Frequently Asked Questions
What do you mean by "girls"?
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We understand gender identity to be fluid and expressed in many ways. Our programs welcome teens along the gender spectrum who are assigned female at birth and/or socialized female. All sexual orientations are welcome and celebrated. Typically around half of our enrolled youth are queer, non-binary or exploring gender identities.
We are skilled at working with teens along the gender spectrum, including cis girls, gender-questioning, and non-binary teens. We are dedicated to continuously expanding our toolkit to maintain best practices. All youth deserve to feel seen, safe and significant. All youth deserve to feel they belong. Questions or concerns welcome, every story is different. Are you a parent struggling to keep up? Here's a link to some helpful terms... |
What is "BIPOC" and why do we use that term?
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"BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Pronounced “bye-pock,” this is a term specific to the United States, intended to center the experiences of Black and Indigenous groups and demonstrate solidarity between communities of color. The term “BIPOC” acknowledges that people of color face varying types of discrimination and prejudice. BIPOC aims to bring to center stage the specific violence, cultural erasure, and discrimination experienced by Black and Indigenous people. It reinforces the fact that not all people of color have the same experience, particularly when it comes to legislation and systemic oppression." - Thank you to the YWCA for this image and definition.
Love Your Nature is committed to creating intentional community that welcomes and celebrates differences. All our groups strive to hold safe, inclusive spaces for youth to share in honest, meaningful ways. Our Real Talk Curriculum grows authentic self expression, including our racial & multiracial experiences. In an average girls group, 40% are youth of color or mixed race youth. Our East Bay BIPOC Group was created to amplify our commitment to serve in this way. The group seeks to create a circle of understanding, solidarity and support for BIPOC teens specifically. This is a space to celebrate and uplift each other, where we value being real, together. Learn more about East Bay BIPOC Group...
You can also read our Statement of Solidarity with Black Lives Matter. |
Is there something I can show my daughter? Can she hear from girls who have worked with you?
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Yes! We recommend showing your daughter the specific page for whatever she or you are wishing to sign up for, first. Watch some of our videos to hear what participants are saying.
We also strongly recommend having her read some of the testimonials written by our teens. These are written specifically for new teens considering joining us :) Read testimonials here. |
Who leads the groups?
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Most programs are led by the Founding Director of Love Your Nature, Emily Frost, and Co-Director Quetzal Francois. Together they draw on over 30 years of experience working with teens and families.
Select groups are led by our Team. Our East Bay BIPOC Group is led by Carmen McNeil. Our Marin Group is led by Caitlin McNeely. Our Davis Group is led by Emily Frost, Quetzal Francois, Isabella Masterson, Coralie Border. Emily Frost leads the Young Adult Groups solo. |
What do you actually "do" in the program?
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Great question! We've created an entire part of the website dedicated to this question: Our Philosophy, and, Teen Curriculum. The short answer is we co-create developmentally appropriate, meaningful programming for mixed age youth groups to help them navigate coming of age. We "do" talking circles, getting to know each other games (that are actually enjoyable), art projects, nature crafts, journaling... We get young people outside and off their phones. We practice Radical Kindness. We celebrate authenticity, courage and vulnerability. We share intentional nature time and introduce to The Way of Council, scaffolding basic practices towards a culminating rite of passage trip upon high school graduation. Facilitators collaborate with their group to create a fun, deep, relevant program, that hopefully makes lasting change in a young person's life.
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Is this therapy?
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No. We are not licensed therapists and as such offer this work as "mentoring" "guiding" and "girls empowerment coaching". Though we have training in various therapeutic modalities, and participants often say what we do "feels like therapy", we do not practice therapy. Teens lovingly refer to what we do as "not-therapy-therapy".
We offer highly skilled facilitation of group process work primarily through small group programs, workshops and retreats. We also offer individual "coaching" sessions for teens, young adults and parents. We are happy to provide referrals for licensed practitioners upon request. Our enrollment materials explain the difference between what we do and psychotherapy. |
This might sound like a weird question, but are the youth you work with "normal"? What kinds of teens do you work with? Will my daughter fit in?
