Reluctant Really?

In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I ought to start out by telling you that I was actually thrown out of the Girl Scouts when I was little. Consequently when my daughter came to me in 1st grade begging to join the troop at her school I was...well...reluctant to say the least. But, in the way of parents everywhere, I swallowed my pride and said "what a good idea."

For the first year I was pretty hands off. But then I started to feel guilty because she loved it and the leaders spent a lot of time with the girls and I really ought to step up. So I agreed to take the camping training. Somewhere in the middle of that chilly drizzly weekend in the woods I saw a really experienced leader teach some young girls how to light a match. I will never forget the awestruck, proud, empowered look on those little faces...they looked like they had conquered fire! And at that moment I drank the Kool Aid.

Girl Scouts is not about Cookies or crafting or little girls in uniforms. It is what you as a leader make it. For me it is about empowering girls. It is about showing them how to walk through their fears and how to stand up for themselves, and more than anything, how competent they can be. Camping is not about camping it's about sleeping in the woods and being away from mom and finding out you can handle it. Cooking is not about cooking it's about learning to use a knife and light a fire. It's also about learning how to think of others as you plan meals that everyone will and can eat. Everything we do seems to have a higher life lesson. In the end all of it is about Courage, Character and Confidence and if we do it right it is all frosted with a thick layer of fun.

Now, six years later my world seems to revolve around my troop. Currently I lead a troop of 32 girls in 4 grades at 9 different schools. Part of me looks at that sentence and thinks "how the hell did I let that happen?" In my defense I have to tell you that in the last 5 years we have been Camping, Backpacking, Skiing, Ice Skating, Surfing, Kayaking, Rock Climbing, and a dozen other adventures I can't think of at the moment. I now have buddies to go out and play in the woods with and I am grateful for their spirit, their sense of adventure, and their willingness to follow me on whatever crazy adventure I want to lead them on next. It's been a privilege and an honor to spend time with my girls and I am grateful every time we get out there and try something new!

And to be sure, it only works because I have great help, and amazing co-leaders for each individual grade. But really it's fun because I have great girls!

This year my oldest girls are in 6th grade and we are starting a new adventure AKA puberty. Probably the funnest thing I have ever done as a Scout leader is to bring up the fact that with all the adventures we go on, at least one of them is bound to get a period on one of our trips...I have never had 10  more engaged, riveted, interested girls in a meeting! But that is a story for another time!