You’ve Got This
You’ve Got This is our young adult recommendation for July and is available for purchase on the Seaside Books online shop. This book is published by Gill Books and is by Tammy Darcy, an award-winning social entrepreneur. She founded The Shona Project to provide a safe place for girls to seek guidance and advice on all the challenges associated with growing up in Ireland. Backed by a team of professional advisors, the website also provides girls with an opportunity to share their own stories and learn from each other. The Shona Project has also delivered workshops to almost 13,000 girls in schools across Ireland.
As I always say, when writing about a book I think it is helpful to include the blurb as this is what folks might first read if they picked up this book in a bookshop. We are told of You’ve Got This:
Our teenage years are very important in shaping the women we become. We start to learn more about who we are and to take steps towards our future, but during these years we can often be consumed with doubt and anxiety. We worry about how we look, what people think, whether we should play sports, not getting ‘perfect’ marks, and how many likes and followers we have online.
You’ve Got This! is a positive and empowering guide designed to help girls find their place in the world and grab life with both hands. Full of practical information on handling the challenges of the teenage years with a healthy mindset, it covers topics like finding your friendship tribe, handling peer pressure, healthy body image, periods, love, sex and relationships, exam pressure, and navigating the online world.
You’ve Got This! is a supportive companion that will boost self-esteem, inspire positive thinking and build resilience while encouraging you to see the amazing potential in yourself. Discover that the parts of you that are different are your superpowers – own them, cover them in glitter and shine brightly!
I love that the first topic addressed in the book is friendship. Friendship is so important, especially for young women growing up in a society steeped in patriarchy that aims to pit women against each other and center the desires of men. I openly admit that for a long time I was a ‘not like other girls’ type of person who thought that women were too dramatic. I only formed friendships with men and pushed women away. I have written about that at length before, which you can read here on my personal blog (that I no longer maintain lol). Now that I have deconstructed that thinking I always say that the thing I am most proud of is my friendships and getting to call so many amazing women my friends.
I especially loved when Darcy names a true friend as someone who will always love you but who will also call you out, “Your friend group should feel like home, somewhere where you have belly laughs and ugly cries. There's no judgment and no one ever gets “canceled.” No one person dictates how everyone should think and act; everyone is just encouraged to be themselves….It’s having someone who will always love you no matter what, but won’t hesitate to tell you that you’re out of order.” I love this framing of friendship. I think the media portrays friendships as all or nothing and that if you ever disagree then the friendship isn’t meant to be. Real friends are invested in you enough to want you to be the best version of yourself.
Similarly, I appreciated the framing around family and what family can look like. Darcy writes, “Any group of people who co-exist in the one home, or across multiple homes, who care for one another and make decisions as a unit can call themselves a family. Sometimes you make a new family, one that makes you happy and loves you.” Too often, maintaining and celebrating our genetic family is non-negotiable, even if the environment is toxic, and I think that can be really harmful. I have a distant relationship with my family, and I spent most of my youth trying to imagine how I would ever be happy if we couldn’t have a TV-perfect bond. It was when I realized I could build a chosen family of friends and set boundaries to protect myself and my well-being that I started to feel whole in my life.
I think the advice about healthy relationships is so important for young people to hear. There are not a lot of examples of healthy relationships in the media. The new season of Love Island just started, and don’t get me wrong, I love watching Love Island as much as the next person, but it isn’t a good example of what healthy relationships can be. Yet this is the type of relationship held up as aspirational in the media. I think the advice given in the book around trust and resilience are critical pieces of advice in a media culture that holds up toxic relationships where people are codependent, move quickly to trust, and fight all the time as romantic.
The book includes sections on mental health and how to care for your body. I appreciated the candid discussions of menstruation and how the menstrual cycle can impact the mind and body. I appreciated that Darcy steered away from shaming, diet culture narratives in favor of uplifting that each individual is the expert about their body. They encourage readers to move in a way that makes them happy, eat things that are colorful and tasty, get enough sleep and drink water. All good advice that doesn’t place a moral value on weight and one’s ability to manage their weight. Similarly, they offer great advice around mental health and wellbeing that gives an affirming message encouraging young people to talk about their emotions and ask for help if they need it.
The book ends with a call to action, encouraging young women to not shy away from activism and politics. I really appreciated how the book doesn’t tiptoe around feminism, privilege, or allyship. Too often, books written for young people try to come across as “neutral” and don’t take a firm stance around social issues, instead only encouraging young people to care about something, anything and never being clear about the real-life repercussions of individual actions and beliefs. Letting young people believe it is ok to not think certain groups of people are deserving of justice or that the climate crisis is up for debate or that we don’t need identity-centered movements is incredibly harmful. You’ve Got This is clear and age-appropriate. It doesn’t position allyship as optional, it provides straightforward concrete steps to take to be a better ally to all people in your community and explains why this is important.
If you have a young woman in your life, I think they would really enjoy this book. I think it is probably best suited for pre-teens and folks in their early teens. The language is accessible and feels like advice from a caring older sister or friend. I would also recommend checking out The Shona Project, they seem to be doing great work.
For more information on You’ve Got This: