Wild Girl EXPOSED: Rachel Simmons
2 Jun
Published author, motivational speaker, blogger, teacher: New-York-Native Rachel Simmons has been on Oprah, toured across the nation, written a best-seller, built a successful summer camp and best of all she’s done all this without forgetting the joy of singing in the streets.
I found out about Rachel early this year after my friend Kaycee Jane sent me a link to Rachel’s heavily discussed blog post on hooking up. After a few clicks around her site, I liked what I saw so I headed to the library to grab her book. OF COURSE it was checked out, so I bit the bullet, went to Coles and invested 20 something Loonies. Gotta say The Curse of the Good Girl was a good ass purchase; not only because the style is incredibly up my alley but also because it gave me a good pickup line to e-approach Rachel with: eh yo shawty, I copped the book and I’m feelin your style still, can I get your number to talk it over sometime? It didn’t go exactly like that but ya get the gist, Rachel agreed to let me interview her last week for a glorious 40 minutes. I can’t say that she was what I expected. But then I thought, how odd is it that we genuinely believe we can piece together others lives through Tweets, Wikipedia searches and Google Images? Rachel is much more than her top 20 engine searches and thankfully a lot more of a true WILD GIRL than I had hoped. How WILD you ask?
Meet Rachel:
Shake hands with the Lady in Red:
My books, workshops and curriculum help girls become young women with integrity, self-awareness and personal authority. This kind of success is a two-part equation. It’s about knowing yourself: how you feel, what you think and what you need. It’s also the ability to act on who you are in your relationships.
I am proud to combine rigorous research with down-to-earth, fun content delivery. I help girls access the silliness and joy that many lose touch with on the road to finding their voices.
You talk a lot about helping girls find their “authentic voice.” What is that exactly?
An authentic voice is the unapologetic you. It is when you are willing to be embarassed and you have a healthy sense of humour about your mistakes. Someone with an authentic voice is not afriad to have a piece of food in their teeth nor are they afraid to be wild or go out into the world without makeup – just looking how you look and being perfectly satisfied like that.
Does an authentic voice mean you know exactly who you are?
No you don’t always have to know who you are but you should know how you feel. You can be authentic without having it all figured out, you should just know what’s going on in your immediate surroundings and how you feel about it. It’s about having the know-how to make the connection between what you are experiencing and what is in your heart. When you think about it, how many times a day do you swallow what your really thinking? How many relationships do you have where you can honestly say that you share the real you? Being authentic is being able to live the life that does not hide the strongest parts of who you are. Ask yourself is one part of your life lived passionately?
Alright so I’m loving all this talk about humour but funny chicks usually don’t have the best rep. Is this changing?
Humour is seen as unfeminine. How can you be lady like, sweet and nurturing when you’re making jokes? Girls receive a lot of messages that discourage them from being silly but what they really need is more permission to start! Humor is about being a smart consumer of the culture, a shrewd analyst. Good humor is about thoughtfully analyzing life.
I understand this! I am willing to do really silly things on demand, I pride myself on being spontaneous and I”ll do almost anything for a laugh (I won’t do anything, just almost anything). If you wanted me to go stand in the street and sing at the top of my lungs, I probably would.
You are a mentor to many, what do you have in common with the people you looked up to back when you were just trying to find your authentic voice?
Honestly, not much. I met a lot of people whom I thought I wanted to be like and it turns out we have very little in common. So much of my career is self-defined, I didn’t have one pundit that showed me the way. I found a lot of people are threatened by passion in youth or they will try to make you feel like you are too young to understand. That’s B.S. you know what you need to know in your 20’s, I’m not saying close your ears to the world, I happen to think University/ College is extremely important in self-development but you are never too young to trust yourself. Learning to trust yourself and believing what you believe is more important than any advice a mentor or role model could offer.
Okay but being in the position that you are in now, I’m sure you have access to some awesome people. Give us some names to Google!
Kate Harding, Courtney Martin and Roots Dance Company in San Diego.
