EP. 22 The Poetic Strategist: Peju Abuchi on Closed Doors and Disrupting Leadership

Peju Abuchi is a Poetic Strategist whose mission is to "disrupt LEADERSHIP spaces". But her journey to the global stage started as a shy child for whom writing was an escape. She joins us to discuss navigating gatekeeping from other women while trying to publish her book, and how she turned that lack of support into an opportunity for growth, becoming the unexpected catalyst to find and hone her authentic voice. We explore the rare fusion of using the 'soft' tool of poetry to achieve 'hard' organizational transformation and her philosophy as a Therapeutic Wordsmith —that by changing our language, we can "craft a different reality".

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Hello and welcome everyone to the WeWin podcast powered by Accelerate Her Africa in partnership with the Human Pattern Institute. I am your host, Lolita Ejiofor, and I'm so excited to have you here with us today. What if the words you've been searching for to describe your journey, your pain, your power, have been waiting inside someone else's pen? Meet Peju the Spark Abuchi, a poet strategist who has spent over 20 years healing the world through the transformative power of poetry and storytelling. From Channels TV to BBC Radio, from the London Mayor's Office to global platforms like Aspire Global Unity Conference, Peju has mastered something rare. The art of connection, conversation, and communication that ignites. Here's where Peju's gift becomes extraordinary. She takes the essence of who you are, your struggles, your victories, your core needs, and translates them into words that land like revelations, words that spark transformation. Peju, the Spark Abuchi, is here to ask you what spark within you is waiting to be ignited? I'm absolutely honored and excited to welcome today's guest. Let's dive in. Peju, oh my goodness, I'm so excited to have you here with us today. Our guests are in for a treat.

Speaker 1 1:45

Thank you, Lolita. It's lovely to be with you.

Speaker 1:49

Awesome. Peju, your title is Poetic Strategist, and your mission is to disrupt leadership spaces. This is a fascinating and rare fusion. How do you use the soft tool of poetry to achieve hard, tangible results of organizational transformation?

Speaker 1 2:12

I love that question, Lolita. I was at a conference on Friday, and part of what was shared was that soft skills are becoming strategic skills. I feel like the organizational development world, the world of learning and development, the world of human resources, the world of leadership is struggling. They are burnt out and seeking new ways to achieve alignment in life, legacy, and leadership. Enter creativity. I believe that creativity has the power to unlock something really deep and intuitive and perceptive, even in the hardest of organizations, even in the toughest of leaders. And when I talk about the work that I do as a poetic strategist, I say to people: we need healers of many kinds in the world. We need doctors who help with ailments. We need dentists who help with oral health. We need psychologists and counselors and coaches and mentors. We also need poets. For me, poetry is healing. Traditionally, the role of a poet was to bring healing through words. And so, as a poetic strategist, I like to positively disrupt leadership spaces by saying words have the power to heal or to kill. Words have the power to build up or to tear down. So by freeing the best of people's words within them, you're igniting a spark that helps them to infuse better, bigger, bolder in your organization, which means in society, which means win-win for you, for your people, for the world.

Speaker 4:08

Why not? Absolutely. Even as you're speaking to me, I do get a sense of healing. And burnout is real. A lot of people are misaligned with life and work. And so poetry as a positive reinforcement helps to frame words that give life and ignite as opposed to drain. So we need more of that.

Speaker 1 4:34

We do, and I think that there's something about poetry that's memorable. So when I talk to people who are bringing in external speakers, I say, I think your people are tired of the same old, same old. The same old stuff away day, the same old stuff gathering and meeting. Infuse something memorable, infuse a little bit of magic. That's where poetry meets leadership.

Speaker 5:00

And that's where the magic happens. It is. In an interview, you said the inspiration for your book was pain. The pain of seeing negative words break up relationships and hold people back from their potential. As a therapeutic words, can you talk about your core philosophy that by changing our language, we can craft a different reality?

