QUOTE OF THE WEEK

originally uploaded by mermmaid.

"We are grown but cannot see,
lost our world of make believe.
Simple times now seem so far,
used to be in my backyard.
Yeah, the world was still in my backyard."
-Joshua Radin, WE ARE OKAY

When I was reviewing the messages from you all in response to our post Growing Up Too Soon, this song came on my playlist. Though I have heard this entire album a zillion times (Joshua Radin is one of my favorites), the lyrics took on a whole other level of meaning, and I decided it was as a sign to post as our Quote of the Week.

For those of us that have shouldered responsibility that exceeds what is thought of as normal for teens, a lot of us have lost our world of make believe. We are forced to look beyond our high school life to challenges that grown ups face. We have seen the heartbreak of the world, and the sadness and hard times that go on inside the closed front doors of our homes.

Even for those of us who haven't had to deal with a family responsibility, a lot of us feel like reality is forcing us to leave our world of make believe behind. I don't mean playing with dolls or believing in fairies, I am thinking of adult pressures that are being put on us before we have really had a chance to enjoy being teens. This comes in many ways...

One girl is dealing with the pressure of wanting to go to a great college she got into, but the unbelievable stress of not being able to pay for it. She works a job before and after school to save the money and is constantly exhausted. Another girl started dating a guy she had a crush on for forever, and she just wants to kiss and he wants to go all the way. Yet another girl goes home nearly every night to mediate her parent's horrible arguments that she shouldn't even know about in the first place. These girls all think about when they were younger, and could just live in the moment and be content with life. Just like this awesome picture above, we wish that we could reverse the clock to a more simple time of happy memories. Do you every wish you could go back to those times?

I think all of us deserve to get a space in the backyard of our minds where we can feel this way again. I go to my safe place, for example, as I am writing to all of you. When I get your responses that remind me you are out there and what I am writing resonates with you, it reminds me that having this site is worth it. 

I challenge each of you to find that place in your mind that brings you back to that little piece of happiness, regardless of where life has taken you now. As we all take steps to remember that we deserve that, then I know, we are all indeed going to be okay.


Click here and then click WE ARE OKAY on the list to hear this song.

GROWING UP TOO SOON

Lost & Insecure, originally uploaded by purplebeats.

When reading Rosie and Skate, our book of the month, I kept thinking about those of us out there who have had to grow up before our time. So many of us assume a lot of the adult roles in our house and don't ever say anything about it. We take care of things for so many different reasons--our siblings, our parents, survival, or because we don't want the world to know about our family troubles.

Do any of you feel that the weight of your family is riding mostly on your shoulders?

In the book, Rosie and Skate deal with having an alcoholic parent and all of the hurt, anger, and crushing hopelessness that comes with that territory. A lot of girls go home to a place like this every day, and feel like they don't have anywhere to turn. I had a friend in high school who I knew for an entire year before she let me come to her house. When I would ask about coming over, she usually said, "My dad is a drunk. It isn't worth it." She was right. The week I ended up coming over to her house for the first time, she had called me crying. Her father had ended up in jail from a drunken brawl and she had no where to go. My friend was humiliated. It was so hard to watch.

I said to her, "This isn't your fault. You didn't do this."

She had said, "It doesn't matter. He is still my dad. What happens to one of us happens to all of us." She was right about that too. She felt guilty for his crime by association and thought that he cared more about the booze than about her. While her father had been the one who had gotten into the fight, the family was dragged through everything that resulted from it.

My friend's father got help. Ironically, it took getting locked up to start his recovery, but he is still sober today. My friend is still working through the years of hurt that the addiction caused her and the entire family. While she has learned that alcoholism is an illness, she is working through understanding that he was sick and had to have a lot of help and determination to overcome it. Basically, her mind tells her that it is a disease, but her heart still fights her to know that she is more important to her father than a bottle from the liquor store.

She isn't the only one that I know who has had to deal with an absent mom or dad, whether the parent is physically or mentally not present. One friend of mine has practically raised her younger siblings, for the simple reason that her parents had gotten divorced, her dad and moved away, and her mom fell into a crippling depression. Instead of letting what was going on at home make my friend slip too, she took charge of her family as best she could. She was an honors student, and really involved in school, but it was rare that you would see her around town without her two siblings in tow. It wasn't a choice she made, she felt it was her job to make sure her little brother and sister were okay. While she was working on Alegbra homework, she would simultaneously be yelling at her siblings to get ready for bed. I was amazed that she could alternate from talking about boys with me to making sure they had lunch money for the next day.

Many girls face this burden of responsibility, and it shows up in many different ways. Divorce, death, addiction, depression--they all leave a lot of us grappling to understand and having to grow up before our time.Those of us that know what growing up too soon is all about, often ask why. Unfortunately, there isn't usually an answer...

If you are affected by the abuse of alcohol by someone you love, like my friend mentioned in this post, Alateen is a wonderful organization meant to help you get through it. Click here for their website.