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We are asked all the time. Yes, we work with "normal" girls as well as girls who might not be considered "normal". We aim to create a strong container that welcomes all youth as they are, for who they are. We work to normalize all our experiences as shared human experiences, even though we all have our own journey. We strive to create diverse yet cohesive groups of girls for all our offerings.
For our ongoing girls groups, workshops, and retreats, our enrollment looks something like this... |
Most common are girls who:
We are also qualified to work with and welcome girls who:
We practice social skills but are not a "social skills" group. If we do not feel the group is a good fit, we will let you know immediately.
In an average girls group, 40% receive some sort of discounted tuition due to financial hardship.
In an average girls group, 40% are youth of color or mixed race youth.
In an average girls group, 50% are queer, non-binary or identify as LGBTQA+.
We are always striving to create more diversity and inclusion in our offerings.
- Wish for stronger more trustworthy friendships
- Would greatly benefit from skillfully led conversations around complex and taboo topics
- Need help dealing with stress & anxiety
- Struggle with the impact of social media and media in general in their lives
- Feel a lot of pressure to be XYZ in their life and need a space they can be truly authentic in and just take off the masks
- Are needing a girl-centered space that is free of drama, cliques and judgment
- Are exploring their sexuality and gender identity
- Are clearly exhibiting "risk taking behaviors" and need non-parental guidance
- Are not yet exhibiting "risk taking behaviors" but would benefit from being part of a well held group that shares intelligent and self-respecting conversations about those behaviors / choices.
We are also qualified to work with and welcome girls who:
- Are recovering from self-harm, eating disorders, or who have been but are no longer suicidal
- Have returned from residential or wilderness treatment programs and are seeking reintegration
- Have struggled with serious hardship including but not limited to abuse, homelessness, addiction...
We practice social skills but are not a "social skills" group. If we do not feel the group is a good fit, we will let you know immediately.
In an average girls group, 40% receive some sort of discounted tuition due to financial hardship.
In an average girls group, 40% are youth of color or mixed race youth.
In an average girls group, 50% are queer, non-binary or identify as LGBTQA+.
We are always striving to create more diversity and inclusion in our offerings.
If after exploring our website, you still aren't sure if our offerings would be a good fit for your daughter, please contact us and request a free 20 minute consultation call. Every group is different and we are happy to share more about the details for a specific group or event. Make sure to show them some testimonials and watch the videos!
How do you make space for kids in the group bringing more serious issues, without the whole group being overly impacted? My teen is figuring out how to hold someone else's struggle without it becoming her own.
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Learning how to be with other people's struggles, and not let them in so deeply that they become our own, is a really important life skill. This concept/skill is an essential one, and this group is a great place to practice. As you might imagine, many young women (or however they identify) have strong caretaker instincts. How we express that instinct -and- take care of our own selves with that instinct, is a big part of growing into our womanhood. This, more generally, is part of our work together.
This is a space where we offer, even invite, young people to share their "more serious issues". These issues are both unique and universal... school stress, divorcing parents, body image struggles, gender explorations, questions around identities of all kinds, sexism, racism, general existential questions about the world we are inheriting... to name a few. These are all "serious". If these fall into categories of conversation you would not want your child engaging with in a facilitated way, I imagine our programs may not be a good fit. |
No one wants to enroll their teen in a "heavy" group and overload them with other people's trauma. But, these are the times we live in and are raising our young people in. I expect stress, depression, anxiety, self harm or disordered eating to arise in any/every group. I know too many self-harming teens to promise this will not come up. Almost every teenager I know, knows a self-harming teen. I want to be hopeful, but I also want to be honest. Self-harm is an epidemic among teen girls at this time. However, self-harm will not be the focus of our group. We might discuss self-harm as a strategy to get needs met, as a way to relate to our body or body image, as one of many ways we might have learned to get a need met... and widen the discussion, if it were to arise naturally. We do not discuss details around self-harm in group and discourage any sort of attention centered on sharing of these details.
Young people often feel like it's their responsibility to shoulder the suffering, or even simply the stories, of peers who are exploring the shadows (which is natural, but without guidance, can have severe consequences, as we know). Adults/mentors often struggle to model the kind of unconditional love required to include the one who self-harms, and the one who harms themself care-taking them, and the archetypal draw to initiation and risk taking inherent to the coming of age process. Our hope is to put these topics in their age and developmentally appropriate contexts so everyone (whether they have self-harmed or barely know what that is) feels seen, safe, and significant.
