January 17, 2019
Brie Mathers, Founder of Love the Skin You?re In, is a member of the Speaker’s Bureau for the Center for Partnership Studies and an ambassador for CPS’ “Partnership Next Gen” program.
Who’s Holding Your Inner Talking Stick?
Last Saturday 20 moms and middle school-aged daughters climbed the stairs that run along the side of our house and poured into the front door. For the next seven hours an inaugural mother/daughter retreat came to life?Love the Skin You’re In partnered with Amy Ahlers? Inner Mean Girl/Inner Wisdom project?and my living room will never be the same. Young women braved big conversations as we all faced down patterns of internalized misogyny, lighting the way to a self-loving inner dialogue.
We created wisdom rocks and inscribed them with many words?powerful, hope, love, connection, wisdom, surrender, to name just a few. The experience reminded me of the traditional Native practice of the talking stick, in which individuals come together in a healing circle to express their sacred point of view. Already we are hearing on?Facebook?that these courageous moms are identifying who?s holding their inner talking stick, and that their girls walked away with heads up and hearts open.
And progress is being made. After 127 years, the American Psychological Association is at last reporting the?negative mental health outcomes of traditional masculinity,?and a new Gillette?ad campaign is stoking a debate about how best to champion progressive masculinity. I can’t wait to share these and other exciting new developments during my first all-boys school keynote at St. George’s Global Stewardship Conference next month.
Brie Mathers has spoken to over 100,000 girls worldwide with her resiliency project.?Inspiring young women to?find compassion within themselves and empathy for one another, the Canadian-born McGill University graduate conducts connective school-wide cultural transformation and leadership events through media literacy and mindfulness.?Her affiliations include Bay Area TEDx, National Youth Week NZ, The University of Rochester Medical School,?The Global CoLab Network,?The Charter for Compassion, Dr. Riane Eisler’s Center for Partnership Studies, One Billion Rising, and YWCA. Brie lives between Oakland, California and Muskoka, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of?Freedom to Blossom.
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