“When you teach a woman, you teach a nation.”
That’s what Lena West of Influence Expansion said in last week’s interview for the Confidence Chronicles.
She continued, “What’s the first thing that you [Cherry] did? …you met me and you wanted to share me with your audience. So when women learn something, we want to take that information and share it with the next person.” So true. And it’s evident again this week as I want to share with all of you Rachel Simmons’ TEDxWomen talk in New York about
Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence
building resilience in girls/women. Rachel shares the stage with a 13 year girl, Claire Sannini, who had been shunned and devastated by friends until she attended The Girls Leaderships Institute where she learned how to have healthy relationships and, among other things, “There’s a better friend out there for you.”
If you have daughters, granddaughters, sisters or female friends, I recommend you CLICK on this link you take the 15 minutes to listen. Or click on this link: Rachel Simmons, building resilience in girls
A Snippet From The Presentation:
I can’t conclude without talking about the powerful role older women play for girls.
My mom had a powerful role in my own inner resume development. She was a teacher at the school where my brother and I went, and she would take us after school for snacks. And we would go to a restaurant, we would go down the cafeteria line, and something would happen, I could see it coming from a mile away, and it drove me insane. My mother would start to feel the french fries on the little trolley of food. And if they weren’t hot enough, she would ask the fry cook to reheat them. I want you to understand this was the most humiliating thing my mother could ever, ever do to me. And I would stand there, and I would just be bursting into flames. “Mom, just eat the fries! Stop being so rude! The fries are fine!” My mother looked at me like I was insane.
Now, years later I was skiing in my late twenties. I pulled over to eat. Sat down, ate a french fry. And without thinking about it, walked right over to the person who had made them for me and said, “Could you please reheat these fries?” And in that moment, I realized that my mom had given me the script to ask for what I needed. The permission, and the sense of authority. The sense that I was entitled to that. I wasn’t ready for it at the age of 9, 10, 11, 22. But when I was ready, I was able to draw on it. The moral of this story, ladies and gentlemen: Embarrass your daughters.
Who Is Rachel Simmons And Why You Should Listen To Her
Rachel Simmons is an internationally acclaimed author and educator. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls and The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence. The co-founder of the Girls Leadership Institute, Rachel develops programs that empower girls to be emotionally intelligent, assertive young adults. A consultant to the Center for Work and Life at Smith College, Rachel was the host of the PBS special “A Girl’s Life” and appears regularly in national media.
What story do you have about learning resilience? What are you teaching your daughters? Share via comments and let other people learn from your experience.
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