Ready to Rise

Own Your Voice, Gather Your Community, Step into Your Influence

Jo Saxton, JO SAXTON

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780281084616
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

A powerful call to step into your full potential that biblically affirms the need for women to rise up and work together to make a better world.

"Jo is one of my most trusted voices in Christian leadership… She leads auditoriums full of people, and she leads me one-on-one." –Jen Hatmaker

In this particular cultural moment, where the momentum of #MeToo meets raised voices over injustice in wage equality and minority representation, popular speaker and podcaster Jo Saxton wants to move women beyond disempowerment. Instead, she draws women together to grow their grit and to establish new partnerships that will have a powerful chain effect.

Ready to Rise tackles the real-life issues women face–workplace harassment, sexism, low self-esteem, financial woes, power battles, and old wounds–while providing meaningful wisdom from Jo's own journey to leadership. Added to this personal reflection are stories of empowered women from the Bible. Jo then calls on readers to invest in the next generation of women and build new communities where diverse female leadership can flourish.

Ready to Rise pulls together Jo's best practices in both listening to the hearts of women and empowering them to change the landscape.

1

Women Who’ve Made a Difference

(And Why I Wasn’t Sure I Was One)

The path to our destination is not always a straight one.

We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back.

Maybe it doesn’t matter which road we embark on.

Maybe what matters is that we embark.

— Barbara Hall

I reflected on my daughter’s speech—her moment—for months. The lens through which she saw the world and the resolve to do something about it reminded me of a time years before: Her younger sister (aged five at the time) called a family meeting to announce what she wanted to be when she grew up. She told us she would be running for president and her agenda would involve taking care of the environment and protecting marine life. (She has since moved on to other career choices.)

Naturally, I love the budding ideas and dreams and passions my kids—two daughters—have, particularly as they develop and mature and learn more about the world around them. But while their enthusiasm—and their innocence—moves me, I am inspired by the liberated audacity of their assumption that they have something to offer, that they have a contribution to make in those places in the world that they believe are broken.

This is the message they constantly see around them—the mantras that say they can be who they want to be, that they can change the world, and that they can live meaningful and purposeful lives by helping and serving people. And, yes, there’s certainly a dose of idealism, but this message of empowerment is also conveyed in the books they read about women who’ve made a difference. They’re inspired by the way they see leaders—who remind them a little, or a lot, of themselves—grace the global stage. I’ll always remember the day when my eldest was a toddler and saw President Barack Obama on TV. She jumped up and down, shouting, “Mommy! His skin! He’s just like me!”

Seeing people who look like them and hearing people share stories similar to theirs has catalyzed my children’s understanding of their own potential and purpose. And this is true for other children, not just mine. There’s a generation growing up that seems to already know that to live a life that makes a meaningful impact is not only necessary but part of our design. And although it is marvelous to watch these young people grow with such purpose behind them, they’re not the first to know this—not the first generation, or, to bring it much closer to home, not the first in our family.

The journey each generation embarks upon as they discover their influence and potential has been different from the previous, inevitably shaped by the times they were in. I’ve seen it over and over again, even in my own family. The generations of women who came before my daughters often discovered their purpose in ways they couldn’t prepare for. Sometimes, their skills, callings, and leadership gifts were not so much discovered but uncovered as they faced challenging circumstances in a broken world. Their potential for impact was revealed as they stepped into uncharted territory in whatever way they hoped to build something different—for themselves, their families, their communities, and beyond.

My maternal grandmother grew up in Nigeria and lived to the rich age of one hundred and two before passing from this world to the next, leaving her legacy of a large, vibrant family. I never got the chance to meet her, but I gained glimpses of her personality through the stories my family told about her. I learned she was kind and strong. She was also a very determined businesswoman, going to the market every week to sell and trade in the community. I was told that when she reached the age of ninety-seven, my aunts and uncles actually had to persuade her to retire! Her husband, my grandfather, had passed away in the 1980s, so she’d been a widow for more than twenty years. Her resilience continued to carry her, even when death created a tomorrow that was unexpected.

