Just two weeks before the completion of their final term at Dartmouth, seven female members of the Class of 2009 shared personal stories about the challenges they faced while at the College as part the 20th annual Women of Dartmouth panel. Speaking to an audience packed into Collis Common Ground, the women, who asked to be referred to by only their first names and class year because of the personal nature of the event, recounted their struggles and triumphs with a variety of personal obstacles, including eating disorders, questions of personal and sexual identity, and the deaths of loved ones.
Ashley '09 said that, during her freshman fall, her oldest brother, Derek, was killed while serving in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. While she and her family had supported Derek when he decided to go to West Point, Ashley said, she had not then realized the full extent of the danger that her brother would experience as a soldier.
"The thought of anything happening to Derek was so far away," she said. "Derek was never a soldier in my eyes. He was just a goofball."
After Derek's death, Ashley walked on to the women's lacrosse team at Dartmouth something she said she had never expected. Her relationships with her team members helped her through her grief, Ashley said.
"It helped make me the person I am today," she said. "I'm not sure if I would've made it four years here without so much help from all those people."
Elsa '09 also discussed how she found a support system at the College. When she was a senior in high school, the year before she arrived at the College, Elsa said, her parents divorced, and her father retired and moved to Mexico.
"Since then, I've seen him twice," she said. "He's pretty hard to reach."
Elsa said she "pretty much cried every night" after her father's departure.
Elsa also shared her experience coming out as a gay woman to the Dartmouth community.
"Basically, no one was surprised," she said. "With that reaction, it really allowed me to start diving into this identity and to start really becoming comfortable with it."
Elsa's mother and sister, however, did not react as positively as did her friends at Dartmouth.
"My mom, she'll never understand, but I think she's better with it. I haven't talked to my sister at all since [coming out]," she said. "Going home, to me, is still a scary thing, and that's definitely where I'm thankful for Dartmouth."
Before Ana '09 came to the College, she said, her family in Montana was "trying not to fall apart."
When Ana's mother eventually left her father and moved to the Grand Canyon, Ana said she found an unlikely family in the members of the Ledyard Canoe Club.
"It gave me a family on campus," she said. "It gave me ... the courage to push myself and to throw myself pretty recklessly into whatever it is that I want to do, and it's going to carry me for the rest of my life."
Shirley '09 never picks up her phone, she said. One day, after seeing she had numerous missed calls and voicemails, she discovered that a friend of hers from home had committed suicide. Upon checking her voicemail, Shirley heard a tearful message from that friend before he ended his life, asking her to call him back.
"I remember being so shaken by it and thinking, What is the point of being at an Ivy League institution ... when life outside is falling apart,'" she said. "I had failed fundamentally, and I couldn't understand how."
Shirley said that she would never speak with a counselor or adviser despite the grief that she experienced.
"I internalized all of those things," she said. "It's so hard to open up in a setting like Dartmouth."
Courtney '09, however, said her many meetings with a counselor at Dick's House helped her come to terms with her mother's death from cancer when she was seven years old.
"I think the one thing that this therapy has helped me understand is that even if you have these feelings that you know are bad ... they're still legitimate feelings," she said.
Annie '09 credited the energy and enthusiasm of the Dartmouth community in helping her overcome the eating disorder she had struggled with since her junior year in high school.
Annie compared the Dartmouth community to her own brother, whose carefree attitude made her want to be healthy again.
"I see Dartmouth as 4,000 brothers waiting to push you around and laugh about it, and that is what it has become for me," she said.