Speaker 1 5:30

Oh yes. I was born and raised in Nigeria. I am proudly Nigerian. And growing up, I remember this calling out with young people where the elders among us would say, Be careful what you say, your words have power. Be careful what you say, it can happen. And that stayed with me long after moving to the UK and just getting this sense through my work as an educator and my work with female leaders in mentoring spaces that actually words were being used as weapons against ourselves. So with a young person saying to me, Oh, miss, I can't do it, I'm stupid. And feeling like that language was normal. Or a woman, a female leader saying, I'm not able to reach my potential. I'm too fat. I'm too ugly. My marriage will never work out. My husband's a fool, he's a doofus. And I remember this aha moment where I pondered and observed, and I was in this space of wondering what needs to shift. And I remember feeling like your situation might not change overnight. But if the words you use to describe your situation change, there will be a shift. So what I'm bringing to this space is the power of the spoken word. If your words are not going to aid goodness and unleash kindness to the other, to organizations, to your family, even to yourself, don't utter a word. Feel free. You have permission to be silent. Because mark my words, when you use words as weapons, you truly get hurt.

Speaker 7:27

Hmm. You know what comes to mind? Proverbs 18, 21. The tongue has a power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruits. So, you know what you just said about people talking themselves into destruction is very, very true. But if you talk life, you will see life, you will enjoy life. I'm fascinated by how someone who wields words so powerfully found her own voice. You've described yourself as a shy child and said that for you, writing was an escape. Can you talk about the early journey of finding your voice in private journals long before you ever took it public?

Speaker 1 8:14

Yes, writing for me as a young girl, I described myself as a shy child. And now people hear that and they're like, Great, you know way. And I'm like, yes, way. I was shy as a child. I have a vivid memory of hiding behind my father's legs when we were at an event and just being like, please don't introduce me to anybody else. I just want to be safe and hidden here. I'm one of six children. I am number five, and we come from a loud, bold household where we were encouraged to speak. And we were encouraged to use our voice, we were encouraged to argue, to get our point across. But being quite shy, I always felt like my words were swallowed up in insecurity, in the hierarchy of respect. Well, it's not your turn yet. Wait for your older sister to speak, wait for your older brother to speak. And I guess my people-pleasing nature led to me just agreeing. Okay, if this older person has said this, okay, why waste time arguing or getting my point across? Because I'm also a conflict avoider, I want peace. So somebody's spoken before me, okay. Yeah, somebody's spoken. But I received an invitation through journaling to be fiercely truthful. And that was about the heartbreak that I received from boys who did not reciprocate my love. Or that was from connecting to pain in my life as a teenager. That teenage season of life is fraught with frustration and finding yourself. And I began to love escaping into writing to find my authentic self, to write out the truth of heartache and joy and pain and desire and vision for my life. Where when I tried to say it out loud, people would be like, Oh, please, you're too romantic, or oh, please, you're you're too positive. Nah. And I just decided, well, if I'm going to get this pushback, my journals never pushed back. They invited more, write more, say more. They were that friend who accepted everything and didn't see a need to criticize, but to accept. And the more I felt accepted on the pages of paper, the more it became evident to me that permission to speak up, to shape things, to show up, shake things up, permission is not externally granted, it's internally downloaded.

Speaker 11:27

100%. Um, as someone who never used to journal, I've started journaling now, it is a safe space for you to pen your thoughts and those fears and be your authentic self, as you mentioned. I think what you've just said also will be helpful for any teenagers listening who are confused and dealing with a lot of things, a lot of pushback, a lot of power that they expect the world to give them for them to journal and write things down and be authentic with themselves. So thank you for sharing that. A core theme of this podcast is the power of sponsorship and women opening doors for each other. But you shared a story that really stuck with me. When you were trying to get your book published, you knocked on doors that possibly could have been opened a bit wider and didn't. This introduces a really important tension. Before we explore what came from that, can you take us back to that moment? How did you process that initial feeling of discouragement when the support you were hoping for just wasn't there?

Speaker 1 12:43

That's a great question. I'm gonna start by saying women need to be really honest with ourselves first and then with each other. Women love to talk about unity and sisterhood, and let me adjust your crown as a fellow queen, solidarity, community, but we can also be each other's worst enemy. Recently I realized that women can be the fiercest gatekeepers. But in our collective fight for the feminine voice to be heard, for feminine presence to be respected, we seem to shift the blame and say, but it's the men. They get it all. It's the men we're fighting against. I see that as part of the problem. But I have also been sponsored by some wonderful men who believe in the power of my voice. And while we're all focused on men, we are not privy to influential women who are closing doors in the faces of other women. And we need to be honest. We really need to be honest, vulnerable, and transparent about the power of envy, about the power of fear. Because once you, as an influential woman, see other talented, gifted, powerful women rising, you do feel threatened. I felt it. We need to admit that. So I will say that. I can't do it. The younger generation are faster and quicker and more adept at getting their voices across and getting first pick of this pie. I can't do it. I'm it's too late. It's too late. And I did grieve the people who I felt could have helped more or supported more. I tell you now, I am grateful. And actually, there's something that I want to craft a poem, maybe, or a post that says, thank you for not helping. Because what that did was it gave me the fight to dig deeper. And when you give yourself space to dig deeper, you find within you deeper treasure that the creator has implanted in you that doesn't need people to open the doors you thought they needed to. And I love saying this. Some of the doors that I've shut in my face, I feel like I stand with my God and we watch the doors close, and then I hear God say, That's okay. There's a window right at the back, we're gonna go through it. And I get into the room, same room, different route, but because I know my God has got me there, my confidence is different. I'm not there relying on the kindness of somebody else who perhaps didn't even want me in the room. I'm there as somebody who is a kingdom citizen who knows why I'm there. So thank you for not helping because you did me a good favor, a great favor by allowing me to dig deeper and to find a new route into that room.

