Quotes from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Another vital skill is managing pain. All the craziness in the world comes from people trying to escape suffering. All mixed up behaviour comes from unprocessed pain. People drink, hit their mates and children, gamble, cut themselves with razors and even kill themselves in an attempt to escape pain. I teach girls to sit with their pain, to listen to it for messages about their lives, to acknowledge and describe it rather than to run from it. They learn to write about pain, to talk about it, to express it through exercise, art, dance or music.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“I teach girls certain skills. The first and most basic is centering. I recommend that they find a quiet place where they can sit alone daily for 10 to 15 minutes. I encourage them to sit in this place, relax their muscles and breathe deeply. Then they are to focus on their own thoughts and feelings about the day. They are not to judge these thoughts or feelings or even direct them, only to observe them and respect them. They have much to learn from their own internal reactions to their lives.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Adolescent girls discover that it is impossible to be both feminine and adult. Psychologist I. K. Broverman’s now classic study documents this impossibility. Male and female participants in the study checked off adjectives describing the characteristics of healthy men, healthy women and healthy adults. The results showed that while people describe healthy men and healthy adults as having the same qualities, they describe healthy women as having quite different qualities than healthy adults. For example, healthy women were described as passive, dependent and illogical, while healthy adults were active, independent and logical. In fact, it was impossible to score as both a healthy adult and a healthy woman.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“We talk about the disappointments of early adolescence - the betrayals by friends, the discovery that one is not beautiful by cultural standards, the feeling that one's smartness is a liability, the pressure to be popular instead of honest and feminine instead of whole.

I encourage girls to search within themselves for their deepest values and beliefs. Once they have discovered their own true selves, I encourage them to trust that self is the source of meaning and direction in their lives.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Adolescence is when girls experience social pressure to put aside their authentic selves and to display only a small portion of their gifts.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“The most important question for every client is "W X ho are you?" I'm not as interested in an answer as I am in teaching a process that the girl can use for the rest of her life. The process involves looking within to find a true core of self, acknowledging unique gifts, accepting all feelings, not just the socially acceptable ones, and making deep and firm decisions about values and meaning. The process includes knowing the difference between thinking and feeling, between immediate gratification and long-term goals, and between her own voice and the voices of others. The process includes discovering the personal impact of our cultural rules for women. It includes discussion about breaking those rules and formulating new, healthy guidelines for the self. The process teaches girls to chart a course based on the dictates of their true selves. The process is nonlinear, arduous, and discouraging. It is also joyful, creative and full of surprises.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Finally I teach the joys of altruism. Many adolescent girls are self-absorbed. It's not a character flaw, it's a developmental stage. Nonetheless, in makes them unhappy and limits their understanding of the world. I encourage girls to find some ways to help people on a regular basis.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Simone de Beauvoir believed adolescence is when girls realize that men have the power and that their only power comes from consenting to become submissive adored objects. They do not suffer from the penis envy Freud postulated, but from power envy.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Authenticity is an “owning” of all experience, including emotions and thoughts that are not socially acceptable.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“shows the destructive forces that affect young women. As a girl, Ophelia is happy and free, but with adolescence she loses herself. When she falls in love with Hamlet, she lives only for his approval. She has no inner direction ; rather she struggles to meet the demands of Hamlet and her father. Her value is determined utterly by their approval. Ophelia is torn apart by her efforts to please. When Hamlet spurns her because she is an obedient daughter, she goes mad with grief. Dressed in elegant clothes that weigh her down, she drowns in a stream filled with flowers.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“America today limits girls’ development, truncates their wholeness and leaves many of them traumatized.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Girls struggles with mixed messages: Be beautiful, but beauty is only skin deep. Be sexy, but not sexual. Be honest, but don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Be independent, but be nice. Be smart, but not so smart you threaten boys.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

“Many girls become vegetarians. They love animals and actively work for animal rights. I think this cause is popular with girls because they so easily identify with the lack of speech and powerlessness of animals. One girl I know wore a button that said 'If animals are to talk, we must be their voices.' Girls identify with gentle, defenseless creatures. And they will work with great idealism and energy to save them.”
― quote from Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

