Mandi Lynn’s Finishing School for Big Hearted Rebels

A course for women and their girls both on the journey to body positivity.

You are a guardian of an evolving soul.  Not just your own but also a teen/tween who has been brought into your world.  You have to watch as she starts to discover she has a body and society has an opinion about that body.  You are discovering that it is forcing you to look down the barrel of your own challenging body acceptance journey.

This stuff isn't easy.

You love your tween because...well...she freaking rocks.

Tweens are magical with their one foot in fairy dust and one foot about to step into the slippery world that is modern adolescence.   All we want to do is preserve that... But sometimes it feels like we are on a treadmill to keep up with all the new ways that are being invented to steal our daughters innocence.

Then to top it off, she comes home upset from school.   You find out it is because some kid pointed out something unique about your daughter and that kid tried to shame her for it.   She is swallowing it and you are getting triggered right left and center remembering when something similar to that happened to you.   Muming/Aunting/Grandparenting is hard.   I totally get it.   Heck.   Modern adulting by itself is...not to mention being responsible for the self worth of a gorgeous little thing placed in your care.

Somedays it feels a little bit like this...

You are stumped and not sure what to do.   Its okay... we got this.  At least a starting place to open up the discussion and angle things in the right direction.  "As a twig is bent, so the tree show grow."  There are skills that can be learned that can keep her sharp, savy powerful, and still glittery when she leaves the nest and you stronger for having successfully guided her there.

Let me tell you a little story

I was born an artist.

I knew it when I was 3.

When I was 7,  I won my first photography award at a state fair.  I was always drawing, photographing, writing, and playing my cello.

I won a scholarship to University to become a musician and artist.

I chickened out.  I joined the military instead after hearing one too many times that artists starve.  I had been on a body shame roller coaster from the age of 3 when I first heard my father talking to my aunt behind closed doors about the number of belly rolls I had.  The thought of not being able to consistently feed myself after years of dieting didn't sit well with me.

When I joined the military, I figured it would prove to my family that I was strong and fit and worthy of respect finally.  After 8 weeks of boot camp where I kicked some serious butt...my own that is.

I walked out proud and strong as an ox and my grand mother looked at me and said "Is that all?  I would have thought you had lost more weight than that!"  Thanks Gran.   I was crushed.  I was 18.

That was chased by being weighed and measured every 6 months in the Navy for 10 years to make sure my bum wasn't too big to get promoted...

Last year at 45, I went back home pleased as punch after changing careers and  winning New Zealand Creative Photographer of the Year.  My family's overwhelming response to my return was..."Hmmmm Mandi, You could stand to lose a few pounds."  Oh for ferk sake.   The difference being this time it made me laugh and shake my head instead of cry.

Here's the deal.  My family.  Despite their sizism are good people.  They just have a very skewed view on what makes a person healthy, and an even more skewed one on what makes a person happy and worthy.  It makes sense.  They live in the western world where sizism is as acceptable as racism was during the 1920s.  It took me years to learn that.  To get my personal power back.  To stand in my own strength.  To own my creativity and not let my energy for my art be siphoned out by body shame and by other peoples opinions.

It has become my creative mission to help others develop those skills much earlier rather than later.  They are teachable skills but it helps if mother and daughter learn them at the same time especially if a mum is still wrestling with accepting her own body.

 

Why big hearted Rebels?

This course teaches life skills not taught in school that help you to be self compassionate and content in an often body toxic word. This course teaches you to be a big hearted rebel .

We are rebelling against the Girl Gauntlet.   The cultural pressures that are driving some of our daughters to eating disorders, depression, addictions, and in extreme cases suicide. We are rebelling against a trillion dollar beauty industry that only profits if you feel like you are in a battle with your body. It is a rebellion against the distorted reality of unattainable photoshop beauty.  It is a rebellion against the media that only casts women who are the size of a coat hanger.  It is a rebellion against a society that's unwritten rule is that a woman's power fades as her looks mature.

It is a big hearted rebellion that starts...one girl at a time. We are inspiring girls to be brave hearted rebels with a mighty cause.   Victims lack power.  Rebels do not.

We are rebels with a mighty cause.

We are starting a Mojolution.   A revolution of girl power that doesn't fade but only gets stronger and richer through adolescence and beyond.   We are walking along side our daughters, playing, laughing, healing, and learning the skills they need to keep their unicorn sparkle alive.