Proof of What’s Possible: How Camp Mentorship Changes Lives

It’s such a gift to look back at my teenage years and feel so distant from the pangs of loneliness of teenagehood. When I look back, the pain is dulled—just a soft echo—but it used to be more like a booming ache that bounced around in my head from morning till night.

I grew up in a suburban beach town on Long Island. Rocky beaches, fireworks in the summer, endless nights spent watching a sunset reflect onto the salty water of the Long Island Sound—yes, these things are nice! But when the novelty fades away, when winter freezes the beaches, when growing pains and the mental anguish of trying to figure out how to exist in a community that feels so different from you sets in… yeah, I can’t say that part was ever my favorite.

When being yourself is complicated

From the moment I was born, my parents knew I was gonna be a fun one, a weird one, a loud one! I love those things about myself, especially now. But for some reason, in my youth, connecting with others was soooo incredibly hard. I didn’t know anyone else who was like me or where I could find them. I moved through school getting in trouble constantly for being too loud and making jokes during class incessantly. I was being so loud, just yearning for someone to actually hear me.

I just felt like I had no guidance or connection—those feelings continued for the majority of my school career. I cannot tell you how much of a difference it would have made in managing my hopelessness if I had someone to show me that just because I didn’t fit into the conservative community I grew up in doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t find connection later on.

Seeing thriving adults who looked like me

I went to Odyssey for the first time when I was 17, begrudgingly, because I thought I was past sleepaway camp age and couldn’t imagine myself having fun there. Let me tell you… this summer changed everything. The complete and utter disbelief I was in, seeing adults that were weird (that’s a compliment), happy, and thriving—and who were here to create a space for me.

My counselors taught classes that rocked my world. They listened to me croon about my loneliness at home and assured me that my future was BRIGHT! (They were right.) They shared their own experiences finding role models and chosen family later in life, and became those things for me. It all gave me the hope and the strength to finish high school knowing there was more out there for me.

From camper to mentor

Now, at 27, a decade into working at the very camp that spurred a complete paradigm shift in my life, every summer I get to see a glimmer of little me in the eyes of some of our campers. I have the privilege of showing them there is so much hope in the future. Even in dark times, the world we can build together is a beautiful reality.