Six Questions About How Strong Women Pray
1. What made you decide to write this book?
People ask me how I got the idea for How Strong Women Pray. Actually, I was praying. I was sitting on my living room floor in New York City praying one morning several years ago, as was my routine at the time. I had come to a point in my life where I looked forward to these moments I shared with God at the start of every day. Not because anything was particularly wrong. So often, prayer is relegated to moments of dire need. No, praying for me had become a source of well-being, joy, and faith. As I prayed, I would feel physically strengthened - from good to better than good. I remember appreciating how much I had drawn from prayer over the years. Feeling uplifted in the good times and, in bad times, finding the courage to move forward. I knew that learning how to pray was one of the most important things I had ever done.
Without prayer, I would have collapsed under the weight of the difficulties in my life and failed as a mother. I would not have been able to inspire others to overcome their own obstacles. I am not sure who I would be at all.
Yet, most people who knew me as a strong woman—an inspirational speaker, a one-legged Olympic ski champion, a Rhodes Scholar and former White House official—did not know that prayer was important to me at all. Millions of people knew my life story, yet they had no idea that I prayed, no inkling that prayer made a difference in my life.
I began to wonder how many of the women I looked up to were also privately powered by prayer. So, I set out to interview strong women—some well-known, others not—to find out what they knew about relying on prayer in the real world.
What I learned from these incredible women was more sacred, more practical, and more uplifting than anything I could have imagined. I began to wonder if I would be able to put such an ethereal feeling into words. But the words of the women gave me a guide. The concrete details they were able to share about their prayer lives inspired me to try new ways to pray and to focus more on what matters most.
2. You're very generous in revealing intimate details of your life and your history in How Strong Women Pray-- what prompted you to share your own life in this way? Why is it important to the book that you do so?
I couldn’t tell the story about my own journey to prayer without explaining the depth of my pain while trying to heal my emotional wounds. From my experience as a speaker talking with all kinds of groups—from huge corporate events to women’s church retreats and runaway teens—I know that using a lot of euphemisms about what happened to me just wouldn’t work.
It’s healing for me and for readers to be able to talk about what most people won’t. Women are often pushed aside or swept under the rug as they try to heal because people aren’t willing to talk about issues like abuse openly. I hope that other women who have been abused in one way or another feel less alone by reading about my experience. When people abuse others, they count on silence, shame and most people’s inability to believe what is happening. By speaking up, we make the world less safe for abusers.
3. Among all the stories included in the book, was there one that surprised you or caught you off guard?
When Edie Falco told me she had never talked about her faith and prayers in an interview before, I was touched and honored. She was so honest about everything: not being brought up with any religion, feeling awkward using the word “God” because it makes other people uncomfortable, etc. She represents a contrast to the women I interviewed who had a strong, traditional Christian upbringing. Every type of person can find themselves reflected in the wide variety of experiences in How Strong Women Pray.
4. What do you feel was the most valuable lesson you learned in interviewing so many different women?
When I began, I prayed by myself and felt the experience of prayer was a very personal thing. By the end of fifty interviews, I learned to seek support and community in prayer. I prayed with many of the women I interviewed. I learned about praying as a couple and praying with my daughter. Now I pray with my publicists and the publisher’s people – sometimes even in interviews! By talking about prayer with so many people, I got a lot more comfortable with it. I’ve already had early readers of the manuscript expand their prayer horizons just by reading How Strong Women Pray. I’ve spoken to wives, for example, who didn’t even know their husbands prayed! Now they pray together. Just by reading this book and getting the dialogue going, prayer is encouraged in all sorts of ways.
5. You work as a motivational coach as well as an author-- have you used any of the material or stories shared in the book in your work with
your clients? What from it has been most helpful to them, as far as you can see?
There are so many motivational and inspirational stories in the book. For example, I have shared with many people Kathie Lee Gifford’s transformation. She felt sorry for herself because she was unfairly accused of using sweat shops to produce her clothing line. When a friend told her that Jesus changed the world through His suffering, it made her realize she could use the situation to help change laws about unfair labor practices. Once she stopped feeling sorry for herself and started thinking about making a difference for others, the whole situation was changed. Her celebrity status helped push through laws that had been languishing for years. Suffering can be your power, if you let it.
Another important lesson is taking time to be still and listen. I have met people who say that they have a rich prayer life at home, but there is no room for God in their work. Women like Amy Domini, Carla Harris, and Westina Matthews work on Wall Street, and they pray before meetings, before important decisions, and when giving advice. Amy Domini was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world because she helped make the concept of socially responsible investing a viable business strategy. The most helpful lesson is that strong, powerful women take time to refuel their inner strength.
6. What is next for you? What is the next mountain to climb?
We are excited about launching LIVE YOUR JOY as a place that makes state of the art information about living better and finding joy available to everyone in a free and easy-to-use format.
This kind of knowledge is usually very expensive. Corporations and wealthy individuals can access therapists, personal trainers, nutritionists, life coaches, and a host of other experts to bring extensive research and training to their doorstep. Through the vast reaches of the Internet, we can bring these tools and technologies to a mass audience in realistic, bite-sized pieces, for little or no cost to them.
Our website, www.bonniestjohn.com, will showcase a variety of 5-7 minute “webisodes”, each illustrating a particular topic and offering the viewer a practical experience they can immediately apply to their daily lives. The LIVE YOUR JOY radio show airs for one hour each Wednesday at 9AM Eastern time, noon Pacific time, on the VoiceAmerica radio network - http://www.voiceamerica.com– the largest web based talk radio network in the world.
I have faced so many difficult life situations myself--healing from sexual abuse and family dysfunction, divorce, having my leg amputated as a child, facing race and gender discrimination, learning to be a Mom, home-schooling, step-parenting and more. I am passionate about using the research and information that is out there because I know it made a difference for me.
I also believe that my background of being a Harvard and Oxford grad, a Rhodes Scholar, and a former White House official gives me credibility--people will trust that I am providing good, solid information. Together, my credibility and my personal experience of life challenges will motivate people to believe and try the things I give them. I know their lives will get better!
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