Young people often feel like it's their responsibility to shoulder the suffering, or even simply the stories, of peers who are exploring the shadows (which is natural, but without guidance, can have severe consequences, as we know). Adults/mentors often struggle to model the kind of unconditional love required to include the one who self-harms, and the one who harms themself care-taking them, and the archetypal draw to initiation and risk taking inherent to the coming of age process. Our hope is to put these topics in their age and developmentally appropriate contexts so everyone (whether they have self-harmed or barely know what that is) feels seen, safe, and significant.
What does my tuition pay for? Why is this so expensive?
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Love Your Nature is a small, but mighty team of female change makers devoted to creating a more sustainable world in which teen girls thrive. We offer high quality mentoring (while not technically offering group therapy) that is transformative, meaningful, fun. Many teens come to our programs "hating" therapy or refusing to ever participate in therapy again. You'll be hard pressed to find a program that packs in the powerful curriculum and therapeutic depth we do, while still maintaining a "chill" vibe that teens generally love. There is a lot of behind the scenes work to guarantee the quality of Love Your Nature programs.
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Costs generally cover:
We are committed to making our programs as accessible as possible because we believe that our whole community benefits when more youth are given an opportunity to be included in spaces where they can fully be themselves. We understand that our tuition rate may be a limiting factor for some families. This is why we have a "no one turned away for lack of funds" policy and a Scholarship Fund. For a little context, in 2022, we directly mentored about 70 teens through our programs, more than half of which received scholarships (about $40,000 of tuition discounts). We are an LLC receiving no grants or funding beyond tuition and individual contributions.
- the endless basics of running a business (insurance, permits, licenses, supplies, food, space rentals, website, Zoom accounts, GSuite, printing, marketing, Quick Books... etc)
- minimal bookkeeping services and a once-in-a-while CPA (we are looking for a great local CPA!)
- about 3% of our income goes to our payment processor, PayPal (we are looking for a great alternative!)
- monthly consultation with super-experts in the field of adolescent mental health, we lovingly refer to this as our version of "Supervision" (see our Team)
- a reasonable income for your facilitators
We are committed to making our programs as accessible as possible because we believe that our whole community benefits when more youth are given an opportunity to be included in spaces where they can fully be themselves. We understand that our tuition rate may be a limiting factor for some families. This is why we have a "no one turned away for lack of funds" policy and a Scholarship Fund. For a little context, in 2022, we directly mentored about 70 teens through our programs, more than half of which received scholarships (about $40,000 of tuition discounts). We are an LLC receiving no grants or funding beyond tuition and individual contributions.
I saw on your website you pay a land tax. What is that about?
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We are a women and queer owned business. We stand with and are committed to serving historically excluded and marginalized families, in particular LGBTQ+ and BIPOC families. We are supported by community, and in turn support our local community. We live and work on unceded Ohlone land. We pay a voluntary land tax in support of Indigenous life. You can learn more about this movement and our decision to support it here.
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Are you a non-profit? Where do my "donations" go?
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We are not a non-profit. We are a teeny tiny love powered "Partnered-LLC". We are Emily and Quetzal. We are our families and our community. We receive no grants or funding beyond tuition and individual contributions. For a little context, in 2022, we directly mentored about 70 teens through our programs, more than half of which received scholarships (about $40,000 of tuition discounts).
We are committed to making our programs as accessible as possible because we believe that our whole community benefits when more youth are given an opportunity to be included in spaces where they can fully be themselves. All contributions go directly into our Tuition Assistance Fund for teens and families facing financial hardship. We also offer a "Pay It Forward" option for all PayPal transaction, which also go directly to supporting teens who would not normally have access to this important work. We have a non-profit fiscal sponsor, Youth Passageways, with whom we run occasional fundraising campaigns with. If you are seeking to gift a larger donation outside of a sponsored campaign and would like to request a tax deduction, please let us know! 
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In their own words:
"You've given me a safe space to truly be myself and in the process, discover who I am." - R.K. |
