No Girl is An Island

I grew up going to Girls' Camp for the mormon church. In my teenage years, up until the very year I stopped going to church and stopped believing at age 17, I enjoyed camp immensely. It was so fun to be with friends, adventure in the wilderness (the last couple years we did overnight or multiple day backpacking trips), to swim in the lake, make crafts, eat, salute the flag, and, best of all, sing together.

Every night before we'd all head off to bed in our little A-frame cabins, we all gathered around a big campfire and the girls sang songs together. Most of them were funny and active songs like "Rise and Shine," "Sippin' Cider Through a Straw,"  and "Just a Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe."  But at the end of each night, the Big Sisters (I was one for two years in a row) went up to the campfire, put our arms around each other facing inward, swaying together, and quietly sang "No Man is an Island."  It always felt so sleepy and comfortable to me, hearing my friends' slightly off-key girlish voices warble up with the gentle smoke into the fir trees and pines. Then we'd quietly say, "Good night,"  and all the campers would shuffle silently off to their cabins with the song's words echoing peace for each of us.

Fast forward many years later, and as a new mother, I found myself singing this same song at night to help my restless baby, Lucy, find a similar peace.

Since my 20's, I've had a scratchy voice on and off, and I have found that I can't always hit the notes like I used to.  The pitch goes too high for me when it says "each man as my brother," and then immediately goes too low with the lyrics, "We need one another." But I'd talk-sing through those parts and go on, because she loved it.

Slightly more troubling was the gendered language, especially as she started to get older and was insistent on proper pronouns. She and Polly didn't like to be referred to as "you guys," and wondered aloud about particularly patriarchal language, "mankind," "brotherhood," etc. This happened naturally; I never really said anything to prompt it, as I had long ago myself accepted the limits of language and gender, and learned to rationalize in my own head. Now I had to think of their perspective, in which girls and sisters are life, and I'd start to switch back and forth between singing, "No man" and "No one." Just like in "Ba Ba Black Sheep,"  Lucy preferred a balance: "the little boy who lives down the lane,"  and then in the next verse, "one for the little girl who lives down the lane." She doesn't like to totally give up common expression like "Each man as my brother,"  but she'd like the next verse to say, "Each one as my sister." 

But for the first time, the other night right before we went to sleep, she asked me to sing it a second time and to sing "girl" every time it says "man."  So I indulged. And I don't know why, singing it that way, deliberately and as a blessing for my own daughters, gave me goosebumps all over. It's such a small change.  I started singing it that way without a second thought. But then I found it somehow made a big difference. With "girl" and all that word's implications and associations, the song felt so much more visceral to me, empowering, complicated, beautiful, personal. 

A song I've always loved, one that has brought me peace.

But now, it brought me peace and something else. Power.

Try it. If you know the tune, sing it aloud. It feels good.

No girl is an island.

No girl stands alone.

Each girl's joy is joy to me. Each girl's grief is my own.

We need one another,

So I will defend

Each girl as my sister,

Each girl as my friend.

I saw the people gather;

I heard the music start.

The songs that they were singing were ringing in my heart.

We need one another. 

So I will defend 

Each girl as my sister,

Each girl as my friend.