When the Tiara Slips

Queen Me Speaks ...

Adolescence was a painful time for me. As evidenced by an excerpt from Grab the Queen Power, not only did I lose my footing, I lost the very foundation of my strength. The solid ground I stood on when eight and nine eroded under my feet and pushed me off balance.

By 9th grade the new game consumed me. I was moving into the world of where boys and girls were different species, and girls were different from the children they had been. Always a great strategist, it didn’t take me long to figure out the rules, all with one intent—fit in. To be what my friends thought I should be. To never be, perish the thought, different. I didn’t even have to make a conscious choice about whether to play or not. I already knew to be loved and accepted I had to follow the rules. So I looked and listened, and with each new tidbit of information, I deleted some aspect of myself that was as wrong as my shoes.

I picked up my mask. I left behind the little girl who knew what she wanted, and became somebody I didn’t know. If you had asked me what was happening to me, I couldn’t have told you. I could barely comprehend the turmoil seething in me, or the shame when all of my choices seem destined to fail someone—my parents, or my friends, or the person I had been up until then.

At age fourteen I had essentially fallen asleep, like the sleeping princess Briar Rose in Grimm’s fairy tale. I had become the Princess seeking rescue and all the while trying with every piece of myself to go away—slip away in a deep, deep sleep. Once Briar Rose pricked her finger and the spell was cast on everyone within the castle, outside a great barricade of thorns sprang up, keeping all rescuers away. For me life was filled with thorns. To feel was painful. To love was painful. To need something from others was painful.

To be was painful.

Studies conducted by Harvard professor Carol Gilligan and Colby College professor Lyn Mikel Brown from 1986 to 1990 have revealed that something truly phenomenal happens to girls around adolescence. They undergo a gradual change in which they lose their feisty spirit, courage and willingness to speak out—qualities they had known in girlhood. Around this time their truth becomes silenced, held back. They become afraid of conflicts with males, because they know on some level that males hold the power. They become—perhaps forever—good little girls, settling into the clichés and limits imposed on their gender. So sleep begins.
—Sue Monk Kidd

Ah yes, I’m not the only one who struggled. Unfortunately, it’s more likely you’ll have a hard time finding the ones that didn’t. While reading School Girls by Peggy Orenstein, I again was reminded that maybe I have more healing to do. Maybe I have more to remember and to process before I am able to truly release and let go and ultimately help my daughter—a daughter nearing the crossroads. In the introduction, Peggy shared her experience.

She started by telling readers that there’s a completely different book she could write. “It would be about how, in spite of all of our success, in spite of the fact that we have attained the superficial ideal of womanhood held out to our generation, we feel unsure, insecure, inadequate.”

She further explains that her previous tendencies had been to use the “stick-your-head-in-the-sand” approach. Despite working with adolescents on a daily basis, she at first resisted thinking about her own experiences and intentionally did not examine the past. A little later in her narration she shared, “I wouldn’t look through it at thirteen, when I lowered my hand in math class, never to raise it again, out of a sudden fear that I might answer incorrectly and be humiliated. I wouldn’t look through it at sixteen when I winnowed forty pounds from my body, refusing food and binging on laxatives, eventually losing the ability to eat at all. I wouldn’t see it when I declined to try out for my college newspaper, even though I dreamed of becoming a journalist. Nor would I see it at twenty-one, when I became paralyzed during the writing of my senior thesis, convinced that my fraudulence was about to be unmasked. Back then, I went to my advisor and told her of the fears that were choking me.”

Her advisor, it turns out, gave a halfway decent answer—an answer that allowed her to move forward instead of backwards. The advisor said, “Don’t worry about it. All smart women feel that way.”

Ouch! Really? Is that the truth? It worked for Peggy. She accepted that piece of advice and continued on … completing her thesis and then by building a successful career in journalism. Peggy, turns out, worked through her pain and became successful despite it. Hey, that’s my story—and yep, it’s also the story of so many others.

Something stinks and it has been stinking for a long, long time. Our daughters, granddaughters, and all the girls we know who are on the verge of meeting themselves at the crossroads—the place where the transition from girl to woman begins—need our help and guidance. As mentioned in Grab the Queen Power…we can offer them assistance by first helping ourselves—by first remembering, forgiving, and then forgetting the pain.

