I ran a girls group with a group of girls between the ages of 10 and 17 for three years. We’d meet up once a week over Zoom to talk about sexuality, relationships, our changing bodies, and so much more. The group began as an educational group, but it became a safe emotional space that each of us both relished and relied on.
Here are 10 of the biggest things I learned from the girls I talked with:
Sexuality is Fluid
Girls often came to the group with questions like “Am I bisexual?” or “If I fancy my friend and she’s a girl, does that mean I’m lesbian?” or “I think I might be straight. But everyone else seems to be bisexual or gay, should I be?”
They questioned their sexual orientation and their attractions over and over again. Some of them felt sure of an orientation or feeling, while others had doubts. This exploration of who we are attracted to, and what that means about us, is a completely natural — and even sometimes fun! — part of growing up.
After openly talking about sexuality, we all came to the conclusion that it really is very fluid. You don’t ever need to name your sexuality until or unless you want to and it feels empowering to do so. Even once you do it can change over time and so can how you talk about it.
It’s sad that being heterosexual is something that is often assumed of us, whilst anything other than that feels like it requires an elaborate coming out event. Every sexuality or sexual identity is as valid as the next. It’s a shame that sexuality has been so heavily scrutinized and scripted by society, politics, and religion.
Don’t feel pressured to have it all figured out, and don’t worry if your sexuality changes over time. It’s all okay, and it’s all normal! You can celebrate yourself in every expression of your sexuality, even if the rest of the world isn’t brave enough to do it with you.
There’s No One Thing That Makes Someone a ‘Woman’
One week, I posed the question, “What does it mean to be a woman?” The girls ummed and ahhed. By the end of the session, we couldn’t reach an answer.
Has it to do with body parts? And if it was, then where does that go? Does it mean you’re not a woman if you have smaller boobs or no boobs at all? Is it about beauty, how you choose to dress, or whether you wear makeup? Do you have to have your period to be a woman? Do you need to like the colour pink? Or want to be a mum?
Our answers to all of these questions were always “No. Definitely not.”
When we explored our individual identities, we found that there were more differences between us and our notions of being a woman than there were similarities. Because of this, we came to the conclusion that there isn’t a single way to be a woman, and therefore, what “being a woman” even is is something only each person who is a woman themself can determine, and only for themselves.
We are all unique individuals: the umbrella term ‘woman’ that we all get lumped under or choose often doesn’t tell us as much as we might assume.
Bodies Are Totally Freaky, and Also Totally Awesome
During puberty, your body seems to change overnight, making it hard to keep up with all the strange new bits of you. Armpit hairs, pubes, boobs, your period… it can all get pretty overwhelming and a little freaky.
In one session, we talked about all the changes the girls in the group were experiencing. At the start they all went quiet. It can feel embarrassing to open up about these things.
I remember being horrified at the changes my body went through during puberty, and frequently wondering whether it was happening to everyone or if it was just me. To break the ice, I opened the conversation with a story about the most embarrassing and bizarre change I remember noticing around age 13. I told them about when I discovered I had grown butt hair.
The girls laughed. Then they sighed with relief. Confessions of, “I’m getting that too!” followed.
From there, we went on to talk about how their newly developing bodies felt kind of foreign, and they were stuck between feeling ready to grow up and feelings of horror about what that looked like physically. The appearance of thick leg hairs and snail trails were just some of the changes the girls described. Some of them had bigger boobs and complained about them, whilst some of them didn’t and felt jealous of those who did.
Throughout our lives, most of us will get things like cellulite and acne and stretch marks, and eventually grow chin hairs and hairs in other places we didn’t expect. Everyone’s body is hairy and lumpy, and often just when you get used to it – it changes again.
All in all, bodies are totally freaky. But as you slowly get used to the ever-changing nature of what it means to be a human in a human body, you realize they’re totally awesome too!
Romantic Relationships Aren’t Disney-like
Waiting for your “other half?” Or a perfect partner who will compliment all your flaws and ride into the sunset with you? You might be waiting a long time. Maybe forever.
Throughout our time together, the girls described some romantic nightmares or disappointments they were experiencing. Boys that didn’t answer their text messages, girls that only liked them as friends, confusing situationships that left them dizzy and nervous, and questionable online connections with people they hadn’t met before.
Relationships aren’t ever perfect, because humans aren’t ever perfect. We are all just doing our best and more often than not, we get it wrong or simply have to learn how to be together over time.
It can be really revolutionary to redefine what a successful relationship is. It will look different for each of us, but perhaps it doesn’t have to mean sticking at it forever and reaching that always out of reach ‘Happily ever after.’ Maybe it’s more about having fun, navigating the imperfect bits as well as you can, connecting with another person emotionally, and learning something about yourself along the way.
I think when I was younger I would have enjoyed my relationships much more if I wasn’t desperately clinging onto romanticized and pre-scripted ideas of how they should be.
Friendships Can Be Your Rock and Be Rocky
One of the most important things in our lives are usually our friends. They can support us when life is tough, and tag along when we come up with outrageous plans.
But like romantic relationships, friendships can also be rocky sometimes. There can be ruptures, fights, disagreements, and sometimes you might grow apart altogether.
I’ve watched the girls in my group grieve friends they were losing, and saw the impact it had on their confidence and sense of well-being, even more so than with a loss of their romantic relationships. Losing friends is an unfortunate and crappy part of life. It’s especially common in your teenage years when everyone is figuring themselves out and trying desperately to fit in.
We all want our favorite friends to be in our lives forever, but who knows what the future will bring?
If you go through a friendship breakup, it’s okay — necessary, even, as with any loss — to grieve. Treat it as a breakup and look after yourself. Speak to your other friends about how it’s making you feel, look for support, and remember that more friendships are waiting for you on the horizon.
