If you want a village, be a good villager.
On Saturday, we celebrated 10 years of an event built by one of our best friends. A woman we’ve shown up for again and again, because she’s done the same for us.
Last year, we brought Dakota with us. She was 16 at the time & she got to experience what it felt like to be welcomed into a room built for women to grow, connect + believe bigger.
She left wanting girls her age to have a room like that, too so fast forward exactly one year & she built one.
On Sunday, we got to stand in her room, alongside girls from our community who came to support a girl putting herself out there & doing something brave.
That’s the part we can’t stop thinking about…
Someone created a room for us.
We brought Dakota into that room.
She created a room for other girls.
& they showed up for her.
That’s how a village gets built.
Someone has to go first.
Someone has to show up.
Send this to a girl who’s learning how to be a good villager, we know sometimes that can be the hardest part, especially at this age.
Girls Mentorship
Girls Mentorship empowers tween and teen girls through personal development, leadership training, and life skills education.
We offer summer camps, after-school programs, and 1:1 mentorship to build confidence, resilience, and lifelong connection.
There are some things we expect kids to magically know by the time they become adults…
How to trust themselves.
How to communicate when it’s uncomfortable.
How to take feedback without letting it define them.
How to know whose opinion actually matters.
How to make a decision when everyone around them has an opinion.
How to lead themselves before they’re ever asked to lead anyone else.
But when exactly are we teaching them how to do that?
That’s the gap we want this class to help fill.
This week we officially kicked off The Practice of Leadership, a high school elective we get to build & teach from the ground up.
And we name it ‘The Practice’ very intentionally.
Because we don’t want these students to just KNOW more about leadership as a concept. We want them to be different because they practice it.
Day one started with what will be our anchor text from The Man in the Arena:
The credit belongs to the person actually willing to get in there and DO the thing.
So that’s what we’re going to ask these kids to do.
Get in the arena.
We’ll give them the tools. We’ll have the conversations. We’ll challenge them. They’ll challenge us. And then they’ll go out into their actual lives and put in the reps.
This was Unit Zero.
Save this because we’re going to be sharing the tools + conversations we’re having inside this classroom all semester.
Share it with someone raising, teaching, coaching or mentoring teenagers.
And follow along if you believe these are the kinds of things we should be teaching kids before we send them out into the world and expect them to figure it all out.
08/05/2026
We weren’t planning to make this a permanent post…
But after sharing it to our stories, the conversation that followed was too important to disappear after 24 hours.
Our inbox filled with hundreds of women saying some version of the same thing...
“This happened to me.”
Some were 17 like our girl when it happened. Some were in college. Some were grown women.
The details were different, but the feelings were exactly the same.
When our girl reached out to us, the very first thing she said was:
“I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.”
That sentence stopped us in our tracks because it’s something we’ve said to ourselves before.
& too many women are still saying it today.
We minimize.
We second-guess.
We convince ourselves we’re reading too much into it.
We worry more about making someone else uncomfortable than honoring the feeling in our own gut.
That’s exactly why she called.
She wasn’t looking for permission to be offended, she was looking for someone she trusted to tell her she wasn’t imagining what she was experiencing.
We told her she wasn’t overreacting & that what she was feeling mattered.
We told her it was okay to use her voice, stand firm in her boundaries, and get the hell out of there.
And before she hit send on a message we helped her draft, we prepared her for what would likely come next...
The minimizing.
The backpedaling.
The “that’s not what I meant.”
The request for more of an explanation.
This conversation isn’t about one text message, it’s about teaching girls that they don’t have to wait until something becomes undeniably inappropriate before they’re allowed to leave a situation that feels wrong. It’s about teaching them to trust their intuition.
So we’re curious...
Have you ever found yourself in a situation like this?
Did you brush it off to keep the peace?
Did you ignore your intuition because you didn’t want to seem like you were overreacting?
Or...
Did someone believe you, validate you, and help you find your voice?
If you’re comfortable sharing, we’d love to hear your story because every time a woman speaks up, she gives the next girl permission to trust herself a little sooner.
Our unofficial rule?
If we haven’t laughed so hard we’re crying at least once a day... we’re not done working yet.
This season has us trying so many new things, and with that comes awkward moments, bloopers, and saying things that are so painfully obvious they deserve a slow-motion replay.