My foster mother, Aunt May, lived in England through the tumultuous times of World War II. The pressure of war forced women into uncharted waters when they were called upon by the government to support the war effort. Because women were taking up roles previously occupied by men, their lives looked entirely different during the war. Women served in the armed forces, in agriculture, and in industry. They kept a nation moving during this dangerous period. When the Third Reich and its allies were defeated and the war was finally won, women shared in the victory (though it was decades before their contribution was given formal and public acknowledgment). Aunt May told me how much she hated modern-day films about women in that era. She felt it was romanticized, that their contribution was seen as frivolous. For her and her friends, it was anything but. What they did was in the bleak face of war, and it was work. They performed a vital service to their country.

When the war was over, women were thanked, but they were encouraged to return to their prewar lives and domestic roles. Hitler was dead, so it seemed that the grip of Nazism was extinguished (for the time being, at least). Men returning home from the war needed their jobs back.

But like any country affected by the devastation of war, the nation was not the same. It could never be. The men and the women were not the same. Including Aunt May. She had long decided she would never marry, so there was no plan for the typical domestic idyll for her. When the war effort was complete, drawing on her experiences looking after children evacuated from London, she decided to foster children. Who would have thought she’d find her life’s purpose and vocation in the midst of war and tragedy? Or that she would be so influential in its aftermath?

Over the forty years that followed, she fostered more than a hundred children. I was one of the last to be fostered.1 I like to think I was child number ninety-nine. When I came into her life, Aunt May was in her seventies, and like my grandmother, she, too, had to be persuaded to retire. Also like my grandmother, she passed away at the age of one hundred and two. Aunt May played her part in trying to fix a broken world during the war effort. Afterward, her life’s mission was to nurture and raise the children who were wounded by it.

After the end of World War II and the attempt to resume prewar lives, it became clear that Britain had a significant labor shortage and needed immigration to boost the rebuild. The British Nationality Act of 1948 gave people from Commonwealth countries free entry to Britain,2 so from the fifties and sixties onward, people from around the world responded to the invitation to work and rebuild. People traveled from the Caribbean, from India, and from countries in Africa, like Nigeria. And my family was among them. In the early sixties, my parents and others—who would become aunties and uncles—left Nigeria in pursuit of new adventures and opportunities.

They were young twentysomethings, visionaries in their own way, ready to build not only the nation but also new lives for themselves. Yet in spite of the law, immigrants were not always welcome. Sometimes they were deemed threats, seen as stealing jobs rather than contributing to the economy. Even though laws legislated against racial discrimination, it didn’t stop it from happening. Therefore, these young immigrants gravitated toward people who understood them, who they felt safe around.

It was no wonder that as I grew older I was surrounded by a village of extended family members. Though not all of them were related by blood, they were fellow Nigerians (and some from the Caribbean) navigating a complex world together, understanding both one another’s roots and the British soil on which they were now planted. In one another’s presence, they felt more known and understood, less lonely. Isolation could leave them vulnerable.

A community was a source of both strength and support, just like back home, just like living in a village. After all, everyday life needed to continue. They needed to keep on going in and through the struggles. There was life to live, information to share about everything, such as paying bills, finding material and a seamstress for when traditional attire was needed, and where to buy hair products for Afro hair.

Furthermore, there was work to be done—fledgling careers to develop and retraining. There were resources to send to relatives overseas, a next generation to birth and raise. Whatever obstacles, whatever opportunities the world threw at them, they would face them together—and together achieve even more in the process.

Each generation of women discovered a path that led them to uncover and utilize their gifts, to use their voices in unanticipated ways in the world in which they lived. It was a path that led to opportunity, even when it didn’t look that way at first. It wasn’t easy for any of them. But when they engaged with the influence they now had, they made an impact on their world.