There’s No Right Way to Break Up With Someone, but There Are Definitely Some Wrong Ways
Romantic breakups are a theme throughout our lives. Whether ours or someone else’s, we talk about them a lot.
One time I asked the girls what the perfect breakup would look like for them. Of course, in an ideal world you’d never get dumped, but it’s very likely we all will at some point.
They each had completely different preferences, and what was the perfect breakup for one was a nightmare-from-hell for another.
So we switched the angle of the conversation. I asked them “What are the worst ways to break up with someone?”
They described scenes where their long-term partners dump them at their family Christmas dinner, or take them on holiday and suddenly leave half way through. They conjured up images of being left at the altar, broken up with over a McDonalds Happy Meal hours away from home, or never being officially dumped and instead just being ghosted for months on end.
It’s fair to say there’s not one right way to break up with someone. But there are definitely some wrong ways.
We came up with these guidelines for how not to break up with someone:
- Don’t do it if they’re far away from home and away from their support network.
- Don’t do it at a big family occasion, like on Christmas day, or on their birthday.
- Don’t do it by simply disappearing off the face of the earth.
- Don’t do it over text message.
- Don’t pretend you’re taking them on a date and then do it.
- Don’t do it at any kind of funeral, or within a few weeks of a funeral.
- Don’t use clichés like “It’s not you, it’s me…”
- Don’t confuse them by breaking up with them and then repeating profusely “I do love you, and I always will.”
We’re All Looking for a Sense of Belonging
Loneliness came up a lot in the group. Lots of the girls have lived abroad in countries where they didn’t speak the language, were parts of alternative communities, or lived somewhere rural and couldn’t meet up with their friends very often.
But even when you are surrounded by people, you can still feel completely alone.
Deep down, we’re all just looking for a sense of belonging. We want to connect with people who have similar interests to us, who understand our backgrounds, and who celebrate our identities.
But how do we find them?
A great way of finding a sense of belonging is to join a club, interact with online support groups, volunteer with a charity or youth group, and you can even use dating apps to look for friends (just click on the ‘Looking for Friends’ filters or say as much in your profile) if you’re old enough to use them.
Your community is out there! Sometimes it just takes a little digging to find them.
Misogyny Is Very Real, and It Hurts Us All
From time to time, the girls would talk about the issues they were having at school. They’d describe students who were bullied for their sexuality, boys who couldn’t express anything other than anger, and how they were constantly being sexualized.
Unfortunately, the patriarchy is still very real and very pervasive. In a world that has strict social norms that tell people how to behave and how to express themselves if they want to be accepted by the masses, it can be very hard to be yourself.
Although under the grips of the patriarchy some groups benefit more than others, ultimately we all lose.
In the UK in 2022 (Gov.UKexternal link, opens in a new tab), males accounted for 74.1% of the registered suicides. So even in a world built by men for men, many of the men aren’t very happy, either. As bell hooks wrote in her book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love: “In patriarchal culture, males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity.” We all have to give up parts of ourselves to conform with patriarchal values.
But even once we acknowledge this – we can’t simply enable or tolerate misogyny. So what can we do? The girls and I never came to any conclusive answers. But we talked about how being compassionate, working through the gender stereotypes that we ourselves hold, and avoiding using language that perpetuates gender roles is a good start.
Emotions Are Complicated
“What the heck am I feeling right now?” That’s a question you’ll ask yourself time and time again. From pure joy to grief, humans are capable of such a wide range of emotions that it can be really tricky to figure out what’s what.
As a teen, I remember feeling rage, complete elation, and serious anxiety out of the blue. Navigating it all with the few tools I had was pretty unmanageable.
In the hopes of helping you, here are some tools that the girls and I came up with together:
- Listen to music that uplifts you out of your blues, not tunes that will fortify your sense of doom.
- Dance it out! Movement is so good for getting you out of your head and into your body.
- Talk to a friend about how you’re feeling. If your friendships are in a tricky place right now, look to other sources of support like online communities or adults that you trust.
- If you’re angry, scream into a pillow. If you’re sad, cry. Holding things in can make them worse.
- If you can’t describe it, paint it. Whether you end up doodling a pitless black hole or a brightly colored, nonsensical mandala – the outcome isn’t important.
- Have a treat hidden in the cupboards for when the going gets tough. Sometimes a chocolate bar can do wonders for your mood.
- If it’s taking over your life, ask for professional help. There’s no shame in needing to do therapy to work through heavy emotions.
Self-Care Can Be Difficult, but Is Essential
We’re constantly being exposed to adverts with slogans like “Because you’re worth it,” new social media trends that state that “My body, my temple,” and quotes like ‘Love your body because you only have one.’
Amidst all this body positivity, it can be pretty crappy when you feel, well, crap.
Curiously, self-care was once a political act. Back then, self-care wasn’t about getting a glow-up, it was about grounding yourself. Civil rights activists Angela Davis and Rosa Parks used yoga and meditation as an act of self-care to build resilience, for example.
Now, self-care has become more of a brand that you buy into or a strict self-love regime that you live by. But self-care doesn’t need to become another thing that you beat yourself up for not being good at. It really should be something that brings you joy.
Self-care is individual to each person, but here are some pointers for what it shouldn’t look like:
- It shouldn’t cost you loads of money. Remember, self-care isn’t a brand. You don’t need to spend all your money to feel good!
- It shouldn’t involve working towards a goal. Keep your goals separate from your self-care activities, otherwise they’ll just become another stressful thing to put on your to-do list.
- It’s not the military, it doesn’t have a fixed schedule.
- It doesn’t involve doing what other people think you should be doing.
