Reflections: #WriteLikeAGirl2015

At 6am on Saturday, April 25th, I opened my front door to find an owl resting on the door mat. It was technically a baby and considered cute between the hours of 9am-9pm. Otherwise, it was an owl with black circles casing its over-sized yellow eyes and rotating its head 180 degrees to stare up at a woman with wild bed hair and un-brushed teeth.

Dear Universe,
If the owl was intended to be a bad omen for Saturday, April 25th, you got it all wrong. Try again next time.

Because Saturday was so awesome. Because Saturday was so precious.

GirlSense & NonSense held a writing workshop for teen writers that day. We dubbed it #WriteLikeAGirl2015 (Because we get tweeter and hashtags now! We really do!) and made banners and bought cute little notebooks. We had writing mentors, group activities, blueberry scones, and a small little reading. Young artists got to work with more experienced artists and together they created and wrote stories and poems.

There are lots of reasons why Saturday, April 25th meant so much to me personally and to my organization. It means so much that I have trouble articulating it here, now. This is all I can muster for now:

Everything I’ve ever dreamed of for this organization happened in that (very cold) room, on Saturday April 25th, from 9am-12pm. Girls wrote words and found the courage to share those words with the rest of us.

Sometimes life is really simply, isn’t it?

I’ve since given a name to that owl on my doorstep. I call him Peter. He wanders around the yard, exploring, learning, and shedding his baby fur.