About

Relational aggression often flies under the radar. Teenagers are frustrated with their friends, parents, and classmates, and the ways they treat each other. As a middle school teacher and administrator, I have counseled hundreds of students on how to respect one another, communicate with each other, and have attempted to disarm words used as weapons. Over the years, I have seen marginal improvement.

The Purpose of the SHE Forum

To create awareness and to educate girls and their parents about RA and expanding their opportunities. The day is shared with their parents to learn about relational aggression, self-image, connective relationships, and enlightened parenting.

The research based interactive workshops will engage participants as they explore these age appropriate topics.

• Personal safety and relational aggression strategies presented by local community outreach agencies
• Keeping your hair and skin healthy with expert advice from stylist and skin care professionals
• Dressing your best with body image and fashion awareness from local fashion experts
• Nutrition and quick simple workouts for busy teens with fitness professionals.
• Fun! Fun! Fun, and learning you will take with you and use rest of your life.

Message from Katey McPherson

During a the 2004 school year, I was involved in an expulsion hearing for one of our students. *Mary was tall, blonde, a softball player, had a boyfriend, and came from a home with two parents. She had good grades, seemed happy with herself, and to my astonishment, came to school one day to inflict self-harm. Her “popular” friends had bullied her at school and on-line to the point that she decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. Among the documents presented at the hearing, were her MySpace.com postings. They were difficult for the adults present to read, much less for a 13 year old girl to manage and internalize.

It was at this point in my professional career, that I had to do something. If Mary, the “popular” girl was a victim, what were her peers that flew under the radar feeling like? I created Sharing Healthy Experiences,” SHE”, as an initiative to create an awareness and education about the damaging effects of relational aggression, and the short-term and long-term results we as parents and educators observe each day.

The Sharing Healthy Experiences Forum allows parents and teens an opportunity to share openly and honestly with each other, while learning alongside peers and experts that have dealt with the very same issues and concerns.

So much of a woman’s struggle to voice her thoughts and feelings, to engage in conflict and debate, to stand with other women, arises from the success or failure of her relationships with other girls in childhood—will she be punished, rejected, excluded, emotional or physically hurt, or betrayed by other women as she was by other girls, for speaking her thoughts and feelings, for questioning the way things “naturally” go? We need only to listen to the rhetoric of adult women’s relationships and their public debates over what it means to be a good mother, a successful businesswoman, a “true” woman, or “real” feminist to understand the long-term implications of these early relationships. The pathways begun in childhood all too often consolidate and crystallize in ways that divide women and work against collective efforts toward social change.

-Brown, Girlfighting