Honor the Girl

Think of your teen daughter. Imagine you are her, for just a day.

You get out of bed, put your Ipod on shuffle and listen to lyrics that, well, they are so degrading to girls I can’t write them. On the ride to school, you pass billboards showing beautiful, thin girls selling products or being the object of a man’s attention and wonder if you need to lose a few pounds or be sexier. At school, your girlfriends gossip in graphic details about their sexual encounters over the weekend and you worry that you haven’t had sex with enough guys. At home you turn on the TV and watch guys paw scantily clad girls in music videos. You worry that maybe you are not pretty enough for a man to want to have sex with you. You log onto MySpace and are greeted with comments from girls at school telling you that you are “Ugly and should die.” An instant message pops up from a Facebook friend, asking if you will give him head the next time he sees you, even though you hardly know him. You write back “Hahahaha” but feel offended. Another friend sends you a link to a free porn site he is watching. Curious, you click on it. You watch two men slap, spank, spit on, and insert themselves into every orifice of the girl who sounds like she is enjoying it, but you aren’t quite sure. Should you be letting your boyfriend do those things to you? Is that what he wants? You are a bit aroused but feel dirty all at once. Before you go to sleep, you thumb through the latest magazine and read about the ten top things guys wish you knew how to do in bed and wonder how you measure up. Worried, you wonder if you your guy will leave you if you can’t do all ten things. Maybe the next time you are with him you should have a few shots of tequila to be more courageous to making him happy.

How are you feeling right now? Maybe you are incredulous. This can’t be reality, can it? Unfortunately, it is the reality many of our girls face, day in day out. Imagine how confused, overwhelmed, disrespected and unsure of themselves the world makes them feel.

How did our world get this crazy for teens? Garbage. Not the kind filling our landfills, but rather the kind that fills our hearts and minds. We have come to use the garbage of sex and violence to get people to buy things or to “buy into” things. Sex can be an amazing, intimate act between people, but we have debased it just one of its facets: lust. We’ve lost our moral compass as well as the map to human kindness, empathy and compassion. The world is in an economic crisis as well as a human crisis. But, there is a way to clean up this mess. It just takes three words: Honor the Girl.

We are focused on saving Mother Earth and turning around our economic woes. Global warming, sustainability, economics, are all buzz words of the day. But we are ahead of ourselves. To save Mother Earth and our economy, we start by saving the MOTHERS of the earth. They in turn will help save us all.

Girls can do the one thing that men cannot. Women have babies. What we teach our teen girls today are the lessons we will deal with in her children tomorrow. At the moment, the lesson teen girls are learning is that to be valued, to be loved, you must be, and I apologize, I know of no other word to use, F*@k-able. What types of mother’s are we creating when the F-word is what we honor? We are creating mothers who carry psychological damage and have low self-respect from today’s constant bombardment of messages and images that disrespect her. That gets passed down to the next generation in many ways. We will all pay an enormous price for that.

Helping teen girls respect themselves will help heal our world’s woes. The balance of estrogen and progesterone in girls’ brains hardwires them to be the nurturers. Women bring peace and solace when you honor and respect them for being the amazing, powerful people they are meant to be.  Let us respect the feminine energy for what it is, life bearing, as opposed to corrupting it to being simply a source of gratification for a man’s sexual needs.

Teach girls to respect themselves and you teach them how to help the next generation respect themselves and others. And so it will go. When people respect themselves, they are less prone to behavior that is destructive to others or self. That creates calm communities that have more resources for solving big issues like economic woes, or finding solutions to helping the planet thrive.

Think how many of our worlds ills could be cured if mother’s simply had less wounds from growing up in a culture that disrespects them. Think what could happen if every mother had enough respect to teach her children that they must respect others, and they should never kill another mother’s child. What if that message stuck?  Perhaps the next generation will look for peaceful solutions instead of waging war.  The wonderful possibilities of where we go as human beings and the future of our planet depends on whether or not we learn to Honor the Girl. It’s that simple.

Give the BEST Christmas Present Ever … and it’s TOTALLY FREE!

The holiday’s are upon us. Mom’s are worried about their holiday budget and how to make their daughter’s happy with less than what they got last year.  But there is one gift, that you can give that is so precious, and priceless yet totally free. It will put a smile on your daughters face and help bridge any distance between you. All it takes is some time and thought.

Give your daughter a  “You are a Precious Gift!” letter.  Here’s how you do it.

