Julia Taylor, author/counsellor/blogger

Photo by Brenda Larson

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Middle school girls have it rough.

There are the girls who are popular, who rule the roost, who determine who is in and who is out, who manage the cliques with an iron fist, while flipping their ponytails over their shoulders and smiling sweetly.

Who is your friend? Who isn’t? Who was your friend yesterday, but suddenly, today, is cold to you?

There are the bullies, who threaten physical violence and, sometimes, make good on their threats. You try to avoid them as best you can.

There are the cyberbullies, who harass you online just when you’ve finally convinced your mom to let you have a Facebook account.

Oh, your mom! That’s another thing! Parents are sooooo embarrassing when you’re in middle school. They don’t know what to say or how to act or when to just leave you alone. They even get divorced, which is hard on you. Don’t they understand what they’re doing?

There are the boys, who are, well, confusing at this stage. They like you, they hate you, they like you, they hate you. They gossip about you! But, you know, you kind of like them, too.

And your body! There’s nothing worse than what’s going on with your body when you’re a middle school girl. You’re fat. You’re skinny. Bumps are happening in places they weren’t happening a year ago. Pimples, too! Why, you hate your body! You wish you had a different body, a better body, someone else’s body.

Don’t even get us started on the school work! All of sudden, the classes are harder. You have to be more organized. There’s more homework. And the teachers!!! Why do they hate you so much?

It’s rough.

Julia Taylor, founder of GIRLS, Girls In Real Life Situations, knows how rough it is. This month, Julia will join the guidance staff at Apex High School, working with teenagers at that school. But she has been on the guidance staff at Apex Middle School and has seen first-hand how overwhelming life can be for girls.

That’s why she built GIRLS, to help female middle schoolers navigate the often overwhelming depths of the water that is middle school.

A group of girls meets regularly at the school. The girls come from different backgrounds. Some are friends. Some are definitely not. Some know each other. Others are outsiders. Some are popular. Some are pretty.

The objective is to demonstrate to them that they’re all important, that they don’t have to agree with each other on anything, that they don’t have to like each other, that they don’t have to be friends. But they do have to respect each other and learn to listen.

“It doesn’t matter what kinds of parents these girls have, they are all struggling through the same issues,” she says, speaking swiftly and with passion about her cause. “They’re always struggling with something. They’re pre-wired to be on the go. Women always have their brains going. They need something to be happening. They need to create drama.”

And so they do. And if you don’t listen the right way, results can be less than thrilling.

“Girls go on tangents. They have to tell you the whole story. They have to include every bit of information. You’re saying, “C’mon, get to the point.” They don’t have the cognitive ability to do that. They’re preoccupied with what’s right. If you shut them off, they don’t know what to do,” Julia says.

Her groups have never had a breach of confidentiality. The successes include seeing girls who otherwise wouldn’t have even spoken to each other the previous year stand up for each other in situations away from the group. They support each other. It’s ground-breaking work.

And it prompted the first GIRLS Summit last year, held at the Cary Y, with workshops on everything from friendship to boys, from bullies to school work, from health to body image. The next one will be held in Jan. 18, 2010 (details to come, so watch for them).

“We had some great topics, like Staying Calm When Things Go Wrong, Staying True to You. There were four sessions to choose and it was a whole day. I had other counselors working with us. It was very successful,” Julia says. “The evaluation results showed that more than 95 percent of the girls who attended would recommend it to a friend and come back.”

Julia is an author and speaker. She wrote Salvaging Sisterhood and GIRLS: Group Counseling Activities for Enhancing Social and Emotional Development. Julia has her undergraduate degree in exercise science with a concentration in health education from George Mason University. She received her master’s degree in psychology with a concentration in school counseling from Marymount University. Julia educates children, teens, and parents in local communities about relational aggression, body image and other adolescent/teen issues. She blogs at www.rosalindwiseman.com (a must-visit site for parents).