Sarah Stillman - Soul Searching. A Girls Guide to Finding Herself

Soul Searching

To Dad, Mom, Scott, and Joni Mitchell

Sarah

First Simon Pulse/Beyond Words paperback edition January 2012
Copyright 2000, 2012 by Sarah Stillman

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Beyond Words Publishing is a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com .

Managing Editor: Lindsay S. Brown
Design: Sara E. Blum
Illustrated by Susan Gross
The text of this book was set in Adobe Garamond.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stillman, Sarah.

Soul searching : a girls guide to finding herself / written by Sarah Stillman ;

illustrated by Susan Gross.

p.cm.

1. GirlsConduct of lifeJuvenile literature. 2. Spiritual lifeJuvenile

literature. I. Gross, Susan, 1960- II. Title.

BJ1651.S85 2012

158.08352dc22

ISBN 978-1-58270-303-9 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4424-4124-8 (eBook)

Recently, I woke up to an email from a fifteen-year-old girl in Russia who is recovering from a serious eating disorder and struggling to accept her body. A week before that, I got a note from a teenage girl in Beijing, China, who wanted to share a list of her favorite philosophy books, and a month earliertucked away like a gem between spam messages for celebrity diet pills and hair removal potionsI received a Facebook message from a girl in Missouri who hoped to brainstorm ways of dealing with hurtful comments from classmates online.

When I first sat down at age sixteen to write Soul Searching: A Girls Guide to Finding Herself , it was beyond my wildest dreamsand qualificationsto publish an advice book that would reach girls from Beijing to Kansas City. My goal was much simpler: I wanted to test out my suspicion that most young women, if given the chance, would enjoy reading about topics like journaling, philosophy, yoga, and creativity every bit as much as about fashion, lip gloss, boys, and dieting. Now, almost a decade later, Im excited to report that readers like you have proven me right. Todays teen girls are a lot more self-aware and engaged than adults often give them credit for. Not only do they like to read, but they like to reach out, react, and share their own ideas.

Since the first edition of this book came out, Ive had the amazing opportunity to exchange emails with hundreds of insightful and inspiring readers like you, whove taught me that society has a lot to gain from tuning in to the diverse voices of teenage girls. Some of the recent messages in my inbox made me smile, like the one that asked, Will you help me interpret my dream about being trapped inside a giant earthworm? But most of the emails have dealt with big, difficult issues that remind me just how tricky it can be to survive middle school and high school: how to handle the ups and downs of friendships and relationships, how to confront scary challenges like drugs and violence, and how to figure out your hopes for yourself and your world.

Being a teen certainly hasnt gotten any easier since I first wrote this book. In fact, if anything, girls today are facing more challenges than ever in our fast-paced, plugged-in culture. In the new edition of Soul Searching , Ive added a section about being a soul searcher in the internet age, which means dealing with issues like cyber-bullying, sexting, and Facebook mania. Ive also expanded the chapter called Set Your Body Free to tackle new themes, such as how to strive for a healthy diet without allowing an obsession with food or fitness to take over your life. And finally, Ive tossed in a few new examples of brave, cool things that girls around the world are doing to stand up for each other in rough situations, contribute to their communities, and make a better world.

Theres something else I should add: for all the pitfalls of living in a technology-obsessed century, its also made this particular moment an incredible time to be a girl. For starters, girls today no longer have to rely on glossy teen magazineslike the ones I ranted about in my original note from the authorfor information and advice. These days, if we dont like the stuff we read on the pages of a superficial magazine, whats to stop us from seeking out better sources of inspiration or creating our own? Todays girls are sharing their ideas on blogs, forming their own rock bands, performing their own poetry in local coffee shops, starting their own sports fan clubs, and standing up for themselves in our broader culture, where Girl Power finally means something more than our right to buy hip outfits and dance around to the Spice Girls. (Have you even heard of them? If not, I feel very, very old.)

Another cool thing about being a girl in our interconnected world is getting to learn from the struggles and ideas of other young people in very different situations, whether in far-off countries or in our own backyards. Consider the example of Maya Naussbaum, a college senior who founded a program called Girls Write Now to empower young women in New York City public schools to write their hearts out about stuff that matters to them and broadcast it online. Another is a girl blogger in Baghdad, Iraq known as Riverbend, a young female computer programmer who kept an amazing Web diary about her experiences living in a war-torn city, where electricity and running water were often scarce. Her blog reminds me that being a soul searcher is often extremely hard, scary work. Sometimes, it means confronting other peoples harsh judgments and pushing through them to stand up for who you are and what you believe, no matter the risks.

Thats a huge part of what this book is about: learning to take yourself and your opinions seriously, facing up to your fears, and discovering how many wonderful things lie beneath the surface of who you already are. Often, that means making embarrassing mistakesof which Ive had plentyand facing scary moments when you dont have the right answers.

If the past ten years have taught me anything, its that soul searching doesnt stop when you graduate from high school or when you get your first job or when you turn a certain age. Ive had the chance to try on a lot of hats in my late teens and early twenties, from college student to clueless traveler to war reporter. But for all the adventures Ive been lucky to have, Im constantly reminded how much I still havent figured out and how many big questions remain a glaring mystery to me.

Sure, this books subtitle may be A Girls Guide to Finding Herself. But Im beginning to think that theres no such thing as being totally found. And heres the good news: the fun, I think, is in the searching.