From Grab the Queen Power:

Within us all is the power to shape and alter our culture and it is important that we do that while keeping in mind the desired result—finding the conditions under which most women flower and grow while providing the tools to become powerful, loving and spirited women …

Amen.

www.queenpower.com

Am I Okay?

Queen Me shares ...

The same questions follow every woman through girlhood and adolescence: Can I really do this? Will I get it right? Am I okay?

—Oprah Winfrey

Actually, I didn’t even know if I would make it to the other side (adulthood). And if I did make it, who would I be? Would I like the person that emerged on the opposite shore?

While researching for my upcoming book tentatively titled Raising Up Queens, I read the work of Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan. In Meeting at the Crossroads, Brown, Gilligan and collaborators followed girls as they transitioned from ages 8 and 9 to fourteen or so. Not surprisingly, their words described my experience—the experience I wrote about in Grab the Queen Power: Live Your Best Life! Although sometimes explained in clinical speak while using words like “disassociate” or “relational crisis,” the girls they studied described me. If it described me, then it probably described you too.

Neeti, a girl featured in the book, transitioned from being an outspoken twelve-year-old girl to an ‘underground woman’—a woman who covered up her feelings to protect herself and to avoid hurting others. Each year, the researchers observed Neeti adapt and change, disassociate and remove herself from relationships. According to the authors, “She (Neeti) described this move in vivid detail and was aware of leading a double life—knowing and yet pretending not to know what she really felt and what was really happening in her relationships.”

Another ‘problem’ adolescent girls seem to face more than their male peers, is the need to be perfect or play the good girl role.

Interestingly, Neetie understood that she was not perfect and that being perfect was an unattainable goal even though her comments to interviewers told a different story. Another subject Liza, at age fifteen, asked the therapists: “I would just like to know from you as a psychologists or people with that kind of degree, is there such a thing as a person who is not necessarily perfect but who has everything together all the time? Not appears to be, just does mentally, psychologically? Is there such a person? Is that possible?”

Of course, it’s not possible. Of course not! But how many of us spent so much of our lives trying to be the perfect girl? The good girl? Why did we expend the energy? And whom were we trying to please?

At the end of the study, female teachers at the Laurel School, the school the girls attended, had to ask themselves difficult questions. Led by Patricia L. Hall, psychologist and former Dean of Students for the school, the women attended three retreats to address the problems presented by the study. Patricia shared with researchers:

“It was first with a sense of shock and then a deep, knowing sadness that we listened to the voices of the girls tell us that it was the adult women in their lives that provided the models for silencing themselves and behaving like ‘good little girls.’” And after processing their ‘sadness’ and ‘remorse,’ the women realized something important. “Unless we, as grown women, were willing to give up all the ‘good little girl’ things we continued to do and give up our expectation that the girls in our charge would be as good as we were, we could not successfully empower young women to act on their own knowledge and feelings. Unless we stopped hiding in our expectations of goodness and control, our behavior would silence any words to girls about speaking in their own voice.”

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. It’s really true! We must start with ourselves first before we can help our girls. Oh my. I tell you that I’m not playing the ‘good little girl’ role anymore. At least, compared to how I used to play it, I’m not. But still there’s a small voice that whispers to me, “You are still playing.” And the voice also whispers that the eyes of a very impressionable eight-year-old daughter are watching, learning.

Being angry or experiencing discord still feels wrong or bad. I don’t like it. I’m not comfortable expressing my truest feelings to others, especially if they hurt someone’s feelings or make someone mad. Good girls don’t act out. Good girls don’t say things that will be hurtful to others or make others mad. They don't say what they really mean. They don’t. They simply don’t. I don’t.

So for me, it’s about coming to grips with myself each and every day. By doing so, I will help my daughter navigate adolescence—what Mary Pipher refers to as a hurricane for unsuspecting girls.

Most girls recover from adolescence. It’s not a fatal disease, but an acute condition that disappears with time. While it’s happening…nobody looks strong. From the vantage point of high school, strong girls can tell their stories, but in junior high, they have no perspective. It’s impossible to have much perspective in a hurricane.
—Mary Pipher

To change the course for our daughters, nieces, granddaughters, or girls in general, we must fully come to grips with ourselves. We must recognize where we are still falling under a spell. As Brown and Gilligan tell us: “Women have to experience the present as different from the past—to feel that now we are not without power or all alone.”

Okay, I’m listening.

www.queenpower.com
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