GIRLS' READ OF THE MONTH

ROSIE and SKATE
By Beth Ann Bauman

Rosie and Skate are sisters trying to simply make it through with bad cards that life has dealt them. Their father is an apathetic alcoholic in jail, and their mother died before they ever had a chance to remember her. With the backdrop of the off season of the Jersey Shore as the setting, we are thrown into the stark world of what it is like to live fulltime in a vacation haven after the world has gone home.

Told from the point of view of the sisters in alternating chapters, Rosie and Skate each have distinctively realistic voices with their own unique styles of poetic rawness. Skate, sixteen, can't deal with the embarrassment that is her dad and pines for her first love, Perry, who has left the Shore for his freshman year of college a couple of hours away. Her name comes from having taken up skateboarding at an early age. She carries her board around with her almost everywhere she goes, like a fierce security blanket. Rosie,  the younger of the two, is fifteen and her mind is filled with almost constant worry about keeping her messed up family together--not to mention the normal stress of boys.  The characters that surround the sisters, like their cousin Angie who comes to stay or Perry's mom Julia, are woven into the story in a way way that makes you root for them too.

To sum it up, Rosie thinks to herself in the first chapter, "If you do nothing, then nothing will change."  We were with Rosie and Skate through every awkward stumble and each brave move, as they try to learn what their version of change will be. A powerhouse of a book, this quick read will make you think about the story and these sisters long after you have turned the final page.

Click here to buy ROSIE and SKATE on Amazon.com

This is our first book recommendation of many to come. If you want to write a guest book review, please contact us at girlsinthehallblog@gmail.com.

HOW TO BECOME A GIRL IN THE HALL

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WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

YOU, originally uploaded by tarintowers.

Girls in the Hall is now happily able to post your comments that you submit in response to our entries. We have been tracking since the blog started last month, and see that there are lots of you reading out there, all over the world. We are beyond thrilled and want to know what you think!

Please give us feedback, so we can make sure to continue to talk about what you want to hear! All opinions and topics are fair game on our site--what you like, don't like, want to hear more about, feel like sharing, or anything else. You can leave your name or, if you want to share something personal and want to keep your identity a secret, you can just mark anonymous when leaving a comment. It is that easy.

We want to hear from you! After all, YOU are the reason this blog exists.

Have an idea for an entry? Want to write one? Email us at girlsinthehallblog@gmail.com.

LOOKING IN THE MIRROR

Huddle In, originally uploaded by Jerrica Joy

In order to make Girls in the Hall a place that deals with important topics for real girls, I read blogs that I respect that pertains in any way to things teen. One site that I follow is www.singlemommyhood.com, which is for real families with real issues, including teen topics. I saw an article link on Twitter to a post on there about what parents should say to us girls when we feel self conscious about our bodies. I decided that I want to go straight to you all and ask, what do you want your parents to say?

The self image topic is discussed a lot in the magazines that flood our mail boxes where they tell us how we look is just fine, but then we flip the page and see another underweight model looking up at us. What is with that?

To continue with my reasoning on this blog to be brutally honest with all of you, even if that means facing myself, I will tell you that I have had body image issues in the past. In high school, I felt like mirrors were my enemy and I often avoided them at all costs. No one else really knew, it was a battle that I kept (and still do sometimes) buried inside my brain. As girls, we have been assigned the nearly impossible task of being content with what we look like, while most of our role models would be considered undernourished by doctors.

Adults usually say things like, "But you look normal!" or "Normal girls don't look like models!" Because of this, when I decided that I had enough in high school of feeling bad, I began my journey back to the real world with really learning what the meaning of normal is. The dictionary tells us that the definition of normal is "relating to, involving, or being a normal curve or normal distribution." To me, that wasn't helpful. We are all so different, how can we define ourselves by what people think is "normal"?

Where does that leave those of us who naturally fall outside of the normal spectrum? What if, in looking up what it means to be normal, it makes us judge ourselves even harsher? Sometimes normal for us isn't what is written in the books. We may know we are healthy, but still not feel good about ourselves, because of the way famous people look, what people tell us or just simply, how we feel about ourselves.

Most of our parents, like the ones who read the site I mentioned at the beginning of this post, just want us to see what they see--amazing girls, filled with so much beauty and potential--and don't know what to say to convey that.

So, my challenge to you is to find what you really like about yourself. Do you know the latest music? Are you awesome at making people laugh? Are you a good athlete? Do you write interesting journal entries? It may sound nerdy, but I swear it really, really helps. If you find something you love doing that makes you happy, that passion will make you feel beautiful, and help you find your version of normal. Then, your normal will be defined by what makes you light up, not the numbers on a scale. I know it did for me.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Oprah...An angel on Earth [read me], originally uploaded by radiant guy.

"Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down."-Oprah Winfrey

The reason I chose this quote is because it means very much to me. I'd want someone to stick by me and not want me just for the nice things I own.

Name: Liz Garcia
Age: 14


I am very excited for this post because it marks the first guest entry of many to come. Liz has a talent for finding great quotes, and is a wonderful addition to the Girls in the Hall team. Do you have something to say? Email us at girlsinthehallblog@gmail.com.