Unlike my youngest daughter, I didn’t have political ambitions at age five. That year, Britain elected its first female prime minister, but I couldn’t make the same assumptions my daughter had. I didn’t see anyone who looked like me on Downing Street in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so I was still dreaming of superheroes. My notions of influence and service, though sincere and heartfelt, were still deeply embedded in the realm of fantasy. Surely I could dream . . .

Like the women who came before me, I found it wasn’t easy to uncover the path to living into my potential for influence. I attended an all-girls secondary school where the message was you could be whoever you wanted to be. The staff strove to empower the young women there. They cited the advancements women made in politics and culture and said there was no reason we couldn’t do the same in the future. It was finally our time.

And though I was inspired, I also saw a society replete with contradictions. My teachers didn’t live where I lived. Was it time for everyone, or just men and women like them, with their connections and opportunities? Those years were marked by an uneasy social and cultural climate. Did this exciting new landscape include women of every class? Poor women? Did it apply to immigrant women and their children? I wasn’t so sure when I saw glimpses of tabloid newspapers in which pundits screeched about immigrants stealing English people’s jobs.

Then came the tumult in my own life experiences with long-term foster care, as well as everyday occurrences like puberty in all its dramatic fullness that left me uncertain of my worth and value. I swung between feeling inspired and feeling insecure in the same hour.

I also could not ignore that in its own way, a path was being uncovered. I often say I was the last to know I had gifts, skills, and a contribution to make. That I already had influence. My self-doubt obscured the significance of indicators, such as leading initiatives at school, captaining the sports team, and participating in fundraising opportunities at church. I remember a teacher deliberately and specifically (and publicly) telling me I had a voice. Perhaps sensing I would misinterpret her words because I was in the school choir, she clarified by saying, “Joannah, I mean you have a perspective, something to say that matters, and a leadership role within your class.” Though I appreciated her words, I couldn’t receive their meaning. I couldn’t own it.

It wasn’t just my voice that was confusing me. As a Christian, I grew up hearing conflicting and contradictory and yet passionately held views on what a woman could and should be and what her area of influence was supposed to look like. By the time I reached college, sometimes those voices included very cute guys who had very strong opinions, who I was strongly drawn to for reasons other than their strong opinions.

The path leading toward influence, opportunity, and leadership began to open up through opportunities to work with the teenagers at my local church, then invitations to leadership roles and speaking opportunities on my college campus. Something was happening, but I still couldn’t own it. I considered it something strange, even random, happening to me, even when I was enjoying the responsibility and opportunity.

I wasn’t an influencer; I wasn’t a leader. I was just someone who had strong opinions. People would sometimes wait for me to act upon shared opinions first and often sought my advice. But I’m not a leader, I reminded myself. It just happens around me sometimes. I don’t know why, but it’s always been like this.

In that era, I didn’t see it as how God made me. I didn’t see gifts. I didn’t see influence. I didn’t see that the path I was on was God-created, God-designed. I didn’t see I was made for this. On a good day, I’d describe leadership as just the things I did. On a bad day, I saw it as a concession God made for a weird woman. And on a very bad day, I feared something was fundamentally wrong with me, that I wasn’t woman enough.

That I was too much.

That I wanted the wrong things in life.

That I was the last person who should be given opportunity for influence.

I knew me. I knew that the brokenness of my past lingered in my life like a stale hangover. It left me with deep, quiet feelings of inadequacy that I worked hard to cover up—until I couldn’t. I knew the cloud of sadness and pain would sometimes settle so heavily that I felt I was staring into an abyss. I also knew the vices I used to escape the way I felt. And knowing how...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 1 Women Who’ve Made a Difference
• 2 The Cost of Disempowerment
• 3 Talitha Koum!
• 4 The Surprising Answer to “What Would Jesus Do?”
• 5 Say Yes to Who You Are
• 6 A Voice Without Apology
• 7 Voice Lessons
• 8 How to Grow Your Grit
• 9 Body Talk
• 10 The Search for Community
• 11 How to Build Your Village
• 12 The Strategic Relationships Every Village Needs
• 13 Ready to Shape a New Skyline?
• I Am Ready to Rise
• Acknowledgments
• Notes