Fridays with Franky: I Heart Camp and So Can You!
Hello everyone! Happy Friday from Franky the Camp WeHaKee Dog! And Happy Belated I <3 Camp Day!
On Wednesday we celebrated our love of summer camp with lots of other camps around the world. Here are Bob, Maggie, and Thatch at their weekly virtual staff meeting, in full summer-camp happy-mode!
I Heart Camp day got me thinking about WeHaKee’s tagline…
At the Heart of WeHaKee is Relationship!
So I know that everyone at WeHaKee loves camp a lot because of the relationships we build and the work we put in to be good at doing that! We want to teach girls and young women, families and friends how camp makes you better at loving and caring for yourself and the people around you. Here are some great ways we can all start on this important mission:
Give the gift of camp.
The American Camp Association recently published a great article from a camp-loving Grandmother who gives the gift of camp to her grandchildren. She speaks eloquently about why it’s so important to her to share this thing she loves with her grandchildren, and how it makes their relationship better! If you want to do that for the amazing people in your live, there are plenty of ways to go about it!
You can tell someone about your own experience. You can help someone register for a session. You can donate to a camp you support, or an organization that sponsors “camperships.” Whatever you do, more people will have the opportunity to live in a camp community.
Live camp at home.
Try taking a leaf out of the camp book and see how it changes your relationships. Do your best to keep your personal space clean and welcoming, as if you were sharing a cabin. Set a couple times to meet over food with family and friends, just to keep up with their day-to-day. Try something new with a new friend and take a photo to save the memory! Write a letter to someone and tell them what they mean to you, as if you couldn’t pick up the phone and call.
Take time each night to reflect on the day, and even ask for your loved ones to supply their experience. Who knows, you might realize that the people around you experience the same things very differently from you. Talking about it (like a WeHaKee cabin reflection) is the first step to recognizing how real the emotions and experiences of the people around you are.
Be encouraging of others on their journey.
Sometimes relationships present challenges. Familial ties, friendships, and even your relationship with yourself takes work. When you recognize someone else putting in the effort to reach out to those around them, affirm that action! That might mean saying something like “I saw you do [xyz], that was really brave, amazing, admirable… etc.!”
It might sound embarrassing but when we can get used to it together. It will make it easier for all of us to do the hard part of reaching out, if we know others are reaching towards us!
I really hope you can tell how much I think the HEART of WeHaKee makes me love Camp more and more each day. Please take some time to read Bob’s Sunday Snippet about how camp kids make great adults, and keep working to make the “real world” more like camp!
See you at camp!
