confident and clumsy, especially with a face mask and fogged up glasses.  

How badass can an already awkward, middle-aged mother of 3 even be?  

Mercy, grace, and gentle kindness.  I gravitate to these cozy words like I do towards a cup of chamomile tea at home in my fleece-lined slippers.  These are the soft places where I want to come alongside others.  But power, justice, and especially women’s empowerment—those words feel outside my zoning laws of comfort.  

Girls with Dreams Become Women of Vision

In the Fall of 2020, I eagerly gathered my first Women’s Empowerment group together.  I offered each woman flowers that uniquely reflected their presence in the group.  Collectively, we represented four distinct ethnolinguistic groups.  We spent time expressing our dreams with each other in our shared language of simple English.  Some women had home businesses, some were thinking about fleeing unsafe environments, and some longed to see loved ones they had been separated from for decades. In that precious space together, we soared.

The next day, I came down with a significant, positive case of COVID-19.  It felt like a slap down.  

How can I lift anyone up if I am inadvertently sharing a virus that could land them down and out?

Empowered Women Don’t Give Up on Important Things

When I get nervous about things in life I can’t control, I take on a physical challenge that is the right amount of impossible and achievable to suit the situation—like climbing a 14,000-foot Rocky Mountain or learning how to ride a ripstick.  Women’s Empowerment felt like a ripstick-kind of challenge.  Rip-sticking made me feel young and tenacious, but it also terrified me a little.  I needed suitable attire for such a venture—a safety helmet with spunk and my reliable running shoes. 

Sunday afternoons I would take my ripstick and my most inspiring playlist and head for the river trail.  I feared falling.  But I feared failing even more. All this was on my mind as I went speeding down a subtle slope.  And then I fell.  Ouch!  My wounded spirit immediately looked around to make sure no one saw that.  My wounded knee wasn’t so bad.

I get knocked down, but I get up again…

Chumbawamba

Note to self: Add this song to my playlist.

GET UP:

My first lesson in being empowered is being persistent and not giving up on things that are important.  Even when I’m scared.  And even when it hurts.  I got back on my ripstick with my bruised areas and finished out my Sunday adventure.

Humility is learning to live for the sake of others.  I have been both haunted and inspired by this definition.  I couldn’t fully grasp what this meant in my life.  I was more preoccupied with falling and failing and the differences between them, that I was not learning the art of lifting.