Voices of Girls

Imagine someone you don’t know wants to help girls that are struggling with life, just like you. What would you tell them?

Many teenage girls struggle with love, acceptance, drugs, self esteem, and failure. I am one of many who do things to be notice or to find love. I speak for the foster children who have been abused, put down, and neglected. Many of us don’t have people telling us we’re doing a good job, or that we look nice today! The way we find comfort is the use of drugs or prostitution, but many ways we find the comfort is very harmful to our well being. If every child had a place to call home and have that mother and father figure in their lives, we wouldn’t have to go out and do drugs or have sex with random men. Every girl needs that special friend to talk to and trust. Many girls that have been beaten, abused, and abandoned. I believe that’s the reason why we turn to other things for a release of stress, or try to hide our true feelings. It hurts to be a nobody, and feel like we’re worthless. –Michelle

I think that we should first start where the problems begin. Find out why the crimes are being committed. Once you identify the problem, you can give them steps and other routes to take to assure these problems don’t happen. Also, you can make them aware of the law and the consequences for their actions. I truly think more jobs should be available in the communities for teens of all ages. More activities would show them that they matter and that you care. Most of the time you don’t get help until it’s too late, you’re already locked up. I think that instead of waiting to help someone once in a program, help them NOW! –Jacqulyn

There are many young girls who grow up and are told that they will never amount to anything; that their voice is better mute. Through all the heartbreaks and struggles, it can take just one time, one even, one word, to turn and change their lives forever. My mistake was believing that I wasn’t good enough, or just the question of if I was even someone. Turning to the life of the streets, drugs and crime felt the only place acceptable. But even there, being accepted wasn’t the answer. In my seventeen years, my past experiences are far more unbearable, intense, even “life threatening” than most adults I have talked to . Although now I have learned my answer is not to be accepted, but to accept yourself and to remember “what doesn’t kill you, can only make your stronger.”

Believe in yourself, and you shall bloom, for you can’t have roses without thorns. –Josie