Do you remember being 12?
I remember my first middle school dance.
I was wearing a short-sleeved dress with big, loose sleeves. While I was getting ready, I shaved under my arms. Then I put on my dress, held my hands up like I was slow dancing with my "date," and suddenly had a horrifying thought:
What if he looks down my sleeve and sees the roots of the hair I just shaved off?
Because obviously, while we were slow dancing in the school gym with disco lights flashing around us, this 12-year-old boy was going to be closely inspecting my armpits.
But at the time, this felt like a very real emergency.
So I came up with a solution.
Nair.
On my freshly shaved armpits.
Because the commercials promised silky-smooth skin, and apparently I believed this was exactly the moment to test that promise.
For anyone who has never put hair-removal cream on freshly shaved skin, let me save you the experience: the harsh chemicals that dissolve hair are HORRIFICALLY painful on tiny shaving cuts.
So instead of barely visible hair roots, I ended up with a flaming red, incredibly painful rash.
Which I then powered through...because I had a dance to attend.
Why was I so dramatic?
Because I was 12.
And my insecurity felt completely real.
Now, of course, it seems so insignificant. I cannot imagine caring if someone saw under my recently shaved—or not recently shaved—armpits.
At this point I'd probably be like, "Dude. Why are you looking that closely?"
But that perspective took time.
It took growing up. It took going through embarrassing moments, hard things, wrong decisions, and enough life experience to learn that not every problem deserves the amount of panic my brain wants to give it.
That's one of the reasons I added "Solution Storming" to Sparkles in Life.
One of my favorite parts of Sparkles in Life is the Solution Storming section. It helps a girl slow down and figure out what is actually bothering her.
Is this a problem I can solve?
Is it something I need to manage?
What matters most to me here?
What are my options?
And what choice do I want to make?
It gives girls practice thinking through problems instead of just reacting to the panic of the moment.
Because when you're 12, a middle school dance, a boy, and some microscopic armpit stubble can genuinely feel like a crisis.
Sometimes girls don't need someone to tell them, "That's not a big deal."
They need tools that help them figure that out for themselves.
That's the kind of tool I wish I'd had at that age.