An Open Letter to the Girl Scouts of America

An Open Letter to the GSA (Girl Scouts of America)

Hello, Girl Scouts of America. Hello, world. Ever since I worked for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania back in 2015, a heavy weight has been pressing on my heart and mind. It has caused me to lose sleep and obsess in this way that one obsesses when they feel they face a large mountain and no rope.

Well, no more. Let this post flow ~ with no attachment to outcome
~Whether it reaches the scope of an audience I want it to, or it doesn't.

When I worked for Camp Laughing Waters in 2015, I received a shock that became heartbreak and then simply illness and a sense of guilt. This camp served hundreds of girls each week, and at each and every meal it was feeding the campers and staff stuff that looked like food, it kind of smelled like food, but it was most certainly not food. And the water was poison.

This isn't a unique situation for Camp Laughing Waters. This is the state of reality in public schools, camps, and other programs all across America. We are victims of our food system and industries that rape the earth for her materials, and we are allowing corporations to poison us and our kids.

This affects ALL children, and it affects all adults. It doesn't matter where you come from in regards to this, because it affects you all the same. We are all equally impacted by this. And people who have trauma already that is not healed, it can be even worse. It is time to elect a leader who will put a stop to Fracking.

I am highly sensitive to whatever I put into my body. It was about a year before this 3-month stint with the Girl Scouts that I started to go into a downward slope with my eating choices. I have always loved to experiment. I started a journey towards veganism in 2011 and chose to focus on raw foods and superfoods. I truly felt my cells changing, my outlook changing, my emotions expanding. In 2011 and 2014 I went through rape experiences and I made a disconnect from my body. My sensitivity was numbed, damaged. I started to eat animal products as a way of perhaps bringing myself down to earth, and I also was ACTIVELY ignoring the Truth of my Spirit.

I found myself making choices that hurt me. That further disconnected me from my own soul's truth. I found myself gaining weight, feeling bad. I felt fear - the fear of the animals I was eating who had lived their whole lives locked up in cages in the dark, forced to wade through the feces of their brothers and sisters.

And my friend she was in the barn, and she was just a tiny little one, she was 6 weeks old, and she was subject to the most atrocious of fates. It is unacceptable. And it demands justice. There will be peace when there is justice, and justice demands peace. And it must be understood.

I found myself there, then, a year and a few months later, standing on the ground of Camp Laughing Waters, feeling like I was up to my eyeballs in mud.

It was like a braking point. I could see it. I could see it, yet there was nothing I could do. I made a commitment to stay there the whole summer. I would do just that.

I got a bad stomach ache the second day from the water that tasted like it literally just came out of a fracking well. It just got worse and worse from there. I noticed girls between the ages of 6 and 12 saying their stomachs hurt, and I immediately suspected the water or the food. But the other staff members would say, "They're just pretending. It's homesickness."

I wanted to do something. I felt so powerless.

How could that water that literally made me feel like I might die not be the cause of at least a few of those stomach aches? I wondered in awe how the other staff members weren't feeling it.

As the time went on, it was all I could do not to give up completely. I spent most of the time resting and I just felt like my whole soul was glued to the floor.

After I left that summer, I just couldn't rest. I couldn't relax. I couldn't heal. Nothing felt right. Even last year, the effects were still weighing on me. I didn't even remember why I felt so powerless, so angry. I just did. Now in retrospect of course, I can see it was the outright rejection of my Soul's Own Truth that put me through it.

I know that we all have the power to make a difference. That is what the Girl Scouts is all about. Don't ignore this post. Don't go back to sleep.

All I want from this post is that those reading it understand the powerful effect that the food and water we put into our body has on our entire system - mind, body, and soul. Maybe you are in a position to make a difference. If so, do.

If you are looking for resources for your friends and family and yourself, please find "Chocolate Revolution" By Anna Suvarora on Amazon for Kindle. There are also tons of other amazing resources available in for eating healthy, moving to plant-based, eating organic, and the importance of eating sustainably for the health of the planet. Forks Over Knives documentary. The China Study if you like hard facts and reading big studies.