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Find Your Tribe

Despite the popular rhetoric about social media leading to the demise of real-world friendships (you’ve heard the criticisms, right? “Teens are now too busy texting to talk”, “Young people care more about their profile pics than their mates”) in my experience, many of us use technology to not only maintain meaningful relationships, but to develop new ones.

Bec and I get "tribal."
Bec and I get “tribal.”

Case in point? I first “met” the talented writer and media commentator Rebecca Sparrow on Twitter. She was tweeting about a young Intern who had made some provocative  statements about her employers. I disagreed with Bec’s take on this and I challenged her. Rather than raging at me in under 140 characters (which is so often the preferred mode of discourse on Twitter), she messaged me to thank me for prompting her to reconsider. We then begun exchanging messages and realised we both had much in common; Bec too delights in writing for young women. Her guide books for teen girls, Find Your Tribe – and 9 other things I wish I’d known in high school and  Find Your Feet – the 8 things I wish I’d know before I left high school are so incredibly warm, wise, honest and filled with just the kind of advice every girl needs to hear! In fact, Bec is one of those rare writers who makes you fall a little in love with her after reading her books and I found I longed to be part of her “tribe” too – so much so that I recently took myself off to Brisbane to stay with her and her family and share thoughts on teen girls, writing, parenting and Wonder Woman. Cyber friendship result!

Through my work with young women I have reinforced daily just how vital their friendships are to them too. As I discuss in my own books, teen girls and their friends often experience the highest highs, and the lowest lows. Any advice then that helps make sense of these vital relationships needs to be shared – and I am thrilled to be able to share an extract from Find Your Tribe here. Share it with the girls you care about too.

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Let’s get one thing straight. The truth is, despite having written a novel entitled The Girl Most Likely – I wasn’t. I wasn’t the girl most likely to succeed in high school. I wasn’t a prefect. I didn’t win any awards in my final year. Not a single one. In fact, in high school I was fairly average. I got pretty good grades, I guess, but I didn’t top any subjects. And I certainly didn’t stand out. Although when I look back at photos of me at seventeen I’m not entirely sure how I DIDN’T stand out considering that in high school I looked like a cross between Tootsie and Jon Bon Jovi. Harold Bishop with a perm. That was me. Excellent.

And while we’re being honest, let’s just say that high school also handed me some of my most crushing moments. Nobody invited me to my school formal. A guy that I was madly in love with barely knew I even existed. I was so bad at Maths I ended up having to do Maths in Society. And despite the fact I’d been playing netball since I was nine, I wasn’t chosen for even the C-grade netball team in high school. Talk about a blow to the ego.

But here’s the weird bit. Despite all that rotten stuff – I loved high school. Yep. Loved it. I’m one of those people who can actually, genuinely say they enjoyed it. A number of my closest friends today are the people I whispered secrets to during Modern History and French and Drama (and, clearly, PE and Maths. I’m beginning to suspect that my grades would’ve been better if I’d actually shut up and paid attention in class).

So how does that work? What was my secret? I made some smart decisions. Starting with finding my tribe ….

FIND YOUR TRIBE

One of the major factors that will determine the quality of your time at high school is who you hang around. Your friends.

I’m going to cut to the chase: Life is too short to hang around with bitchy, negative people. So don’t. In high school you want to find your tribe. Your tribe are those friends who get you, who see the world the way you see it, who like you for who you are. They’re real friends. They don’t slag you off the moment your back is turned or routinely humiliate you and put you down. Nope. Real friends have your back – they’re fiercely loyal and protective. If you have a tribe of six friends – that’s fantastic. But even if you have just one great friend – that’s all you need.

You know what else? You don’t need to be in the cool group to enjoy high school. Aim to be someone who is friends with all different kinds of people at school. Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes calls this being a ‘floater’. Floaters do their own thing, have healthy self-esteem and they definitely don’t pay attention to peer pressure. Be authentic in your tastes. In other words, be who you are. Don’t change your personality or your interests or your taste just to hang around with girls who spend all their time bitching and making fun of other people.

All this sounds obvious, right? And yet many adults will tell you it took them years (and some painful friendship experiences) to finally get this lesson. For some reason, many of us spend our spare time with snarky, negative people who make us feel worthless.

And don’t think for a second that hanging around with the cool group will make you seem more attractive. There’s nothing attractive about someone who behaves like a sheep and follows a leader. You’re way better off hanging around with your tribe. After all, what’s attractive is a girl who is confident, who can laugh at herself, who smiles a lot and who exudes a generous spirit.

 

N.B You may also be interested in my seminar for parents and educators on supporting girls to make positive, healthy friendships. Find out more about this, and download a flyer, here

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One Comment

  1. Storm Greenhill-Brown

    Love the celebration of teen books on the blog this week. I love Rebecca’s book “The Girl Most Likely” and am keen to recommend the title above. I personally adored high school and had a wonderful rollercoaster ride of highs and lows and came out the other side resilent, confident and ready to tackle the big world. I am lucky to have stayed in contact with my senior year besties and we are a diverse group who still love nothing more than re-hashing our school yard tales of love, loss and disasters. Over the years I have chatted to other girls from our year who don’t have those same fond memories as us. I find that profoundly sad as those are such formative and intense years where you are very exposed and vunerable. How wonderful to be able to offer such great reading up to teens that might help them find an alternative way through those often crushing and complex years.

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