Finally, here on TGAW we do a lil something called Journey to Greatness where we ask people to share aloud a goal that they are consistently working to accomplish by years end. What is your Journey to Greatness?
I would like to bike 100 miles! I’m almost half way there
And then she was gone… We thank Rachel for taking time out to chat with us, an average day has her working on curriculums, answering an exhuberant amount of e-mails, Tweeting, blogging, prepping for Girls Leadership Institute (the camp she founded in 2000 that teaches girls and women skills for assertive self-expression, emotional intelligence and authentic relationships) and of course making time to do the things that WILD girls do.
If like me you feel like this romance was to short lived, worry not my pets there is more ways to get the gospel according to Rachel:
Affirmation.
Daily I have doubts about what we do here on TGAW; just before I hit send on any e-mail, I blink twice than think twice before including the link to this blog in my signature. I am worried because this home is different, it’s un-ladylike, it’s immature, it’s brazen… but it is genuinely an accurate representation of who I am. Makes me wonder: do people deserve to know who we are or should each case be treated separately? Should the outter world only be privy to the parts of us that are pertinent to them?
This interview provided so much affirmation, not only because I had the unique opportunity of hearing one of my role models encourage others to be WILD but because I got to see the other side of my struggle. Despite my efforts, like Rachel I do not have a mentor and even though a lot of y’all accept me, I am heavily judged by those who are unaccustomed to someone like myself. But can I tell you how incredible it was to listen to this young woman who paved her own path (her own way) and has made an entire career out of encouraging others to cut loose at their tailored seams. That’s inspiring. That’s affirmation. I appreciate this sh*t, I hope you did too.
Wild Girl or Wild Guy EXPOSED, is a new feature we are adding to the blog. We are looking to interview people who are successful at their passion while still maintaining a strong relationship with his or her wild side. If you have any suggestions of people we should profile puhleeeze let us know at thosegirlsarewild(at)gmail.com
**Next up Nneka Elliot, reporter from CP24!
I know a few ppl you could profile, hard act to follow tho, this girl is awesome! how old is she?
I really liked the tips in her videos. Every now and then I talk myself out of doing things that, in my gut, I feel I’m qualified to do. And while I do the self-assessment she recommends, it seems that I sometimes push myself to let the cons outweigh the pros. “Critical,” “(over)analytical”–that’s me; I’m that way with myself and others. My natural tendency is to “let it all hang out,” but I bet there are a lot of people who know me who don’t know that because they’ve only been in settings in which I’ve chosen to act like I have my ish all together…. I mean, sometimes I do, but I need to take my chances in the times I know I don’t.
The part you wrote at the end reminds me of the question I asked for the blog tour (about the open nature of this blog conflicting with anything else in your lives). I remember you both saying this is just how you are, and I wondered then like you said in this post: “…should each case be treated separately? Should the outer world only be privy to the parts of us that are pertinent to them?” ::shrugs::
I just know that we change with our settings. I try to remember that just because everyone isn’t seeing everything about me all at once that doesn’t mean I’m not being “authentic” and that even if I look back on something I said or did in my past and say “wtf,” it’s okay because at that time, I said/did it with conviction and (more than likely) good intent.
I know a couple of people who may be good for this feature. I’ll check in with them.
o this lady is 2 ill. i definitely have an “authentic voice”. i love when people give me words to definitions i already know. once upon a time i was in a struggle to find and accept myself for the abnormality that i am. jus an insecure lil pickney. Luckily somewhere along the road i blossomed into this unapologetic, all or nothing type of young woman who is pretty confident-ish. kinda…still workin on it actually. i woulllllllllllld get the book, but im poor. (by the way that was a subtle hint to bum off a copy from role model Shannon in case you didn’t catch the subtlty
(dsol can i get my paws on yaws?)
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back to the subject….
i think its important to always be the genuine YOU, not you, tailored to fit the expectations of others. you might lose yourself in the flip flop trying to please everyone. live free. no need for the reservations.