Speaker 16:55

Yeah. Oh my goodness. I think um, first of all, I'm one of those who understand what gatekeeping is all about as a person who was a gatekeeper themselves and someone who's experienced it from others. There is this sense of territorial ownership or stress that makes women feel threatened by another woman coming up. And like you said, if that person is in alignment with God, there is nothing that door being closed would stop in terms of that person's journey to success. Going through that must have felt discouraging at first, but you obviously didn't stay discouraged. You said that experience enabled you to look a little bit deeper. What did you find when you looked deeper? For the woman listening who is in that moment of discouragement right now, can you talk about how that closed door became an unexpected catalyst for you to find and hone your own more authentic voice?

Speaker 1 18:10

Yes, from closed door to catalyst. I'm gonna say to the women who are listening, who are discouraged, who are scrambling in the dark to find their voice, you're not alone. You're not alone. And the pain of this season will become a proclamation for your next season. Part of what I write in my book is about not despising your dark times, not despising the day of small beginnings. And part of my preparation for this season of my life was frustration and feeling like I'd received this great invitation in life to step into a bigger space, to use my voice, to coach women to find their voice, and nothing happened. And I remember feeling like I'm so embarrassed. What is going on? God, you asked me to step into more, but less is happening, less opportunities, less money. I was okay before I got this invitation. What are you doing? What am I doing? In the frustration of that season, for me and for the women who are listening, there is so much happening. The seeds that you're sowing with tears, the seeds with anger, frustration, with doubt, with unease, with shame, those seeds are becoming part of your tree that will become shelter for other people.

Speaker 19:52

Wow.

Speaker 1 19:53

So part of my preparation was hearing the phrase, Peju, before I unleash you on the world, I have work to do on you. I have work to do in you. So I say to people now, to leaders, before you can move forward, you need to move inward. And part of moving inward is to move upward because the shift happens in your mind frame. So I could have become bitter and vengeful and hateful and decided, I'm gonna get back at those people who shut the doors in my face. When I make something of myself, I'm gonna show the energy. I say the energy that you spend envying and wanting to get back at people, use that energy to better yourself. Use that energy to pour love into yourself, use that energy to appreciate and champion people who are doing well. That's good energy. So, what I have been left with when all was said and done was that this season of my life is an invitation to co-create with the creator. I have no better way to say it. I just know I love the invitation. I love what I'm birthing through words and poetry. I wrote something very special over the weekend because I just had a wave of inspiration. I wrote my manifesto as a mom. And just when you birth something in pain, especially when it when it has to do with your children, you know that essence of being a mother bear and a tiger mom. When you birth something in pain and purpose and you step back, what what stares back at you is just promise. Promise that good times are still ahead. They're here and they're still coming. So don't give up.

Speaker 21:58

Wow, you just took me. On a lovely journey there. I think what I held on to was seed. You've planted that seed. That seed is hope. It's not just about you, but it's what God has given to you to fulfill. And so when we're waiting, we should understand our strength is being renewed as we wait and not be filled with bitterness and anger, which we take out on others as well. So thanks for sharing that. Again, the expression was so beautiful. I'm sure everyone is wowed. Okay. That journey from a shy child, finding her voice in journals to an author who had to self-publish to be heard is so powerful. Now you're an official delegate at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. What does it feel like to have completed that arc, to take your voice from the private page to a global stage?

