What do our daughters need to hear? (Part 1)

What is it that our daughters need to hear?

This school year, I spent eight Thursday afternoons at various schools with the lovely Kardivas.  Kardivas is a district-wide, after-school character club for 5th and 6th grade girls.  These remarkable young women of the most tender age are already wading knee-deep in the fast moving currents of adolescence.  It is pure joy to visit them and their mentors, sponsors and parents who desire all the best for these precious, thoughtful girls.

Eight times over, I tell them my story and help them think about theirs.  What is it they especially might need to hear?

Somewhere in the hour, I show them a picture of two girls, sisters ages 10 and 12, who live on a massive trash dump in the Phillippines.  It is hot, humid and you can only imagine the squish and the stench as the sisters spend hours before and after school slopping through the refuse collecting bits of food and scrap to sell for their family.

I ask our freshly scrubbed, sheltered, and now very quiet 5th graders what they think?

"It's not right."
"It makes me want to go there and help them."

What do our daughters need to hear?  How's this for a less-than-perfect, but a starting-somewhere start?

We have all been given a unique, innate gift, maybe two.  No one has every gift (parents - please take note).  No one has no gifts.  We have not been given these abilities in order to be more successful and more attractive than the rest, but to help set things right in the world.  

What would it look like if 40 girls in the 5th grade were observing others carefully, helping friends and family identify their unique gifts?  What would happen if those 40 were to make it a daily habit to speak out loud, thoughtfully and specifically, where they saw good and right in their friends?

I ask each Thursday group how they know what gifts they have been given?   They roll out a stunning, chatty parade of talents, passions and gifts:


"I'm kind"
"I'm funny"
"I'm good at music"
"I love animals"
"I'm good with babies".
"I like to write"

No one tells me her gift is being skinny or pretty. 

What do our daughters need to hear?
What do we need to remember again and again as women swimming in this culture?

 2011 AAA coaching retreat, Austin

Every inch of our hearts and our world is out of sorts and many things are not right.  As much as we live in beauty, plenty and opportunity, even here there is much to set right.  We can use our gifts to set things right at noisy lunch tables, sleepovers, classrooms, friendships, our own communities, our city and even/especially the dumps in the Phillippines.

I notice in you, dear one, that you have a very special gift(s) of______ that has been given to you, especially for this time.  It gives me and others such great joy to see you using that gift to think about others, even at great cost to you.

It makes you more beautiful than you'll ever know.