From the Field to the Fight: When Healing becomes Advocacy for Girls

Growing up as a young girl, I learned to keep things to myself because I felt my voice never mattered. With no one to confide in, my mental health began deteriorating early. I carried thoughts of wanting to vanish—not because I wanted to die, but because I wanted the pain of feeling unseen to disappear.

As an adult, I now understand how that silence shaped me. It influenced how I asked for help, how long I endured before speaking, and how I related to the world. That experience followed me into my work as a social work student.

I did not fully understand the weight of silence until I began working closely with girls whose stories lived quietly inside them. In classrooms, they laughed; in groups, they nodded. But in moments of trust, their bodies spoke first—tight shoulders, cautious eyes, hesitant voices. Trauma was not dramatic; it was routine. It showed up in withdrawal, anger, academic decline, and survival without support.

What unsettled me most was how normalized this pain was and how distant the systems meant to protect girls felt. Mental health support was scarce, and safe spaces were treated as optional. I began to see the gap between policy language and lived reality.

It was from this realization that She Rises was born. She Rises is not a rescue project; it is a listening space. It centers girls’ voices as truths to be honored, not problems to be solved. In that space, healing became resistance—choosing to speak, to feel, and to imagine a future beyond survival.

This work taught me something simple but profound: when girls are heard early, harm can be prevented. My advocacy begins there—in the belief that every girl deserves to be listened to before she learns to disappear.

Written by: Elenah Kendi Thomas