Incredible speech from Curve Counsellor and head of our Inclusion Program, Marley Super, celebrating her 10th year at camp: 

Picture; a young me, sitting right where you are now, listening to speeches full of certainty and confidence – while I felt anything but. I remember thinking; I can’t relate to any of this. Everyone seemed so sure of why they kept coming back, while I was not. I told myself at 10 years old, while I watched Dani Barish give her speech, that I would never be standing here doing this, for one very simple reason; I couldn’t imagine the idea of speaking in front of the entire camp.

Camp was never my favourite place. I didn’t feel as though I was making lifelong friends, and I definitely didn’t believe that every summer was better than the last. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be here at all. I’ve had years where I felt out of place, too quiet, or like I just didn’t “get it” the way everyone else seemed to. I’ve had summers that drained me, moments that confused me, and times I seriously considered not coming back. I’ve felt like a background character in other people’s camp stories more often than I’ve felt like the main one in mine. Even in the summers when I felt small or unsure, camp still managed to hold just enough space for me to keep returning.

Coming back to camp for my Curve summer after Covid  gave me something I never expected – a space to grow. That summer didn’t solve all my problems, but it led me on the right path to doing so. I left camp unrecognizable to the version of myself who had arrived on the first day. The curve helped bring forward a part of me I only ever saw here – one who’s still figuring it out, who sometimes messes up, and who always surprises me. If there’s anyone sitting in front of me now who feels even slightly the way I did back then, just know; even if it doesn’t feel like it yet, there is always space for you here. And not because someone says so in a speech, but because you get to define what this place means to you – not the other way around. Camp isn’t something that happens to you. It’s something that happens from you. You decide what it becomes. It’s not about waiting for the perfect experience to be handed to you, or for someone else to give you a reason to come back. It’s about recognizing that how you move through it – what you notice, what you care about, what you choose to bring to others – starts to shape the meaning it holds for you. Sometimes that means letting go of what you think camp should be, and giving it room to become something else. When I stopped trying to live up to someone else’s version of camp, it actually started to have an impact on me.

So now, ten years later, picture the same girl, with the same struggles, standing here today with no final answer. I’ve learnt that is unrealistic. I don’t come back because camp is perfect. I come back because it’s real. It took time for me to realize that camp never needed me to be loud or confident or the best at anything – it just needed me to be here. And slowly, that was enough. Slowly, the version of myself that only existed here started to exist everywhere. I know there will come a day when I’m ready to say goodbye to this place, but for now, I choose to come back because each year since my Curve summer I’ve left camp a little more whole, more grounded in who I am, and more sure of the parts of myself I used to second-guess. Camp didn’t fix me. It didn’t give me all the answers. But it gave me something just as important – the space to grow into myself, and people who reminded me I was already enough.