Speaker 1 23:00

Yes. Part of that journey is feeling the fear and doing it. They say, you know, you hear this phrase, do it scared. Do it afraid. And I'm doing a lot of these performances and these invitations to speak. I'm doing it afraid. I don't take any invitation to speak for granted. Whether that's to a small parity event that has asked me to do it for free or to do it for a really low amount because that's what they can afford, or to a big corporate event that are paying big money. I just think what a privilege. What a privilege it is for people to hear truth spoken through me. What a privilege it is to speak life into people. And so what I love is to cherish the private voice more than the public voice. Because the public voice, today they can love you, tomorrow they can disagree with you, the next they can criticize you, and then they admire you, and then they want more of you. For me, the private voice is where I get my most confirmation that this is my calling. This is my calling. It's where I do my preparation. Because again, if I started to take this for granted, I'd just be telling myself, I can do this. I just need to rock up on stage and no, no, no. I have a gig I'm preparing for on Wednesday in the shower this morning. I was practicing. This morning, as I woke up, I was being given words, phrase it this way, this is how you ended. I just think it's an honor to grow in your craft. And part of growing is allow your preparation to be as excellent as your delivery. Right. Because people are counting on you, people have paid money for you, people have taken time to be seated there to hear you. It is a privilege that I don't take for granted.

Speaker 25:14

I can see that. I mean, anyone who has the opportunity to hear you speak would know that you're coming from a place of introspection. You've also recently become the director of storytelling and engagement for Core Leaders International. It feels like your entire life's journey has been training for a role where your formal job is to identify and share impactful stories from a community. How does it feel to have your personal hard-won skill become your professional mission?

Speaker 1 25:50

It is exciting. Life is meant to be exciting. And every growth spurt, we know children and babies go through growth spurts, and it's a period of marvel where you're like, wow! From crawling to walking to jumping to running. I feel like as adults, we need to celebrate our growth spurts. So for me, this role as director of core storytelling and engagement at core leaders international is confirmation. By that I mean I can't remember the man who said we live life forwards, but we reflect backwards. When I talk to young people, I say to them, reflection is not a luxury, it's a necessity. In this fast-paced world of AI and Chat GPT and instant, instant, instant, a lot of young people are not taking the time to pause, to reflect. And dare I say, a lot of adults are not either. It's on to the next thing, onto the next thing. There is power in the pause. And in that pause, you reflect. And as you reflect, you're given the gift of gratitude where you can look back and say, that makes sense. Those dots, yeah. And so for me, this role helps me to reflect to three years ago when I got that invitation to step into more, and I did it scared. And the invitation was, PG, what makes your soul sing? And I was like, I know it, but I'm scared, I can't do it. Now the reflection is wow. For such a time as this, I had to have said yes. I'm so glad I said yes. I have been growing into a season of now here I am. And the power of reflection is it gives you vision, you cast vision. Part of the poem that I crafted on at the weekend, I'm sitting there thinking, where might I be invited to perform this poem? World stage, United Nations, I'm coming.

Speaker 28:23

That's wonderful. I just love how you have proclaimed where you're going to perform next. And the gratitude comes from your self-reflection and understanding what you've achieved and how far you've come. And it's such a great way to position life and everything we do.

unknown 28:44

Okay.

Speaker 28:45

That mission to empower others has been a long time theme. For 10 years, you ran a mothers' empowerment program with the goal of empowering mothers to speak out, reach out, and get out. How much of that work was fueled by your own journey of learning to speak out?

Speaker 1 29:07

I love, I love mothers. I have huge respect for mothers, and I feel with mothers the inadequacy of the understanding of the role and the impact. There's a book that I read when my children were younger, and it talked about the need to care for children, the need to empower and protect children. But then the author went one step backward and said, you need to do the same for the mothers. You need to protect mothers, you need to empower mothers, you need to support mothers, be a crown and a circle of goodness around mothers. Because if mothers are not well, children are not well. If mothers are not well, they can't impart faith, hope, and love, the greatest of these, the greatest of these things to their children. So the the leaders of tomorrow, the future for tomorrow is slightly out of shape because the mothers were not well. And so that period of my life was such a stepping stone and a springboard to some of the work and a lot of the work I do now. Me alongside these women felt this sense of judgment. Why are you a stay-at-home mom? Why are you taking time out? Oh, good for you. Do you just go out to spas and have coffee all day? And a lot of the judgment was coming from other mothers. Other mothers, sadly enough. And I got this sense that women, mothers needed to be poured into. I did. I was thirsty, hungry, lonely for this community of empowered mothers. I felt I'd waited quite a while for somebody else to start this platform, and I initiated conversations with older women who didn't want to, it was not their calling at that time. And I felt this sense of you do it. So I did it. And for me, the premise was women, you matter. Besides being wives and besides being mothers, you women, you matter. So we explored topics like your gifts matter, your finances matter, your prayer life matters, your friendships matter, your scars matter, your wounds matter. We explored your sexual health matters. We went there. It was amazing. And I felt this sense that I needed to unravel within this group, within myself and these moms. This time of raising young kids will surely pass. But if you're not ready for the next season, you will miss it. So let's grow together through this season, vision casting for the future where our children will not be so dependent on us or so reliant on us. Who do we want to be when that time comes? Let's start now by investing in ourselves, by investing in our womanhood, investing in our minds, investing in the work of our hands. So when that time comes, we're ready.

