Live Event: The Girls Rock! Showcase at The Music Farm Columbia

Last week I sent Hollie to a Social Justice summer camp that uses music as their medium to discuss issues related to gender, race, and bullying. The first thing she said when she got in the car Monday afternoon was, “Can I come back next year?”

I said, “Let’s see how the week goes.”

She informed her MaMa later that night that at Girls Rock camp there was absolutely no room for ugliness of any kind. No mean girls. Period.

How refreshing.

All week she and her buddies learned about great female rock stars, played around on lots of instruments, formed bands, wrote songs, and performed. They danced and sang. They supported one another, encouraged one another, and felt good about being themselves.

I know no one sends their kid to mean girl boot camp. It’s an insidious competition for attention and validation that creates mean girls.

But getting a chance to go to Compassionate-Loving-Rocker-NonConforming-Brave Girl Camp is so totally amazing that Hollie and I were both blown away by the experience.

On Saturday, the camp hosted its showcase, a chance for the fledgling bands to perform their brand new songs, strut their self-made t-shirts, and be one in solidarity for all the values the camp promotes: Inclusiveness, Acceptance, Compassion, Freedom, Individuality, Love, and so much more.

The parents who gathered to watch the showcase all looked like me: concert t-shirts, tattoos, beer-in-hand-at-3-pm. It was my Unapologetically X Women’s March #Resist brothers and sisters and it felt awesome.

I know I’m doing this mom thing a little different than my neighbors and my Facebook friends, my college friends and my high school classmates, my PTO peers and business colleagues. But I’m doing it a lot like my Girls Rock Tattooed Music Fan Day Drinking Tribe.

And that makes me think it's probably an okay approach.