Hey Y’all!

I hope you are staying safe and healthy in this season. During this time of social distancing, I hope you are finding new, creative ways to maintain communication with those you love who are far away.

Here at GRIT we are staying flexible and figuring out day by day how we can continue to serve the women of Biola, even if campus is closed. From conducting the hiring process for our team next year, to producing social media content, to publishing blogs, our team has been hard at work. And we have some exciting news!

Our friend and role model, Desiree, is the founder and CEO of a jewelry brand called RCHL Made. She makes every beautiful piece by hand. She has a heart for what GRIT is doing at Biola, and we are so lucky to share that she’s going to be partnering with us to facilitate a giveaway for our community! (More on that coming soon…)

Last month, RCHL Made ran a campaign promoting their newest necklace in honor of Women’s History Month, the Gloria Necklace. I highly encourage you to learn more about Desiree’s heart behind this wonderful piece in a RCHL Made blog post here.

In a situation where a man might be praised for his leadership skills, a woman might be called “bossy.” Or when a man is praised for being an ambitious go-getter, a woman might be labeled as “aggressive.” The Gloria Necklace is designed to encourage women to break the stigma around the names they might be called, and embrace the traits which make them oh-so-very wonderful.

Last month, before the world started to end (kidding, kinda) I had a conversation with Desiree. She said something that really stuck with me. She mentioned that she wants to make jewelry that does something. That means something to people. Our team at GRIT thinks this necklace fits the bill for that.

If you were to visit our “About GRIT” page, you’d see that we don't exist to simply “empower women” in some vague, ill-defined sense. Rather, we “want to see women move courageously into the fullness of their image-bearing capacities in ways that attract those around them to God’s great goodness—bringing light, life, healing and hope to real people in their communities.”
That’s our mission. This in mind, we believe it would be completely tragic for the women of Biola to feel the need to downplay their God-given strengths in order to simply meet some arbitrary standard of what girls are supposed to do and how they ought to do it. To us, this necklace acts as a reminder not to shy away, but rather to be humble and courageous stewards of what God has given us.

That being said, over the next two weeks, we’ll be reflecting over these words: bossy, emotional, aggressive, and loud. We’re excited to share what this project means to us, as we encourage our community to own what makes them fabulous. Thanks to Desiree and the whole team at RCHL Made for believing in what we do here at GRIT.

Stay Emotional!

In Bossiness,

Logan