Amanda Bedzrah is our DOZ Show Preferred Guest for this issue of DOZ Magazine. She is CEO of Empower A Woman, an organisation that was set up for vulnerable women, women who have been through domestic violence, and or sexual abuse. She shares with us her journey, from the death of her only brother to a sudden reminder of being sexually abused as a child and how both experiences shaped her and helped her to add value to women.
She is empowering women one gift at a time. She desires to give vulnerable women gifts that will make them smile, and she has done so for over five years. Last Christmas, her organisation gave about 2600 gifts. Most were to women in prison including babies in prison in the Mother and Baby Unit. They also organised a Christmas party and gave gifts to 40 widows in Otor Iyede, Nigeria. Empower A Woman also sponsors three children in Nigeria in primary school. Amanda is, in addition, an author of several books, including, The Love That Set Me Free: Finding God in the Midst of Pain and Brokenness, 5 Habits of Godly Resilient Women, and Overcoming the Fear of Death. All her books can be purchased on Amazon.
Be inspired by her journey.
You are the CEO of Empower A Woman, please share with us, how and why you got into this line of work.
Thank you, that’s a really good question. Well, it was 2014; I went to a Joyce Meyers’ conference with my older sister. The theme was being bold and courageous, and I went all the way to America because, at that point in my life, I was feeling so overwhelmed with fear, I wasn’t feeling at all bold and courageous. But I knew that God had called me to do something, I knew that God had a purpose for me, but I really didn’t know what it was. I was still on my journey of healing, I was working through some of the things that we’re still going to talk about but I just really felt that I needed to be in a place worshiping, praising God and just really hearing God speak to me. While I was there, God started to speak about formally starting up an organisation, but I felt so inadequate, I was like, what do I know about running an organisation? I had always had a passion for helping women, and I had been doing so informally for so many years, but as the conference progressed, I started to get a sense of it’s time to do more than just informal help here and there, that I was really called to start up something that was going to bring change in the lives of women. But as I battled with fear, I still had that constant reminder of God starting to speak to me, and actually, it was right there in that conference that He gave me what I consider to be a mission statement and it’s like blueprint not just for the organisation but for the way that I lead my life and that’s what still drives me today. And so, I took out a pen and I wrote it down and it basically said, just because I can’t do everything doesn’t mean I won’t do anything. Even if I can only do something, I refuse to do nothing. And you know, that just brought me so much freedom because when I started thinking about an organisation, I thought, oh, I have to help lots of women to make it look worthwhile. But God was just like, it’s only about the one, Amanda, it’s only about the one. Even if you change one woman’s life, that’s something, that’s positive, that’s all I’m asking you to do — just one person. And so really, that’s how we started. I came back, just formalised it, set up a non-profit organisation and the journey began.
You’ve had two significant, and perhaps I should say life-changing experiences, one was losing your only brother, and the other was a sudden recollection of being abused as a child. Please share with us both experiences, how they impacted you and how you overcame.
Losing my only brother was lifechanging because it was the one thing that exposed me to heartbreak. It exposed me to a type of pain that even till now, I find hard to put into words. I was a young girl of only 11 years old, and my brother was literally my best friend. I had known him my whole life obviously as he was older than me and we did a lot of stuff together. At the time he died, my sisters – so there was my brother, and then I have got two sisters that are older than I am and then me, so I am the baby of the house. But my two sisters were in boarding school, and my older brother was not able to go to boarding school because he had sickle cell, so he had to be home, and so I was almost like his little partner in crime, we did literally everything together. So, losing him was so significant and I think it hurt so much because I didn’t have a real avenue to express my grief. It was just something I had to deal with and just accept and grow up with and it left me very bitter and very angry on the inside, but it wasn’t until the last few years when I became an adult that I’ve been able to understand the impact that that kind of grief had in my life and the changes in me that it caused; in my personality, in my perception of life, in things around death, I was so afraid of death, I was so afraid of dying and all those things, it was rooted in the death of my brother. The other thing that you talked about is my being sexually abused as a child, now again, for me, that was something that was so traumatic that my brain just shut it out, I forgot, I remembered when I was 28, that was the first time that I actually remembered that this had happened as a child. And when the memory came back, of course, one of the first things I did at the time was to seek some help, go for counselling. I remember sitting there and asking my counsellor, how do you forget a thing like this, how does your brain just shut it out? And she said to me, well, Amanda, it was so traumatic for you that the memories were locked away until the point where your brain felt that you could deal with it and this is why you just remembered now. So, yeah, those were two big things that happened. In terms of overcoming, it’s an ongoing journey, I will tell you that but for the grace of God, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you, I wouldn’t probably be sane, I might even be dead, who knows? But for the grace of God, that’s the only way that I or anybody else really can overcome; I can’t take any credit for it.
What support, if any, was available to help you get through these challenging seasons of your life?
It’s been an ongoing journey; it’s one that I still wake up, and I still battle with the thoughts and the emotions every day. I don’t believe that you get over grief; you just learn how to cope better. I have had the privilege of getting prayers and support, from Beauty from Ashes Ministries Hadlow for both issues, I’ve spent some time with Gee Patchett of Transformation Powerhouse, Transformation Powerhouse is a charity that supports people that have been through sexual abuse, and she really helped me to cope with and come to terms with the things that happened in my past. Over the years, at appropriate times, I’ve had professional counselling as well. But I will tell you that the most effective support has been having an in-depth, one-to-one relationship with Jesus. Just really spending time in the word and giving Him the permission to heal my broken heart because those two circumstances – and obviously they’re the worst things I can say have happened to me, but they’re not the only things. There are so many other things that have come out as an effect of that kind of trauma that I’ve been able to lay at the feet of Jesus and He’s come ever so gently and you know God is such a gentleman, He will never give us more than we can bear and as much as it will be so wonderful to snap our fingers and make all the pain go away, it doesn’t work that way. It’s a progressive restoration, but I’m in a much better place now than I ever was.
