Dannah Gresh - Raising Body-Confident Daughters: 8 Conversations to Have with Your Tween

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

EUGENE, OREGON

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Cover by DesignByJulia, Woodland Park, Colorado

RAISING BODY-CONFIDENT DAUGHTERS

Copyright 2015 Dannah Gresh

Published by Harvest House Publishers

Eugene, Oregon 97402

www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gresh, Dannah, 1967-

Raising body-confident daughters / Dannah Gresh.

pages cm (8 Great Dates)

ISBN 978-0-7369-6005-2 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-7369-6006-9 (eBook)

1. Mothers and daughtersReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. Body image in girlsReligious aspectsChristianity. 3. GirlsReligious life. I. Title.

BV4529.18.G7425 2015

248.8431dc23

2014028523

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To Cheryl and Rebecca

I love you both.

Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

2 P ETER 3:18

More than 200,000 moms and daughters who have attended live Secret Keeper Girl events and the hundreds of thousands who have used one of our printed resources to get closer to each other and to God. Ive loved getting to know you through Facebook, Twitter, and my blog, secretkeepergirl.com. I love you, girls! Every time you show up for an event or use one of my books to get closer to your daughter, you are standing with me to say that what God instructs about womanhood matters. Thank you!

Harvest House Publishers for partnering with us for the exciting growth of Secret Keeper Girl. This publishing house is built on the Word of Godliterally. A copy of the Bible is buried in the foundation of the building to remind them what matters. And that matters to me. Im especially grateful to Terry Glaspey for steering the new partnership and occasionally meeting up with us in New York or on my little farm to talk art and books and musicals. Bob Hawkins Jr., LaRae Weikert, and Barb Sherrill have been indispensable as we figure out how to meet the needs of all those Secret Keeper Girls. Paul Gossard crosses the ts and dots the is in these books and provides occasional spreadsheets to calm my nerves when deadlines loom. Gene Skinner jumped into this project to help him out, and Ive enjoyed working with him. But the entire team is always there to encourage and direct and make it all happen. Big hugs!

Suzy Weibel, for standing by me as a best friend and ministry partner. A few paragraphs in this book started in a book that she wrote, but I ended up stealing them (with her permission) for this book! I wanted to use her good stuff, so youll find it in here. Suzy never complains when we strategize like this and change thingsshe just trusts Jesus and me. What a good friend!

Eileen King, for plowing the ground for me to write. She creates the fertile soil of time by taking the weight of many things off my back so I can get away from the office and write until my fingers are sore! Im sure hers are too. This book came from her heart as much as mine!

While Im at the task of squeezing, Im so grateful for my main squeeze, Bob. Secret Keeper Girl was his idea, and he has been a faithful visionary and CEO. Bob has married administrative genius and patience to lead us through ten marvelous years of bringing girls and their moms closer to each other and to God.

Mostly, thanks to Jesus, whom I long to be with every day. May my body be his living sacrifice.

Dannah

Contents

I met sweet Hannah Bananaexcuse my tendency to nickname everyone I meetwhen she was about eight, but Id seen her picture long before I met her. She was a model for the cover of a music CD as a tween girl. In the close-up photo, her eyes were closed in worship as she tilted her head boldly to the sky, sending a contented smile in heavens direction. Her skin was nakedfree from any kind of makeup, including powder or lip gloss. In stark contrast to a picture-perfect world, her beauty did not come from perfection on the outside but something internal.

But this was just a photo, right?

Wrong.

Real-life Hannah, who was athletic and nearly always in basketball shorts and a T-shirt because she just didnt care what she wore, always had that look on her face. Contagious peace. Her beauty came from deep within.

Imagine my absolute shock when, several years after meeting her, I learned something that might have kept her from exuding so much confidence. Hannah was missing most of her fingers on her left hand. I noticed it the day she came to school with her arm in a cast from a recent break. I was so shocked, I gasped and asked if her hand was swollen, thinking maybe that was why her fingers looked short. But they just werent there! I had never noticed. More importantly, Hannah didnt seem to notice either. She typed, played basketball, wrote papers, and cookedall with a significant handicap but also with exquisite natural beauty and total confidence. Today she is a young woman in her first job as a teacher. She remains rather makeup free and unconcerned with what she wears, but she is as breathtaking as ever.

Contrast her to a girl we will just call Jane. I saw a photo of her before I met her too. Her features were flawless. Perfectly crafted nose, full lips, gorgeous deep brown eyes, and dark skin. But there was no smile on her face. Just a hollow stare that hid her beauty. I remember wondering what could possibly have made her sad enough to wear such a haunted look on her face.

When I met her as a preteen, fear was etched all over her, though it was somewhat ebbed by (of all things) shopping. A smile or giggle would sneak through from time to time, but her face primarily remained in that state of haunted beauty. Buying clothes seemed to make this tween forget her insecurities. Experimenting with makeup was fun at first but soon seemed to be necessary . An obsession with name brands led to a spending problem. I strongly suspect an eating disorder set in sometime during her teen years. Today she is a skeleton of a young women with little life direction. She cakes herself with makeup that makes her look like a clown, shes literally ashamed if shes not wearing brand-name clothes, and she cant look in the mirror without crying on a daily basis.