Lessons Learned in 3rd Grade: Intersectionality of Healthy Female Friendships and GOTR

I began the process of learning to seek and sustain healthy female relationships through the foundation given to me by my after-school running club in 3rd grade. Little did I know that what I learned then, wouldn’t have such a profound positive impact until I came to college. Since coming to school, I have had the wonderful opportunity to become friends with some truly amazing women. Never in my life have I had such fulfilling friendships, ones where I am fully supported, challenged, and loved in very diverse ways. Developing these newer relationships has caused me to look back at the friendships I had in high school and examine why they were different. Why was I more competitive with my friends? Why did I not truly want the best for them? Why was there often an underlying toxicity?

Whenever I have a new revelation in my life, I call my mom. So, as I was sitting in the dining hall eating breakfast, I called her and talked to her about my past friendships. We talked about many things during that phone call. How for one, the average length of a friendship is 7 years. How friends come and go like seasons, and how it’s normal to grow out of older friendships that maybe don’t sustain you in the way they once did. She assured me that as I grow I’ll experience some growing pains, but it’s nothing you couldn’t handle Lauren.

She then ended the phone call, and later that day I got an email from her with the subject “Girls on the Run 2019 curriculum”. Curious, I opened the email with the short message from her:

Check out the stuff on female friendships. You ask and you shall receive.

Girls on the Run is a non-profit that seeks to empower young women through running. When I was younger, my mom ran the program at my elementary school. Wishing she had a program like this when she was younger, she ended up getting more involved, eventfully becoming the director for my county. 

I read through the Girls on the Run curriculum, skipping ahead to the lessons on friendships. The first lesson taught you the benefits of having friends — a relatively simple concept, but important to establish. A good friend makes you feel better about yourself, and they make you feel happy. As I looked back on my previous relationships, I realized how many I had that weren’t truly giving me happiness — an almost silly, but telling, realization. The next lesson was on choosing friendships. The lesson encouraged the girls to think of things that would “boost” friendship, “test” a friendship, and “break” a friendship while identifying the qualities to look for in friends. The final lesson was on communication. The goal of the lesson was for the girls to recognize the importance of communication, to learn how to stand up for themselves, and to gain strategies for communicating with others.

I am fortunate that I have been able to find positive female role models.  At first, I thought I was lucky, but what I’ve come to realize is that through this experience, I have subconsciously sought out positive female role models who exhibit the basic but essential teachings of Girls on the Run.

As I sat there, in the dining hall, reading my moms email, all I could think of was the Girl Scout song that my mom had my troop sing as kids:

Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver, the other is gold.

A circle is round, it has no end.
That’s how long, I will be your friend.

A fire burns bright, it warms the heart.
We’ve been friends, from the very start.

You have one hand, I have the other.
Put them together, we have each other.

Silver is precious, gold is too.
I am precious, and so are you.

You help me and I’ll help you 
and together we will see it through.

The sky is blue. The Earth is green
I can help to keep it clean

Across the land, Across the sea
Friends forever we will always be