What’s Going on INSIDE Our Girls? These girls cracked our heart open!
Most of us know how hard women are on themselves, right? How much pressure we feel to be perfect, and do it all, but never feel like it’s enough? But what may shock you is how hard our girls are on themselves.
At our book launch party last month, we asked girls of all ages (from 7 years old to 17) to come up on stage and share what’s going on inside their minds and hearts, to reveal what their Inner Mean Girls beat them up about, to expose how our culture of busyness, pressure and stress is impacting them.
What they said hit home at how early these fearful, sabotaging voices start in us:
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“I am worried.” (at the age of 7!)
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“I feel pressured to be perfect.”
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“My Inner Mean Girl tells me I shouldn’t be too sure of myself.”
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“My Inner Mean Girl tells me if I try, I might fail.”
Watch this video and HEAR what our girls are feeling on the INSIDE:
The hearts of every woman in that audience that day cracked open to understand:
Our girls follow our lead and do what we DO (even if we SAY something different). If we self-sabotage and self-bully so do they.
Which means…
If we start choosing self-compassion over self-criticism, self-trust over self-sacrifice, so will they.
With Mother’s Day coming tomorrow, first we wanted to say THANK YOU to every mother, aunt, godmother, grandmother, and sister for choosing to love yourself. For every moment YOU choose self-compassion instead of self-criticism, you impact every girl in your life.
Sometimes it can feel like you have to do something big like end world hunger to make a difference, when in reality you ARE MAKING A HUGE DIFFERENCE in your choice to love yourself and be an example others can follow. That is enough.
So today we wanted to invite you to join us as we take a stand to bring awareness to self-bullying and get the tools of self-compassion, self-trust and self-love to girls and children around the world, as well as women!
How can you help girls (and boys!) everywhere…
Our intention is to get these tools into the hands and hearts of as many children, parents, teachers and schools as we can. We’ve made some good progress so far by:
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Testing a full month of self-love curriculum in a school in Chicago, where 160 middle school kids took a pact to end negative self talk and support each other when they have “inner meanie” attacks
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Partnering with Girls Inc. and donating $1,000 from our San Francisco book event so that they can continue to create programs that help girls become strong, smart & bold.
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Exploring summer and fall Inner Mean Girl Reform School and Inner Wisdom Super Power programs with Girls Inc.
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Creating self-bullying curriculum that schools can use in October during anti-bullying month.
We are also considering creating a parent’s guide which would include “Inner Meanie” De-Activating tools that work with girls and boys, as well as super power tools for strengthening self-trust and the voice of their Inner Wisdom.
We want to know… What do you think?
We would love and appreciate your feedback and ideas! Please email us – Amy and Christine – at support@innermeangirl.com and tell us:
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What resources and information would you like as a parent, teacher, therapist, coach or person who works with or has children in their life?
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What organizations would be good for us to work with or to know about – to partner with, speak with or collaborate with? And if you have a contact or can provide an introduction, please share.
We will read and respond to every email you send us.
We KNOW that the Inner Mean Girl and Inner Bully concept works wonders with kids (as well as us adults) – so we appreciate any thoughts you have to share with us.
We believe that it is possible for us to put a stop to the cycle of negative self-talk and self-abuse. The truth is that it starts with you. When you take a stand to reform your Inner Mean Girl and empower your Inner Wisdom, increasing your self-love and self-compassion, you become a model for what is possible for our girls.
As you treat yourself kindly, especially in moments of failure or challenge, you will become like a lighthouse of self-love, showing the women and girls around you how to come home to their hearts.