fired up

Wow. I hear myself talking on the phone to the parents of the girls who are going to be spending next week with me, and I think "Damn, I'm fired up!"

A mom just asked me "you have three boys...so, what led you to work with girls?"

It's a funny question, to me, but I don't treat it as a silly one. The simple answer is : I was once a girl, and I remember!

But I always give a much longer answer, because I love the opportunity to voice my passion for nurturing individuality, and for celebrating each person's uniqueness.

The works of great artists are recognizable from across the room not because they conform to standards, but because they do NOT resemble that of their contemporaries.

When we stand in a circle and paint a still life, it is not just our persective on the objects in the center that is different. The unique way we see and express what is before us is what is most exciting and worth celebrating.

Similarly, when we hold our bodies in an asana (yoga pose), we do not resemble our neighbor. And that is beautiful. The girls need to know that. Who wants to walk through a forest filled with only one sort of tree, one height, one width of trunk, one length of branch, one color of leaf?

When I began teaching art to kids, I was taken aback by how often girls especially would ask for permission to color outside the lines, so to speak - to color their hair blue in their self portrait, or to use a material in a different way than I had demonstrated.

They felt they needed to ask permission to be creative. In art class.

Over time, these incidentals became more important than my original agenda, that of introducing kids to ancient cultures through art. I realized that the most valuable thing I had to offer them was permission to be themselves, to invite each girl's inner goddess, which is my name for the creative individual within each girl, to emerge, to show herself in her full glory.

So, now, my "art camp" is officially dedicated to introducing girls to their unique inner being and to giving her freedom of expression, in a variety of forms.

Next week, when the girls and I do yoga together, when we dance, when we talk about life, when we march around banging on pots in the backyard, when we create poetry and jewelry, when we make paintings, when we journal...my greatest hope is that those unique individuals who work so hard to conform to standards all year long will come out to play, to sing, to dance, to be seen and heard. Because they inspire me so.

I can't wait!