claiming your power by sharing your story
TRANSCRIPT
8/3/2019 Claiming Your Power by Sharing Your Story
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Claiming Your
By Sharing
Your StoryBy Ingrid Ricks
8/3/2019 Claiming Your Power by Sharing Your Story
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When I mapped out my dream path for my new memoir, Hippie Boy: A Girl’s Story, I
knew I wanted to start sharing my story with at-risk
women and teens. I envisioned using my story as a
tool to encourage them to face down their challenges
by finding their voice and claiming their inner power.
I wasn’t sure what form it would take. I just knew that
this was the overall message of Hippie Boy, and a
message I am passionate about getting out into the
universe.
Then, in early December, I was contacted by Marjie
Bowker, an English teacher at an alternative high
school in a suburb outside of Seattle. She told me our
mutual friend had given her my book to read. Her next
words were an early Christmas gift to me.
“Hippie Boy is the book I’ve always wanted for my students,” she said. “Do you want to
form an author partnership?”
Neither of us understood what an author partnership even meant. But we both knew wewanted to figure it out. So on a whim, we started brainstorming and Marjie was soon
crafting a curriculum that focuses on using Hippie Boy as a guide to help her students
share their own stories in a narrative format.
Our month-long curriculum kicked off January 4th. And magic has been happening ever
since. These juniors and seniors, more than forty in all, have experienced the kind of
heartache and tragedy that most of us can’t even fathom. They’ve experienced gang life
and drug overdoses, and have lost loved ones to prison, suicide and cancer. Some havebeen shuffled from house to house without ever having a safe place to call home. Some
have been battered and abused and neglected. A few have resorted to stealing food
because they didn’t have enough to eat.
These students have every right to be angry and hardened. Instead, they are some of
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