rise up

WE: Women’s Empowerment at the Immigrant and Refugee Center

~ Georgia Coats ~ 2 Comments

Women’s Empowerment is about Showing Up.

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.

Women’s Empowerment is about Lifting Each Other Up.

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.

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.