As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. For Denise Myers, Empowerteen was one village that helped her raise her two children. “The earlier you can get your kids to understand the ideas of mindfulness and the ideas of healthy eating…the more you can get that into a younger person, earlier in life, I think the more they’re informed as they go throughout life,” shares Myers, offering some insight into her philosophy. She feels that this is a philosophy that Dr. Paula Pilcher shares, which is one of the many reasons why she got her children involved in Empowerteen.
Myers daughter was the first of her two children to attend a retreat and classes in 2017, and while it’s been several years since her daughter first participated, Myers recalls her daughter’s excitement. “They would get outside and do things like make lotion and learn how to make more natural products for your skin,” Myers describes. “She enjoyed those kinds of activities where you were making something with your hands, learning at the same time, and understanding sort of how it affects your health and how it affects your body.” Myers is the type of parent who leans into practicing healthy habits for her family, so the added knowledge and encouragement of Dr. Paula was a huge help when teaching her children the right way to take care of themselves.
For Myers’ son, he started out as a participant in 2018 and 2019, but quickly moved into the role of mentor after gaining a set of skills that he wanted to share with others. “He wanted to give back to the younger kids and help them sort of understand his progression and how you can evolve and how things do get better and change,” Myers expresses, describing her son’s thoughtful motivation for becoming a mentor. “For him that was the impact it had,” she begins. “Just allowing him to see ways he could use those tools to help himself, and later on in life, wanting to give back to kids who were younger.” While he wasn’t yet an adult himself when he became a mentor, he understood the rapid changes that kids go through in the tween and teen years, and ultimately knew he could use that understanding to uplift others.
“I think it was fairly outside his comfort zone to go do in the first place,” Myers reflects. She jokes that her son was a bit awkward growing up, so she was a bit shocked when he came home with the news that he’d decided to become a mentor. She recalls Dr. Paula sharing some details of her son’s first mentorship, saying that her son had opened up about insecurities he’d experienced growing up. This vulnerability gave him the ability to relate to the kids he mentored and in turn helped him comprehend the changes he’d gone through in the past few years. “I think even in a short week of camp…he found himself attaching himself to the kids who were less engaged in the program, and trying to draw them out,” says Myers. “I think that probably boosted his self-confidence, and I could see that.”
Seeing the positive impact Empowerteen has had on her children, Myers offers her reflections on why the organization is so influential. “There’s no class that teaches you how to be human; how to interact with people who don’t look like you, or sound like you, or think like you,” she says. Myers feels that Empowerteen was the key that clued her children into those lessons that are otherwise lacking in a traditional classroom. “Having an organization like this…that promotes those things, just gives a wider opportunity for them to learn these things and practice them at a younger age.”
WRITTEN BY: Grace Bland, Empowerteen Journalism Intern
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