Speaker 32:39

Wow, what a circle of trust. Having women, mothers, wives coming together and talking about real life situations without judgment. There needs to be more of these so we can appreciate ourselves even more because the world can be really cold, especially for a mother. It can be very lonely. So things like initiatives like these help us to have a voice and to speak out about our experiences and feel safe again. So, Peju, your entire journey of finding your voice culminated in your book, A Poetic Odyssey of Proclamations. As a final gift to our listeners, could you share a short piece from that book? One proclamation that speaks directly to the woman listening who is in the middle of her own battle to find her voice.

Speaker 1 33:46

My longest proclamation in this book is on self-love. And I decided that self-love had to be the longest proclamation because we don't talk about it enough. And we pay lip service to self-love. I heard a phrase once which I loved, and it says women set themselves on fire to keep others warm. We burn ourselves up, we burn ourselves out, we burn ourselves down to keep others warm. And I don't think that is the goal of womanhood or motherhood. So there's a sense of reframing self-love. And when women say to me, I'm a caretaker, I'm the caretaker, I'm the caretaker of everyone in my family, immediate and extended, I say, you're not the caretaker because you don't take care. You are the caregiver, you give care, you give, give. You're giving care, care, giving care to your husband, giving care to your children, giving care to your parents, giving you're constantly giving. I want you to be the caretaker. There's a reframe. So when women say to me, Oh, I find it difficult to ask for help, take care. I find it difficult to make time for myself, and I do too, by the way. Take care. So this is self-love. And for me, self-love supersedes shame, which we so often feel as women, supersedes guilt, which we so often fall into as mothers. Self-love is your love. It's the fullness of giving yourself permission to breathe, to live, to show up, to speak up, to shake things up, to spark things up, to know you matter, your voice matters. How do I love me? Let me count the ways. Not only on good days when I feel the sun's rays. I long to gaze at my current phase and express self-love with a powerful phrase. I am a beautiful blaze. This is my current craze as I navigate life's maze. Watch me dazzle and daze. I will amaze. My glorious reflection says that I love me in all ways till the end of my days, even as my hair glows with craze.

Speaker 36:57

Beautiful. Just beautiful. But you after everything you've navigated, what does that one word voice mean to you today?

Speaker 1 37:16

Voice means vulnerability. Voice means vision. Voice means values. And if you bring them all together when you're vulnerable and you hold true to your values, whether people agree with you or not, you are stepping into your vision for your life. We're not living for the applause of people. People are fickle, they will love you today, they will ignore you tomorrow. Your voice matters. And if you're not speaking and sharing your voice, if you're not finding your voice or refinding your voice or amplifying your voice, consider it as stealing from society.

Speaker 38:11

Wow. Okay, that is a profound way to end this episode. Peju, um, I absolutely loved our conversation today, and I thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to share your story and your words of wisdom and your beautiful poetry with us. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 38:38

You're welcome. It's been a joy. I love the power, the depth, the height, the breadth, the length of the questions. They have allowed me to grow. Thank you, Lolita. It's been a joy.

Speaker 38:56

Dear listeners, I believe Peju has talked about how to look through the lens of gratitude and live. Introspection is not a choice, it's a necessity. How do you see yourself? What is truly holding you back? It's you. So we need to take care of ourselves and be the best we can be. Our words are powerful. We should use them to build up. Your voice matters. And I quote Peju, if we do not use our voice, we should consider it stealing from society. I hope you sit with that and understand that it is your duty to use your voice. The world needs to hear your wisdom accumulated throughout your journey to make it a better place. I'd like to thank you all once again for listening in and do have a great day filled with gratitude and love.