Meet Christine Leahy of Women Stand Up! International

Standing on a platform in Baker Ballroom, Christine Leahy told a packed audience her personal fairy tale. It was a tale of abandonment, depression, abuse and a happy ending. She and her husband Michael Leahy talked to Ohio University students at “Seduce Me,” an event where they shared their personal struggles with the worldly things that overran their lives and how they overcame them.
 
When she was a little girl, Christine dreamed of happily ever after. But when her father left her family when she was six years old, Christine made a promise to herself: she would never rely on a man to give her a full and meaningful life.
           
            “We as a culture, we tell young women that if you do a certain thing, if you look a certain way, if you behave a certain way in relationships, you will get this in the end,” Christine said. “Whether it’s the marriage, the house, the great job, the happy ending. I think that I bought into that for so long, but when I noticed relationships around me, including my parents were dissolving, I was becoming more bitter against this idea of happily ever after.”
 
            Christine threw herself into making it on her own. She got her bachelors degree from Central Michigan University. Then, she went on to receive her masters from Illinois State University and started on her doctorate at Florida School of Professional Psychology. Though it may have seemed on paper like Christine was on her way to proving all of those childhood fairy tales wrong and that she didn’t need a man to have a meaningful life, she battled with depression and turned to online dating. 
 
            Though she didn’t want to find her worth in a man, Christine turned to Internet dating sites for a little bit of fun. She would talk online and go on dates with men. She even had one man fly from London, England, to date her.
 
She eventually met a man, David, and they began a relationship. But he was overprotective, easy to anger and jealous. She said that things got to the point in their relationship where she was afraid to sleep at night for fear that he might hurt her. One morning she got up and went to check her email. Instead of her inbox, she found David’s. There were emails from several other women that he had met online and was having sexual relations with.
 
Christine went straight for a bookstore and found self-help books on abusive relationships and addictions to pornography. Her eyes were opened to a world that before then she never knew existed, where the man who she thought loved her was abusive and unfaithful.
 
After she ended her abusive relationship, Christine went to counseling and sought support from others to help her get her life in order. After some time, she realized that her problems stemmed from her father leaving her all those years ago. She made the life changing decision to reconnect with the side of her family that had abandoned her as a child.
 
After a lifetime of relying on herself, Christine had not only found her family, she unexpectedly found the man of her dreams. She met Michael Leahy while working in Chicago. He was in town giving one of his talks for “Porn Nation,” a presentation on his addiction to porn and how his Christian faith helped him overcome. It seemed the reluctant Cinderella finally found her Charming Prince.
 
But a week after Michael proposed, he broke off their engagement. Michael had been married once before, but the marriage ended due to his addiction to pornography. Christine moved to Atlanta in an effort to work things out with Michael and to be close to her new family. But when things with Michael didn’t go as she had hoped, she decided it was time to do something she had always wanted to do. Christine signed up for the army.
 
Michael wrote to her every day she was at basic training, but these weren’t your average letters. He told students at “Seduce Me” that his letters were more like novels. Christine said that the letters were so long and so many that she was ordered to do push-ups, sometimes up to 1,000 for a long letter. (Her fellow trainees helped her complete the hundreds of sets.) Through the letters, she said they reconnected and experienced the kind of intimacy that they had been missing in their previous relationship.
 
Christine graduated top of her class from basic training, which she credits to the mass amounts of push-ups. Afterward, she and Michael were married.
 
And while no one lives perfectly happily ever after, Christine is using her modern fairy tale to help women around the world realize their worth. She left the military in September for full-time ministry with her organization Women Stand Up! International.
 

Women Stand Up! focuses on empowering women around the world. Christine and Michael returned a few weeks ago from a trip to Kenya, where they met with women and established a partnership to help the women of Kenya succeed financially and emotionally. The project helps single mothers (either from rape or consensual sex), widows, women living with HIV/AIDS and women raising multiple children.
 
“They suffer in a great way like American women do in terms of depression and anxiety and stress issues,” Christine said.
 
Women Stand Up! International focuses on the message of “I Am Enough.” Christine says it’s the battle cry of the organization. It stems from women who have spent a lifetime looking at images and stories in the media about how they should look, act, dress and talk. “I Am Enough” means that women take a stand and say that they don’t need to be any more than what they already are.
 
“It’s an awakening for a lot of women who have been in situations like I was thinking that I was left behind because I wasn’t enough.”
 
Christine said that Women Stand Up! International is looking for women to be ambassadors to work on the I Am Enough 5K to raise support to help the communities in Africa. The ambassadors would then go over to Kenya to train and provide love and support for the women there. The money raised from the 5K would go toward buying sewing machines, chickens and other commodities to help the women support their families.
 
“It’s amazing when you go over there and someone feels like someone else cares about them,” Christine said. “when you figure out that someone will stop what they’re doing in their busy schedule and ask you how you’re doing, it makes a huge difference in their lives.”
 
In the U.S, the organization is centered around the Battle Buddy System, which is similar to the system in the military. The Women Stand Up! system never leaves a fellow woman behind. The program encourages women to take a look at who is in the battle with them and who will pull them through the hard times. There are lead mentors and then specific mentors that specialize in legal and spiritual guidance for women.
 
Pulling another concept from her time in the army, the Wounded Women Warriors project is taken from a similar system that helps physically wounded soldiers when they return from combat. The Wounded Women Warriors project helps women soldiers and the spouses of soldiers with the emotional problems they face everyday. Christine said that women in the military have specific emotional needs that need to be addressed.
 
“The military changed me in a lot of good ways, a lot of positive ways, and I never want to leave that part of me behind just because I left the service,” she said. “They’re my brothers and my sisters and that’s a family that I didn’t expect to have, but I want to be able to help them even if I can’t on the battle field.”
 

Christine and Michael are currently traveling the country with their program “Seduce Me,” talking to college students about their stories and how their Christian faith helped them overcome what was seducing them. For more information on Women Stand Up! International or Christine’s personal story, visit womenstandup.net. For information on Porn Nation and Michael’s personal story, visit bravehearts.net.
 
Photos courtesy of Christine Leahy.