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Suzanne Anderssen attended the recent Girl to Woman Festival in Lennox Head with her 10 year-old daughter. She shares with us the significance of the G2W message in their lives.
My ten-year old daughter walked away with a lot from this year’s (2018) Girl to Woman Festival! To start with, the gift bags were amazing! They contained a high quality t-shirt (in the correct size and totally wearable), a gorgeous children’s book (I Am Beauty-full Just for Being Me), rose bath salts from L’Alchimiste, samples of mi’essence organic skin products, a fashion hair bow, discount offers and more. Over the course of the day she handmade a batch of fruit and nut balls, her own personally scented perfumed oil, a family of ‘rock critters’, a real flower garland in her newly braided, sparkly hair, a handmade bracelet of beads and a container of blue slime.
She also had a delightful time sharing the day with her best friend, loved the peppermint-licorice iced tea and other yummies from the Belle G2W café, had some crazy moments at the dress up photo booth and was privileged to hear a performance by Glorious Music. What a day, topped off with a swim at the beautiful Lennox Head beach just across the road!
My ten-year old daughter walked away with a lot from this year’s (2018) Girl to Woman Festival! To start with, the gift bags were amazing! They contained a high quality t-shirt (in the correct size and totally wearable), a gorgeous children’s book (I Am Beauty-full Just for Being Me), rose bath salts from L’Alchimiste, samples of mi’essence organic skin products, a fashion hair bow, discount offers and more. Over the course of the day she handmade a batch of fruit and nut balls, her own personally scented perfumed oil, a family of ‘rock critters’, a real flower garland in her newly braided, sparkly hair, a handmade bracelet of beads and a container of blue slime.
She also had a delightful time sharing the day with her best friend, loved the peppermint-licorice iced tea and other yummies from the Belle G2W café, had some crazy moments at the dress up photo booth and was privileged to hear a performance by Glorious Music. What a day, topped off with a swim at the beautiful Lennox Head beach just across the road!
But that’s only what I saw with my eyes.
I could feel the dedication of the festival organisers in the fairy lights, the decorated tents, the quality of the beauty products available and the kindness in the eyes of all the Girl 2 Woman t-shirt-wearing volunteers. And I could feel the importance of having the festival in the first place.
Children are born free, open, loving, playful, intelligent, cheeky and ever so sweet; and then often (usually), they slide into anxiousness, restlessness; they’re afraid, unsure, scared they don’t fit in, distracted teens and later adults, and possibly parents, as the cycle readily continues.
Children are born free, open, loving, playful, intelligent, cheeky and ever so sweet; and then often (usually), they slide into anxiousness, restlessness; they’re afraid, unsure, scared they don’t fit in, distracted teens and later adults, and possibly parents, as the cycle readily continues.
But somewhere in this I know we all have a choice for this not to be our reality.
And talking about choices...
Last year I was in a supermarket in Washington DC, USA. Choices ... choices ... choices galore! Each aisle was stacked with an unimaginable amount of choice. I couldn’t believe the cereal aisle! Every conceivable kind – cinnamon banana blueberry mulberry blackberry blast apple raisin maple honey crisp choco crunch mini multi pebbles clusters squares rounds puffs bunches frost bran flake strawberry almond pecan oat wheat corn rice – (you can breathe now!) in any size carton, flavour or texture. How is it possible to have so many combinations?!
Why am I going on about the choices of cereal in supermarkets?
Well, returning to the G2W festival, I sat in three of the workshops available for parents (and girls) that were facilitated by Natalie Benhayon, G2W Director and a team of specialist ‘girl/mother/father-empowerers’, and was taken back to that supermarket aisle in the USA.
Today, girls have an abundance of choices too, many in-your-face-type choices – no different to that cereal aisle. What to wear, what to eat, what to play, who to play with, who not to play with, what to say, what to laugh at, what to listen to, who to listen to, when to go to bed, when to wake up, what to read, what to write, what to watch, how to speak, how to listen, how to behave ... Endless choices.
A mother of a newborn baby can keep the baby close to her; she can make pretty much all the decisions for the baby. But only up to a certain point. Beyond that, the child begins making his/her own choices, the mother/father no longer being with the child every moment of the day. Our children continue to grow up, and continue to expand their repertoire of choice making. They spend more time with others and less with their parents, neither a good nor bad thing, it’s just the way it is. And with that, comes choices.
How does a child know what choice to make when they are flooded with so many options?
The million-dollar question of course, but the answer is very simple and forms the foundations of the Girl 2 Woman festival:
We carry the knowing of truth inside us from the second we are born. That newborn baby knows exactly what temperature he needs to be, when he needs food, when he needs to be held, when he needs space. And he doesn’t wait to be asked! Knowing what we need in any given moment is our god-given right as a human being; this knowing-what-we-need is true wisdom and doesn’t depend on our age.
The opening workshop of the day shared this understanding. The workshop was about exploring ‘how to stay connected with our girls as they develop their independence and navigate the many phases of change ahead’. The ‘many phases of change ahead’ contain the abundance of choices available; we can either feel bombarded and overwhelmed by these choices or we can make our choices based on the fact we DO know what is true and right for each of us, honestly.
I know I don’t make many choices for my ten year old these days. In fact, for most of her short life I gave over the choices to her, seeing my job as parent to simply reduce the choices available – this shoe or that one – knowing she had it in her to make the choice that was true or right for her.
The older she gets, the fact is that more choice becomes available, but I am less available to limit the choices.
I thus see my job now as empowering her to know SHE KNOWS. I will still say NO at times (likely often!), providing her with boundaries when there is simply no choice to make (I’m sure she will thank me for this one day!). And with her knowing she is wise, she is able to walk down that cereal aisle and say no to the choices on the shelves that do not support her.
We both definitely walked away from the festival with far more than what we were carrying in our hands.
By Suzanne Anderssen, B.Comm, Dip Av, mother, daughter, wife, friend
I know I don’t make many choices for my ten year old these days. In fact, for most of her short life I gave over the choices to her, seeing my job as parent to simply reduce the choices available – this shoe or that one – knowing she had it in her to make the choice that was true or right for her.
The older she gets, the fact is that more choice becomes available, but I am less available to limit the choices.
I thus see my job now as empowering her to know SHE KNOWS. I will still say NO at times (likely often!), providing her with boundaries when there is simply no choice to make (I’m sure she will thank me for this one day!). And with her knowing she is wise, she is able to walk down that cereal aisle and say no to the choices on the shelves that do not support her.
We both definitely walked away from the festival with far more than what we were carrying in our hands.
By Suzanne Anderssen, B.Comm, Dip Av, mother, daughter, wife, friend
