Yesterday we wrapped up an family overnight stay at Great Wolf Lodge. The kids didn’t have school and my husband found a great deal on a Sunday night room, so we took the opportunity for a little family get away.
In order to make sure everyone had fun, Josh and I employed a divide and conquer strategy with the kids. He took the girls to some slides and I watched my son play for over an hour in a pool. It is there, fighting over a floating lily pad, that I saw an unexpected lesson in girl power.
A group of about six boys, including my 7 year old son, were fighting over who could fit on the floating lily pad. There was lots of splashing, struggle, and effort exerted to not only get on top of the float, but then maintain ones position as other boys tried to join on top or knock someone off to take their space. It was a rowdy bunch and I was surprised an actual fight didn’t break out among all the jockeying for space.
I observed the chaos for about 20 minutes before a thin, blonde girl of about 12 years old swam over and immediately started to find her space in the chaos. She was fearless among the wild swarm of boys and quickly found a winning strategy that gave her the largest space on top of the lily pad and made her pretty difficult to knock off. She took up space without apologizing and held her own among the boys.
I thought that after a few minutes of the fighting, she might realize it wasn’t quite as fun to have six boys trying to fight against your enjoyment of a lily pad float, but I was wrong. If she was knocked off, she fought right back to her space. She didn’t talk to any of the boys; she stayed focus on holding her space.
I looked over and saw a blonde woman watching the interactions intently, so I swam over and asked if the strong girl on top of the lily pad was her daughter. When she confirmed my suspicion, I then told her how great I thought it was that she went for it and took up space, and we both marveled at her grit and determination to be in charge of that lily pad.
A younger girl came over to join the battle over the lily pad and the blonde who was handling every boy fighting for the top immediately turned to her and said “do you want to be on my team?” When the younger girl agreed, the blonde girl immediately reached out her hand to help the younger girl fight her way on top of the lily pad.
A short time later, my oldest came back to the pool and I pointed out the strength of the girl on top of the lily pad and how she took on all the boys who eventually gave up because she kept taking up space. I pointed out how she helped another girl join her on the lily pad and how awesome it can be to team up with other girls to achieve a goal. My oldest was inspired and swam over to the lily pad. The blonde immediately asked if she wanted to join her and gave her a hand to help pull her up and taught her how to stay on top of the lily pad when others wanted to push her off.
Look at this example of strength in sisterhood: the blonde powerhouse recognized other girls as part of her team and immediately wanted to help them join in the success she had found. She taught them how to stay on the lily pad so they too could take up the space they wanted to hold. She didn’t wait for friendship or to see if they had anything in common beyond their perceived gender; she just took the opportunity to reach out to another girl and work together.
How many times do we miss these small ways to inspire others and invite them to join us in adventure? Are we looking to share our power or worried that this small, hard fought space we’ve found is too limited to try and invite others in? Are we teaching our daughters to take up space and look for girls to join them? And are we celebrating the success of girls and women we don’t even know, but see as examples to live by? We as women and girls should take more opportunities to encourage each other in our efforts and point to those who can teach us to be better versions of ourselves, even if that example comes from a blonde girl taking up space in unexpected places.