Today was the first official meeting of a new club that myself and two colleagues are heading up at Ed Harris called Girl's League. The intent of this club is to create a safe environment where girls can make and foster positive relationships and self-esteem.
The kickoff was a fun, positive experience and I am really looking forward to getting to know each of the girls through the year.
After introducing ourselves, we had the girls think about one woman they look up to and why. The answers they gave were varied. Some girls could barely muster the courage to say who it was they looked up to, let alone why. Some girls spoke of looking up to Michelle Obama, Oprah and Tyra Banks because they are all successful and do good things in this world. Some looked up to the first college graduate in their families. Many girls looked up to their moms and grandmothers for raising their children without a husband's help and/or surviving a difficult childhood and becoming independent and successful women despite.
I shared about the woman I look up to most in this world, my Mom, and felt blessed to be able to relate to what some of the girls had said. I look up to my mom for SO many reasons: she is beautiful, generous, hospitable, strong,intelligent, thoughtful and has a solid faith. But even beyond that, she became this beautiful person out of an incredibly difficult childhood of an alcoholic father, (at times) raising herself, starting work from an early age to support herself, and on. She didn't have a mother who mothered her children consistently well, yet she is the best mother I have ever met. She didn't have wealth in her early life, but she doesn't take for granted what she is blessed with now. She experienced pain and abuse that many haven't and hopefully won't, yet she is joyful and uses what she has learned from her past to encourage and change others lives. My Mom is proof to me that it doesn't matter where you come from or what negative, external things you experienced in your past, the choices you make in life for yourself are what determine the type of person you will become. That makes me proud and happy, and I hope it encouraged my girls as well...
The rest of the club time we talked about what we envisioned for the club. To jump start the "getting to know you" process, we asked each girl to answer two questions on a piece of purple paper before they left:
1) What do you expect and/or want from Girl's League this year?
2) What do you like most about being a girl?
We got great feedback which I compiled into two lists to deliver to the girls during their classes tomorrow. I'm hoping this will excited them to come back for the next meeting. I enjoyed reading through all of their thoughtful responses. However,if you refer back to one of my previous postings, you may not be surprised that I was struck again by the curse of the NO boundaries student who also happened to join Girl's League.
This is her answer to the 2nd question (note where I'm pointing) for your viewing pleasure...
