The Girl Guide

Finding Your Place in a Mixed-Up World

Christine Fonseca

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000489606
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Finding your unique voice in a noisy world can be hard—very hard. But not if you have a great guide! The Girl Guide: Finding Your Place in a Mixed-Up World is a must-read for girls in grades 6-8 as they enter the tumultuous world of adolescence. Packed with fun worksheets and quizzes, as well as stories from older girls and women, The Girl Guide covers everything a teenage girl needs to know on the journey toward her own identity. Proven strategies for dealing with stress management, confronting relational aggression, being safe online, navigating the changing mother-daughter relationship, and more make this the ultimate guide for any girl to get through the teen years and discover her unique point of view in the world.

Grades 6-8

Check out Christine's article on building positive friendships in the January 2014 issue of Justine!

Part I
The Journey
Begins

DOI: 10.4324/9781003238799-2

Understanding how to develop your authentic self begins with understanding who you are in the first place. The upcoming chapters discuss how to discover what it means to be "you," including your strengths and difficulties. The worksheets and quizzes give you the tools to discover your strengths and opportunities for growth, establish goals, and develop healthy lifestyle choices that can put you on a path toward your dreams.

The chapters also begin to delve into the concept of resiliency. Defined by Merriam-Webster as "the ability to recover or adjust to change," the attributes of resiliency can make the difference between falling short of your goals and learning to pick yourself up and push through the hard times.

Before we begin the journey toward your authentic selves, I've got a little quiz to get you thinking about your own authenticity. Answer the five true/false questions before reading through this section.

The Girl Guide Quiz #1
My Journey Begins

1. I know how set goals that are Responsible and measurable.
   • ❑ True ❑ False
2. I think it is more important to be myself than to have a lot of friends.
   • ❑ True ❑ False
3. I practice healthy habits like getting enough sleep and eating properly most days.
   • ❑ True ❑ False
4. I understand the importance of exercising and being relaxed
   • ❑ True ❑ False
5. I have a good sense of my strengths, as well as the areas I need to improve
   • ❑ True ❑ False

Come back and retake the quiz anytime you feel a little disconnected from yourself. Then revisit the activities and tools presented in the chapters, just to refine your skills.

Chapter 1
It's My Life

DOI: 10.4324/9781003238799-3

The best advice I've ever received? Be yourself. If someone else doesn't like it, that's on them. You just worry about being true to who you are. —Maya, age 16

Every journey begins with a map and supplies, including an inner journey. And you can't create a map until you know where you are right now and where you would like to go. Over the next several pages, you are going to learn how to determine where you are and begin to make your supply list of what you may need on the journey toward your authentic self. But first, let's start with a little scenario.

What Would You Do?

You have a lot on your plate—school, sports and other extracurricular activities, taking care of your little sisters while your parents work. It's a lot of responsibility. You're tired, stressed, and always feel like you are fighting off a cold.

After several months of this grueling schedule, you really want to talk with your parents about lightening your load a little bit. But you don't want to disappoint anyone. Nor do you want to sound like a burden to them.

What do you do? Tell your parents how you feel? Suck it up and just deal with your schedule, regardless of how you feel? Let yourself get sick and have your physical health communicate your needs? Just drop out of things without telling anyone?

Take a moment and write down what you would do to navigate through this challenging situation.

Who Am I?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, starting on a new journey begins with a map. And the only way to create a map is to know both where you are and where you want to go. Easier said than done at times.

It's hard to really understand who you are at your core. Sure, you can look into a mirror and make judgments about your looks. You can use words like tall or short, blond or brunette, lean or heavy, as ways to describe what you look like. But these descriptions only involve your physical attributes, not the essence of "you" inside.

Now, I'm not saying that physical form isn't important. I would be lying if I told you that human beings don't make judgments about you based on physical attributes. And there are a lot of books and magazines that address the latest fashion and beauty trends. But not this book.

This book is about going deeper, beyond the physical descriptions we may use for ourselves and into the inner attributes that shape how we act and the decisions we make.

It has to do with the you on the inside.

How do you get to know her? How do you discover that authentic self and make a place for her in the world? Those are the questions we will explore in this book.

It starts with taking stock of some of the personality attributes you may have. Things like whether or not you enjoy school, the types of friends you enjoy, and your hobbies. Take a look at the Who Am I? worksheet and work through the various attributes listed, indicating which ones describe you and which ones do not.

The Girl Guide Worksheet #1 Who Am I?

Directions: Take a moment and Read each Statement, indicating if you agree or disagree.

Skill	I agree	I disagree
I'm a good listener.
People say I am fun to be with.
I have a lot of friends.
I like to be active.
I prefer reading to most sports.
I would rather draw than read.
Math is my favorite subject.
I am a strong student.
I enjoy spending time with my family.
When my friends and I argue, I am usually the one to make things better.
When I am mad, I stay mad for a long time.
I do my homework on time most nights.
I like to be involved in a lot of activities.

Now, take a moment and write a few words or sentences to describe yourself based on those attributes.

This list is by no means exhaustive. It is merely a starting point. After you've worked through the list, take a few minutes to write a description of yourself in your journal or at the end of the worksheet. Try to stay away from any physical descriptions of yourself and focus on the core attributes of the inner you. Think, too, about your quirks, habits, and things that make you unique. For example, one girl I spoke with said she loves to analyze everything, making literal analyses about nonliteral statements—all as a way to drive her friends a little crazy. It is her own unique quirk and something her friends identify as completely her.

Once you have a good, working description for who you are right now, begin the next section and start to plot out where you want to go.

Dream Big

Although you certainly don't need to have a destination in mind when setting off on an exciting journey, it is helpful if you have some idea as to the direction you'd like to go in. With inner journeys, that means having some idea as to your future dreams.

When developing your dreams, there are no limitations. Don't let an inner voice of doubt get in the way of your fantasies. Don't think about the barriers that could prevent you from the dreams. Don't limit yourself in any way. There will be time to manage the dreams and deal with making them realistic, but not here. Not now.

This is the opportunity to explore all of the possibilities of your life. Eleanor Roosevelt and Anaïs Nin are bo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: The Journey Begins
• Part II: It's All About Connections
• Part III: "I Think I Can"—The Power of Belief
• Part IV: Finding Emotional Balance
• Part V: Putting It All Into Practice
• Final Thoughts
• Recommended Resources
• References
• About the Author
• About the Contributors