Courageous and Strong
“On my honor, I will try…”
A long time ago, roughly about the age as the photo on my about page, I took an oath that I don’t think I fully grasped as I took it. Girl Scouts was an after school activity along with attending Hebrew school, theater workshops, swim lessons, karate, softball, and half a dozen other things I tried for a few months or years. (As an aside, I deeply appreciate that my parents helped me explore as many different activies as I could become aware of.) I don’t think I ever gave great consideration to what it meant to serve God and my country, to help people at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout Law.
Now I have a new appreciation for it.
Last week, I had an amazing opportunity to meet with a group of Daisy and Brownie Girl Scouts. For those unfamiliar, Daisys are in grades K-1, Brownies 2-3. Although I don’t have any personal experience as a Daisy, I do fondly recall my time as a Brownie earning badges, selling cookies, and going on my first camping trips. (For the record, even at that age I liked everything about it except sleeping on the ground.) I remember going door to door for those cookie sales, getting sick from eating too many s’mores, and one meeting where we finished earning a badge focused on being strong women by fully embracing that it was also okay to be unabashedly feminine and each getting fully dolled up toddlers and tiaras style. (My grandmother treasured the resulting photos.) My troop stayed together until high school, though the meetings became less business and badge earning and more a recreational activity for a core group of friends not to lose touch as we started to pursue different interests. I wish nothing less for the girls I met last week.
The troop had reached out to a fellow cosplayer who frequently appears at charitable events in the area, asking if he knew any female super heroes who might want to visit their troop. So Cap reached out to Black Widow, who in turn recruited me, the Unstoppable Wasp, to help them earn their Courageous and Strong petal.
I had been building Wasp — Nadia Van Dyne — since early 2020, after finishing Built On Hope. Nadia’s story resonated with me because while she shares several characteristics with Black Widow, coming as she also does from the Red Room, she is also the first superhero I came across with confirmed mental health struggles. Nadia is bipolar, and is often overtaken with hyper-focus, something I know only too well. Plus she loves science. All kinds of science. She was a character who I knew that I could fully embody, with both a serious and a silly side.
Originally I had planned to debut Nadia at NYCC, but I ended up missing the con. I gave her a little test run around Halloween, but I wasn’t totally pleased with the wings and had some other accessories that had not been made yet. She was on the back burner until this event came up. I figured I would continue as I gained the skills to work with additional, different materials to make what I ultimately wanted to make. I was very focused on the costume part of cosplay. I think somewhere along the line of cultivating my Instagram I had forgotten some of the play. Getting the chance to take this (to my usual standards) half finished costume to an event knowing in my heart of hearts that these girls wouldn’t know the difference was exactly the kick I needed to get back into cosplay proper. All these girls saw was a super hero. One who fought bad guys during the day and talked to Girl Scouts about how to make ice cream in a zip lock bag and a baking soda volcano at night. (Of course, having Black Widow to back me up didn’t hurt either.) They believed. And I believed in our — in my — ability to make a difference in the world.
So:
On my honor, I will try to be the hero that these Girl Scouts met every day, and to live by the Girl Scout Law.