The girls in Club Real Girl, our after school program, have me rethinking the power of gossip. We started Club Real Girl by asking girls about their interests and obsessions. One idea kept reoccurring: girls talking behind each other’s back. So we started our program by exploring just that.

Twenty-four fifth and sixth grade girls worked in small groups to create five tableaux portraying different gossip situations. We then explored the internal voice of each of the characters in these scenes: the gossipers, the bystanders and the victims of gossip.

As the characters spoke, patterns started to emerge. At GLI we generally teach that gossip’s impact comes from its damage on the victim’s reputation. When her reputation is suffers, her relationships change, and therein lies the real impact—not the words themselves (sticks and stones…), but what those words do to reputations and relationships.

The “A-ha” moment to me came in hearing the internal voices of the victim characters. The victim in each of the five groups echoed a similar thought pattern: she was believing the gossip about her. She was starting to think that her shoes or accent were weird, that she was, in fact, a loser. She wasn’t able to brush it off as “just rumors.” The gossip actually affected the most important reputation in her life: her reputation of herself.

One of the things that I am most grateful for this year are the amazing role models and mentors in my life. These are the women working hard to build a company that impels our girls to be authentic, face their fears, and live as leaders. The women that I refer to include women in my family, mothers of daughters in our programs, mother of friends— all who bring their own stories, strengths and experiences to the GLI table.

This does not look like fertile ground for an emerging real girl, but this is where I am: on the tennis court. I dismissed tennis for years as elitist or exclusive. The truth is I am scared of it. Tennis is hard. When one isn’t naturally gifted at sports, one develops a sports philosophy that is anti-competition. This philosophy leads to yoga classes, leisurely bike rides, or relaxing (slow) jogs. Tennis, unlike these solo sports, is about winning, and therefore another person loosing.