2019

Nadia Bilchik is an editorial producer for CNN. Before she came to speak to us, I honestly didn’t even know who she was. After hearing what she had to say, I don’t think I’ll ever forget her.

Feeling somewhat anxious in certain situations is a common feeling for me and for so many others. Teen anxiety is higher than it ever has been. Whether it’s severe or not, it can make little things like raising your hand to speak in class or talking to new people so much harder than they should be.

I work myself up so easily about many things, making it hard for me to try new things. It sometimes takes some convincing to get me to go to large events and new places. I’ve always wished I didn’t have to live with any worries, so, when I saw the topic for the meeting, I was very curious. I went into the meeting not sure what to expect, and came out of it with knowledge I didn’t know was available.

Bilchik explained that she had created a four-step guide on how to conquer and calm your nerves before doing something that is out of your comfort zone. The first thought that came to my mind is that this meeting is perfect for me! She went on to explain each of these steps.

1. Think of happy past moments

2. Show interest

3. Breathing exercises

4. Show energy

They include: thinking of happy past moments, showing interest in the topic at hand, doing breathing exercises, and showing energy. The first is pretty self explanatory: think of memories that make you happy and hold onto them to take your mind off of the worrying. It was interesting to hear everyone’s happy moments.

The second involves a tactic of not using “I” statements. We did an exercise where we had to have a conversation with someone else and could use only questions in response to our partner. This gives the person that you are talking to reassurance that they have your full interest and attention.

The third step to calm nerves is all about breathing. Taking deep breaths is a way of refreshing your mind and body. It helps slow and control your heart rate and it sends a message to your brain to calm down and relax.

The last step is to show energy and engage in the conversation. You can show energy simply by standing up straight and putting a smile on your face. This shows confidence and makes you approachable. Bringing up topics that you and whoever you are talking to are both interested in is a great way to engage another person. This helps the conversation flow. With practice, all of this combined will eventually allow you to be able to comfortably start conversations with anyone.

Since this meeting, I already have and will definitely continue to use this process a lot throughout my life. I am overjoyed that Nadia Bilchik shared her wisdom with me and my fellow strong women. •

Rachel Cohn

Coming into this meeting with the poet Caroline Rothstein about consent, I was prepared to have a difficult discussion about the reality of sexual abuse and rape culture. However, this meeting with Caroline pleasantly surprised me. We learned that you cannot give your consent to something without fully knowing who you are as a person.

Caroline speaking to the Strong Women

Caroline told us her struggles with finding her own identity in the form of beautiful poems. She spoke about the hardships she faced every day and the struggles with being a woman in society today. She spoke poetry about sexual abuse and her difficult eating disorder.

Caroline Rothstein

However, to me, the most noteworthy poem was about how despite all these burdens, she still showed up on the other side a strong woman who knew her strong identity. The words Caroline said truly spoke to me and it felt as though she knew me better than I knew myself. I was on the edge of my seat just wanting her to keep chanting about what she was passionate about, for I was also passionate about the same things.

Writing

After that, we had the opportunity to write our own poetry and I found it much easier than I anticipated. Our poems were about being Jewish and women or about being a Jewish woman. I had so much to say and found it inspiring that everyone else did as well. It was comforting to be in a room full of people who have the same beliefs and values as I do.

While I came into this meeting eager to learn about consent, I ended up learning more about identity and the importance it plays in knowing whether or not to give consent to something. Caroline was extremely empowering and I was grasping onto every last word she said. Although this meeting went much differently than expected, I am so grateful for that because what we talked about in this meeting, identity, and being a Jewish woman, are all so important to me and things that I will never stop caring about. •

Lili Stadler

Whenever prompted with the topic of sexuality and gender identification, I had never thought twice. I would simply brush off the subject since I had always been confident in who I was and who I felt that I was: a girl. I always thought that was a confusing conversation topic, thinking that there was not much to discuss. More clearly said, sexuality was always something simple to me. When preparing for the conversation of gender and sexuality with Dr. Joy Ladin and my peers of the Strong Women Fellowship, I did not believe my thoughts would change. But, seeing different perspectives and hearing the struggles and stories of my peers completely altered what being a “man” or “women” could be.

When you look up the word “woman” in the dictionary, you will find the definition, “an adult human female” or “a wife, girlfriend, or lover”, plus other varieties of that nature. But, I have realized that the dictionary definition of this word barely scratches the surface of what being a woman actually means.

When finishing her empowering story of bravery and transition, Dr. Joy Ladin prompted me and my peers with a question: “What was your experience of growing up as a girl?” To my surprise, the majority of responses to the question, including mine, were negative. We discussed in our conversation the topics that us, as teenage girls in the modern world, face, most of which were feelings of adversity and fear. A few examples included memories of my peers’ parents telling them to change because they were “showing too much”, them getting dress code violations for their bra straps and thighs showing, and their constant fear of slut shaming.

“What was your experience growing up as a girl?”

To my surprise, the majority of responses to the question, including mine, were negative.

Hearing these things, at first, made me feel comforted that I was not the only one who had gone through these things. But, after a while of discussion, I realized how negative this conversation was. I knew we all love being women, but the growing sense of negativity made me feel unsettled. From here, the conversation unintentionally turned into one about what it means to be a woman.

Joy started off this conversation with the topic of gender versus sexuality. She explained to us that these two things do not need to go hand in hand, nor do they have the same connotation to every individual. Once again, this was something I had never thought about before, so my mindset was transformed. I realized that all of those negative memories of growing up a girl made up who we had become. With further discussion, I was inspired that gender and sexuality are not as simple as I thought, and that two people with totally different experiences of being a women could still be defined as one.

We should not be defined by who we are categorized to be, but who we feel we are.

The beauty of the hardships of growing up in fear and shame is that we learn to overcome it and hopefully become who we feel we are inside. The story of Dr. Ladin, although completely unique to the stories of everyone participating in the conversation, led us to the conclusion that being a woman and growing up as a woman can be defined in an infinite amount of ways. We should not be defined by who we are categorized to be, but who we feel we are. •