We’re thankful we can laugh at ourselves, because life is too short—and the mission is too important—to take ourselves too seriously.
Now... back to filming. 🎬❤️
The world has a funny way of convincing girls that their worth can be earned... or lost.
It can’t.
Your worth isn’t something you prove.
It’s something you already have.
Tag someone who needs this reminder today.
If you’ve been around here for a while, you already know we have a tendency to say yes to adventures that make us equal parts excited and well, question our own sanity 😂
So naturally... We’re going back to high school.
Not as students, we’re not Drew Barrymore but as TEACHERS.
This August, we’ll be stepping into a high school classroom to teach a year-long leadership & personal development elective, and if we’re being honest, we’re feeling all the things.
We’re excited, grateful, nervous & forever curious.
Will they like us?
Will our lessons land?
Will we survive our first day without embarrassing ourselves? 🤞😂
The truth is, we’ve wanted to spend more time with high school students for years. Our Peer Leader program at summer camp has become one of our favorite parts of what we do, and this feels like the next chapter we didn’t know was coming.
So... we’re bringing you with us to share all the things:
The lesson plans.
The teacher outfits.
The wins.
The awkward moments.
The classroom stories.
What high schoolers are actually talking about.
What they’re struggling with.
The lessons that work.
The ones that completely flop.
And everything we learn along the way.
August 11th... here we come. 🎒✨
Give us your best advice in the comments the below, the funnier the better!!
07/20/2026
We gave a group of girls a scenario and asked them a simple question:
“If you were taking ownership in this situation, how would you feel?”
Their answers were incredibly telling. Most of them described feeling guilty, replaying the situation over and over, criticizing themselves, or staying mad at themselves long after the moment had passed.
It was such a stark reminder that somewhere along the way, many girls begin to believe that’s what taking ownership is supposed to feel like.
But that’s not ownership, that’s shame.
Ownership isn’t about making yourself feel worse because you made a mistake. It’s about taking responsibility for your actions, learning from what happened, making it right if you need to, and then giving yourself permission to move forward.
It sounds like:
“I made a mistake.”
“I can apologize.”
“I can learn from this.”
“I can make a different choice next time.”
Replaying the mistake doesn’t create growth, learning from it does.
That’s the kind of ownership we hope every girl learns—one that holds her accountable while also reminding her that one mistake should never define who she is.
Finish this sentence for us: “I’m giving myself permission to...” 👇
Six years ago, we started Jill & Mary | Empowering the Next Gen of Girls with one goal: help girls build a strong foundation from the inside out.
Now... We’re building one too.
After a year and a half of sitting, waiting, wishing & all the paperwork, Girls Mentorship Foundation is officially a 501(c)(3). 🎉
There have already been several “What the hell did we get ourselves into?” moments because for real, what are we doing? *nervous giggles*
So instead of pretending we have it all figured out or figuring it out behind the scenes, we want you to come along...
The meetings, the wins, the setbacks, the lessons. The people helping us make this dream a reality.
This foundation is going to create more opportunities for more girls, in more places, for years to come.
Thank you for believing in Girls Mentorship. Whether you’ve attended a camp, shared a post, volunteered, donated, cheered us on, or simply followed along... you’ve helped us get here.
Episode 1 is just the beginning. Let’s build something that lasts.
07/13/2026
We wish someone would have told us a lot sooner...
You don’t have to believe everything you think.
Because our brains are really good at filling in the blanks.
“They don’t like me.”
“I’m going to fail.”
“I’m the only one who feels this way.”
“I’ll never fit in.”
The problem is, our thoughts aren’t always telling us the truth.
One of the greatest gifts we can give our daughters isn’t the ability to avoid hard situations, instead it’s the ability to pause, question the story they’re telling themselves, and choose a different perspective.
That’s how confidence is built.
Not by never feeling nervous but instead by learning that our thoughts don’t always deserve the final say.
We’d love to hear from you:
What’s one story you believed about yourself growing up that you later realized wasn’t true?
Or, if you’re raising a daughter...
What’s one truth you hope she believes about herself before she walks into this school year?
Let’s remind our girls—and ourselves—that we have the power to rewrite the stories that no longer serve us.
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