Outline what your pregnancy was like. Write how happy you were, or how scared. But start at the start of her life… when she was inside of you. Share your memories with her.

Outline about her being an infant, a toddler,  a young child, and then a teen. What are the happy memories that stand out? What do you love most about her? Write about them. Let her know you love her.

What message do you want to end the letter with? A call to action? i.e. “I want to spend more time with you laughing in the coming years.” Or a thank you? “Thank you for gracing my life.” Or, a promise? “I’ll love you till the day I die.”

Find pretty paper to write your letter on, or type and print. You can add stickers to it, or draw or add pictures etc. Be as creative as you like.

Wrap the letter in a pretty box and tie it with a colorful bow. Write on the tag, Special Gift.

After she reads the letter ask if she wants to know anything more, or hear more stories about her growing up and how much you love her.  Offer her the invitation to have a conversation with you. If she declines, that’s OK. She’s a teenager! It’s nice to make the gesture though, and ask what she needs.

Make sure your letter is filled with love and appreciation for her. This is NOT the place to write advice, or to admonish her or say “I told you so!” Open your heart. Write from that place. Give her the gift of love.  Let her know she is a gift to you.  Whatever that which is greater than us, gave her to you. She came through YOU to find her way into the world. She doesn’t belong to you, she belongs to life itself. But aren’t you lucky that she found her way her through you? Let her know that! Happy Holidays.

Aging Gracefully

Are you settling into middle age as your daughter moves into her teen years? Some mothers have a difficult time watching the glow of their own “blossom” fade as their daughter blooms more every day. Although middle age (and beyond) hold its own magic, it can be hard to watch yourself age. It doesn’t help matters if your daughter is also at the age where she thinks you are suddenly the most annoying, unhip, uncool person on the planet.

I remember watching my daughter at her middle school graduation. She was full of hopes and dreams and looked more grown up than I had ever seen her before. It was the first time I acknowledged I was getting older, and she was turning into a young woman. I remember thinking, “I need to pass the baton to her.” By mentally letting go, and telling myself that she could run with the “baton,” allowed me to step more fully into my own place in the circle of life. Read more

What Are You Focused On

Recently, I had the opportunity to walk the beach at Ponte Vedra, Florida, to look for fossils hidden among the broken shells and debris. It has been years since I last “fossiled.” However, I remembered what size, shape and color to look for, and soon, I was focused on the fossils, not on the shells and the million other things strewn on the beach. It was easy to find the treasure I searched for.

How about you? Is it easy to see the treasure in your teen daughter? Or are you focusing on the debris, and the broken things? I hope you are focusing on the treasure, and giving your daughter credit for the good things she is doing. Whenever someone in my group found a great fossil, we celebrated with a “high five.” It felt great that other’s shared in our small victory. Are you sharing in your daughter’s victories? What has she done lately that deserved a “high five?”

We mom’s know that to raise a daughter, we need to teach them about life. But we often forget that teaching is far more than simply pointing out what our daughters are doing “wrong.” Yet many moms focus only on the negative. They forget to point out and celebrate the good. Read more

Spend Less Here, MORE Here!

Now that most of us Moms are tightening our belt as we ride the financial rollercoaster, (or is it more like riding Drop Zone?) we are spending less time at the mall shopping. What are you doing with the time you used to spend on accumulating THINGS?

I hope you are using that time on other things such as personal growth, (now is a great time to learn to face change bravely) and building your relationship with your loved ones. I’ll address personal growth for moms in my next blog. Today, let’s look at your relationship with your daughter.

First, some mom’s are saying they feel guilty over not being able to provide things as they used to for their daughters. This is understandable. There is great joy in being able to give our girls things that make them happy. The problem is, most of us are conditioned to think of and measure happiness in terms of possessions. Read more

Is Your Teen Daughter More Unbearable in This Bear Market?

Moms, do you notice when you are worried about “big things,” that your daughter’s behavior becomes more unbearable? Has she changed her behavior, or are you simply on stress overload?

My hunch is, you are on stress overload, and your daughter’s normal teen behavior gets on your nerves more.

On the other hand, maybe your daughter is acting out more than usual. Our teens feel the palpable tension in the air as we all watch our savings, our kid’s college funds, maybe even our next mortgage payment vanish as the free fall on Wall Street continues.

No matter if your daughter’s behavior is real or imaginary, here are some simple tips to deal with these stressful times. Read more