North Star Girls Group
Girls connecting with other girls to feel less isolated and more confident as they enter and move
through adolescence.
After working with a lot of adolescent girls as well as doing some research on this population during graduate
school, I decided that a way to reach a lot of girls in a helpful way would be through running groups designed
to connect girls to each other. I searched for a curriculum that I thought would work, but couldn’t find one —
so I decided to write my own.
The North Star Girls Group is a group curriculum designed to provide both education and support for girls who
are entering and moving through adolescence. These groups can be run at schools, community centers, mental
health agencies, or other locations by trained facilitators. The curriculum is designed to give girls a
sense of competency and empowerment through education, support, and connecting with others. The curriculum
addresses issues that all adolescent girls face, including relationships, teasing, identity questions, body
image, thoughts about the future, popularity, etc. The idea behind the North Star Program is to give girls
a structured and supportive place to talk and share with each other.
“You are in a boat that is being tossed around by the winds of the world.
The voices of you parents, your teachers, your friends and the media
can blow you east, then west, then back again.
To stay on course you must follow your own North Star, your sense of who you truly are.
Only by orienting north can you chart a course and maintain it,
only by orienting north can you keep from being blown all over the sea.
True freedom has more to do with following the North Star than going
whichever way the wind blows. Sometimes it seems like freedom is blowing with the winds of the day,
but that kind of freedom is really an illusion.
It turns your boat in circles. Freedom is sailing toward your dreams.”
— Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia
The voices of you parents, your teachers, your friends and the media
can blow you east, then west, then back again.
To stay on course you must follow your own North Star, your sense of who you truly are.
Only by orienting north can you chart a course and maintain it,
only by orienting north can you keep from being blown all over the sea.
True freedom has more to do with following the North Star than going
whichever way the wind blows. Sometimes it seems like freedom is blowing with the winds of the day,
but that kind of freedom is really an illusion.
It turns your boat in circles. Freedom is sailing toward your dreams.”
— Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia
Heidi Arizala Showman, MSW, LICSW ~ heidi@northstaroffices.com