Then I began to notice a different kind of energy. Many of the girls could easily be overwhelmed, anxious to the point where they couldn’t have fun.

These are young women who are used to intense pressure. They work hard to get good grades, look the right way and fit in. They strive to be talented and accomplished in all that they do. And because they were approaching camp with the same kind of rigor and intensity, every new skill — be it a canoe stroke or a bowl made on the pottery wheel — took on outsize importance. Campers used the word “stress” more than any of my adult friends.

Working with these girls kind of put things in perspective for me.

Part of me wanted to dismiss their issues or just tell them to calm down, because they will encounter much bigger challenges in life. But the issues that were trivial to me were very real to them, and at one point, I had struggled with them, too.

It would have been silly to urge them not to sweat the small stuff because I was the queen of sweating the small stuff. In many of these moments I’d look into their eyes, 14 years old with none of the answers, and see myself, 28 and still without any formula of how to live life correctly.

As I coached the campers through their anxieties and problems, I began speaking to myself — and my anxieties and problems — with a new sense of compassion. I had been spending so much energy on being upset with myself, my career path and my inability to “get things right.” But I wasn’t trapped. I, too, could rethink how I spent my emotional energy.

Rest hour is a coveted time at camp — some 45 minutes of complete silence in the middle of the day when campers take to their tents. It became the anchor of my day.