Popular quotes

“The intruders spoke no words as they rushed in. Five boys carrying baseball bats and tire irons. They wore an assortment of Halloween masks and stocking masks.
But Derek knew who they were.
“No! No!” he cried.
All five boys wore bulky shooter’s earmuffs. They couldn’t hear him. But more importantly, they couldn’t hear Jill.
One of the boys stayed in the doorway. He was in charge. A runty kid named Hank. The stocking pulled down over his face smashed his features into Play-Doh, but it could only be Hank.
One of the boys, fat but fast-moving and wearing an Easter Bunny mask, stepped to Derek and hit him in the stomach with his aluminum baseball bat.
Derek dropped to his knees.
Another boy grabbed Jill. He put his hand over her mouth. Someone produced a roll of duct tape.
Jill screamed. Derek tried to stand, but the blow to his stomach had winded him. He tried to stand up, but the fat boy pushed him back down.
“Don’t be stupid, Derek. We’re not after you.”
The duct tape went around and around Jill’s mouth. They worked by flashlight. Derek could see Jill’s eyes, wild with terror. Pleading silently with her big brother to save her.
When her mouth was sealed, the thugs pulled off their shooter’s earmuffs.
Hank stepped forward. “Derek, Derek, Derek,” Hank said, shaking his head slowly, regretfully. “You know better than this.”
“Leave her alone,” Derek managed to gasp, clutching his stomach, fighting the urge to vomit.
“She’s a freak,” Hank said.
“She’s my little sister. This is our home.”
“She’s a freak,” Hank said. “And this house is east of First Avenue. This is a no-freak zone.”
“Man, come on,” Derek pleaded. “She’s not hurting anyone.”
“It’s not about that,” a boy named Turk said. He had a weak leg, a limp that made it impossible not to recognize him. “Freaks with freaks, normals with normals. That’s the way it has to be.”
“All she does is—”
Hank’s slap stung. “Shut up. Traitor. A normal who stands up for a freak gets treated like a freak. Is that what you want?”
“Besides,” the fat boy said with a giggle, “we’re taking it easy on her. We were going to fix her so she could never sing again. Or talk. If you know what I mean.”
He pulled a knife from a sheath in the small of his back. “Do you, Derek? Do you understand?”
Derek’s resistance died.
“The Leader showed mercy,” Turk said. “But the Leader isn’t weak. So this freak either goes west, over the border right now. Or…” He let the threat hang there.
Jill’s tears flowed freely. She could barely breathe because her nose was running. Derek could see that by the way she sucked tape into her mouth, trying for air. She would suffocate if they didn’t let her go soon.
“Let me at least get her doll.”
― Michael Grant, quote from Lies

“You can't tell how heavy somebody else's load is just from looking. The Lord doesn't give us more than we can carry”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River

“You have a house if not a home," she spat. "You have people who care for you if not about you. You may not have everything you want, but I'd wager you have everything you could ever need, and you have the audacity to claim it all forfeit because it is not love."
"I--"
"Love doesn't keep us from freezing to death, Kell," she continued, "or starving, or being knifed for the coins in our pocket. Love doesn't buy us anything, so be glad for what you have and who you have because you may want for things but you need nothing.”
― V.E. Schwab, quote from A Darker Shade of Magic

“Happily, you don’t know how to find me. If you did, I’ve no doubt, you would try to bribe me to finish the story. I know how you are. I know how I am, too. I am very susceptible to bribes. As you’ve probably noticed, I have no self-control whatsoever. I like chocolate best. But I also have a fondness for cheese.”
― Pseudonymous Bosch, quote from The Name of This Book Is Secret

“Come work for me, and I’ll tell you.”
My eyes went to his. “You are a thief, a cheat, a murderer, and a not-nice man,” I said calmly. “I don’t like you.”
He shrugged, the motion making him look utterly harmless. “I’m not a thief,” he said. “And I don’t mind manipulating you into working for me when I need it.” He smiled, showing me perfect teeth. “I enjoy it, actually.”
― Kim Harrison, quote from The Good, the Bad, and the Undead

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