What is the vision of Empower A Woman, what is it that you hope to help women achieve, and how have you been able to make a difference so far?
I’ll be honest with you, when I started Empower A Woman, I had a grand idea of drastically changing the lives of women, having an organisation that would sponsor women, whether it was to start businesses, whether it was to go back to school, anything that would empower them and make them better versions of themselves. But there was always the still quiet voice that I know was God speaking to me and He was like, just love them, just place value in them, just tell them who they are; remind them who they are, it starts with self-worth, it starts with knowing who they are, it starts with building them up from the inside, emotional resilience, and I will bring the healing and the restoration, I will do everything else. And of course, you start an organisation, and you want to do things that people will be like, oh, look, that organisation, they’re doing this, they’re doing that, but the one thing that God kept telling me to do was to give gifts, to vulnerable women, and I was like, how will giving gifts really change anybody’s life? I want more, but God kept saying, just give gifts. He was like, a gift is a beautiful thing, when you give somebody a gift, it communicates hope, it communicates love, it communicates value and I want you to give gifts to women that would not normally get gifts, and so I obeyed, reluctantly actually, because I felt like I wanted to do more. So the first year, we gave a hundred gifts and the second year, we did a bit more, the third year we did seven hundred gifts, the fourth year we did just over nine hundred gifts, predominantly to women in prison, women in shelters and just vulnerable women, and last year we gave about 2600 gifts. Most were to women in prison including babies in prison in the Mother and Baby Unit. And do you know what? After four years, I got thank you letters from women in prison and it wasn’t just that they wrote to say thank you, it was the words that they wrote about the impact, that it has made and you know for these women to have been able to write to me they would have had to do research because when we send gifts, I don’t necessarily include my contact details. They would have had to do some research to find the organisation, to find an address that they can write to, handwritten letters; it was just mind-blowing, it was amazing and it was such confirmation because I read these letters in fact I’ve got quite a few now, and I see God’s grace in a small little gift and the impact that it’s making in their lives. So, for now, that is my focus, to give them gifts that would make them smile, gifts, that would show them how valuable they are and that would be the starting point. Obviously, as time goes on, I would want to do more, we would want to do more, as an organisation, I should say. But for now, it’s almost like, just give them gifts. That’s all.
What do you find most fulfilling about empowering women?
Oh, everything. Everything. I just love that I can be a small part of their journey to wholeness. There’s something special about a woman finding herself, finding her voice, and discovering her self-worth. I believe that it makes a woman unstoppable because the way that you see yourself, your self-perception goes a long way in you walking in your purpose, being able to understand who you are, not just as a person, but who you really are in Jesus Christ. I think there’s something phenomenal about that, and I’ve had the privilege of working with some women who started out shy, uncertain, unsure, and to see the change, to see the transformation, in their lives, to see them as young women standing on their own two feet, doing their thing, and just living out purpose, it really excites me. So, any way that I can be a part of that journey, even if that is I am just praying for you, or even if that part is I’m just listening to you complain, whatever it is that I can do to empower a woman, I will do.
As a woman who experienced sexual abuse as a young child, what advice would you give to other women and girls who have been victims of sexual abuse?
Speaking to women or girls who have been victims of sexual abuse my message to you is it’s not your fault, you did nothing wrong, and you don’t have to be afraid, you don’t have to be ashamed, you don’t have to feel guilty, you don’t have to feel embarrassed. You were a child; these were grown adults that should have known better and did the wrong thing; it’s not your fault. But what I would also say is that you need to speak up and speak out about it, the pain that comes from the trauma of sexual abuse is not something that can be buried and hidden in silence, but most importantly the silence would mean that it would continue to happen because until you speak out about someone who’s abused you that person has the potential to continue to go on abusing other people. So it’s not right, it’s not acceptable, it should not be happening regardless of where you are, there have been so many cases of young house helps, as we call them in Nigeria, that have been abused by their masters and are being threatened with loss of jobs and they’ve had to live with that pain that shame and guilt for year. It’s not your fault, that was not something that should have happened, just because you were brought in to someone’s house to care for their kids or their home and they were paying you doesn’t mean they had the right to abuse you. There are a lot of people that are living with that guilt and that shame and thinking, oh I did something wrong. No, you didn’t do anything wrong, it shouldn’t have happened, and you have every right then to now begin to speak about it and get the help you need. There are so many organisations out there that are available to support the victims of sexual abuse. There are so many books out there where people have written and shared their story, I’ve got a book that you can read, there are resources out there now that you can google, you can buy, whatever you do, you need to do something. For many years I thought it was something that could be buried and hidden, but at 28, married with two kids, suddenly the memories crop up and it destabilised my life. So, it’s not something that goes away; it is something that needs to be dealt with.
Amanda, thank you so very much for talking with us, how can people contact you if they would like to know more about you and the work that you do?
The easiest way to get in touch with me is via email, amanda@empowerawoman.org, that’s my direct email address I check the account every day and I try to respond as quickly as possible.
