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
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
posted by Allyn Evans at 1:18 PM
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