Reviving Ophelia (15 page)

Abby and Elizabeth are now in their early twenties. They are both “in recovery” from their adolescent experiences. Abby works at a food co-op as produce manager and is active in Ecology Now. She hates drugs, even caffeine, and allows herself only herbal teas. She loves the community of like-minded people who work at the co-op. She and Nan shop together for herbs and vegetables to plant in the spring. Together they concoct natural-food recipes for the co-op deli. She and Bill just returned from a bike ride across Iowa.

Elizabeth is a good mother for her lovely red-headed daughter. She, Colin and the baby live on a rented farm outside of town. Neighbor kids follow her around as she feeds the goats and chickens on her farm. When her daughter is older, she intends to go back to school and study biology.

Gary ran a silk-screening business and Carol gave violin lessons to children after school. They had three children: Rosemary, in eighth grade, and twin boys three years younger, who were stars of their neighborhood soccer team.

Carol and Gary were New Age parents. Gary wore beads and had a ponytail. Carol collected crystals and spent time in the brain wave room at our New Age bookstore. They had raised Rosemary to be her own person. They hadn’t tried to mold her in any way, but rather believed in letting her character unfurl. Gary said, “Our biggest fear was damaging her spirit.”

They tried to model equality in their relationship and to raise their children free of gender role constraints. Rosemary mowed the lawn and the twins did the dishes and set the table. Gary taught Rosemary to pitch and draw. Carol taught her to read tarot cards and to throw the I Ching.

This was a child-centered home, very democratic, with an emphasis on freedom and responsibility rather than conformity and control. The parents didn’t believe in setting many limits for the children. Rather they felt they would learn their own limits through trial and error. They both liked to describe themselves as friends of their kids. They taught Rosemary to stand up for herself and had many stories of her assertiveness with adults and peers.

Carol and Gary spared no expense to offer their children enrichment opportunities. Rosemary took art lessons from the best teacher in town and attended baseball camp every summer. The boys had ball teams, YMCA camps and yoga classes.

At our first appointment Carol and Gary seemed vulnerable and shaken.

Carol said, “I want my daughter back.” She talked about how happy and confident Rosemary had been in elementary school. She’d been a good student and student council president in her sixth-grade year. She was interested in everything and everybody. They had trouble slowing her down enough to get rest and food. She once said to her art teacher, “I’m your best student, aren’t I?”

With puberty she changed. She hated the way her wiry body “turned to dough.” She was still assertive with her parents, even mouthy and aggressive much of the time, but with peers she was quiet and conforming. She worried about pleasing everyone and was devastated by small rejections. Many days she came home in tears because she sat alone at lunch or because someone criticized her looks.

She stopped making good grades because she felt grades didn’t matter. Popularity was all that counted. She obsessed about her weight and her looks. She exercised, dieted and spent hours in front of the mirror.

Suddenly she cared more about being liked by athletes than about being an athlete. She became what her parents called “boy crazy.” They found notes she’d written filled with sexual innuendos. She talked about boys all the time, called boys on the phone and hurled herself at any boy within reach. She was asked to parties by ninth-grade boys who were experimenting with sex and alcohol.

Gary said, “We’re in over our heads with Rosemary. She’s doing stuff now that we thought she’d do in college. We’re not sure that we can protect her.”

Carol said, “I wish we could find a nice safe place and put her there for about six years until she matures.” We all laughed.

“We’re both from small towns,” Carol continued. “When we were Rosie’s age, we didn’t have these kind of temptations. We don’t know what to do.”

Carol handed me a CD they’d found in her room. “Look at what she’s listening to—‘Reckon You Should Shut the Fuck Up and Play Some Music,’ ‘Crackhouse’ and ‘You Suck’ by the Yeastie Girls.”

Gary said, “We had a family rule that anyone who swore put a quarter in the jar, and when it filled we’d all go out to eat. After listening to that CD, we realized that we were in a new ballpark.”

Gary stared at his hands. “We taught her to be assertive and take care of herself, but it seems like she uses all her assertiveness against us. She keeps things stirred up all the time. She has a real flair for the dramatic and her timing’s great. She’ll blow just during my meditation time or when I have a customer on the phone.”

They worried about Rosemary all last year. Then the previous Saturday night she had stayed with a boy in a hotel room after a Jellyfish concert. She lied and claimed to be at a sleep-over with girlfriends.

I agreed to visit with Rosemary. She was petite, with dark hair and dramatic eyes. She wore designer jeans and Nikes to the session and carried a paperback copy of The
Anarchist’s Cookbook.
She immediately told me that she wanted my help in getting her parents to lighten up.

I was careful to listen rather than talk. I knew that any advice would sound parental, and hence unacceptable. I asked about her concerns. She was worried about her weight and her physical flaws. She felt she needed to lose ten pounds; her left profile was “hideous” and her skin too splotchy. She had tried dieting but hated it. She felt crabby and depressed and eventually would cave in and eat.

I gently introduced the concept of lookism. Rosemary felt her friends were lookist and so was she. She was frightened of not being pretty enough. She said, “Wherever I go, I look around and there’s always someone prettier than me. That drives me nuts.”

We talked about how sexualized and unnatural models looked and about the way women were depicted on MTV and in the movies. A part of Rosemary hated the pressure and another part was obsessed with looking right. A part of her scorned lookism and a part of her evaluated everyone on the basis of appearance.

We talked about how her life had changed since elementary school. Rosemary had been happier then. She smiled when she talked about baseball and drawing with her dad. She had loved her parents and felt close to them then, but now she didn’t. “They don’t understand what I’m going through. They always give me stupid advice. They don’t want their little baby girl to grow up.”

Rosemary felt close to her friends, but she admitted that friendships were difficult. She worried about betrayal and rejections. The social scene changed from day to day. She felt uneasy standing up for herself with boys. She did things she didn’t agree with to fit into the popular crowd.

We talked about her friends’ experiences more than her own. She had friends who were dumped after they had sex with their boyfriends. Other friends were raped or had abortions. Generally she felt that she wouldn’t get in the same kind of trouble, but she admitted she had experienced a few close calls.

When we talked about guys, she was surprisingly insightful. She had wanted a boyfriend so badly that she had done anything to win favor. She said, “I don’t feel good about myself unless a guy likes me. I do whatever it takes.”

Our work proceeded erratically. It’s hard to do therapy with an anarchist. Like her parents, I wanted to keep her safe while she grew up, and like them, I had to be careful or I might say the wrong thing. If she folded her arms over her chest and looked out my window, I knew it was over for that session.

Rosemary saw the world in rigid categories. She overgeneralized, simplified or denied what she couldn’t understand. Her feelings were chaotic and often out of control, and her need for peer approval, particularly male approval, placed her in dangerous situations. She had a hard time saying no to boys who pushed for sex. Furthermore, she was determined to figure everything out for herself. She literally flinched on those rare occasions when I offered advice.

I thought of the many ironies in this family. These New Age spiritual parents had a daughter whose main concern was weight. The parents’ laissez-faire approach didn’t work well in a time of AIDS and addictions. Carol and Gary were careful to raise Rosemary in an androgynous environment, and she was now ultrafeminine so that she could attract and hold boys. They taught her to be assertive, but she used those skills only with grown-ups. Most ironic of all, Rosemary, who had grown up in a home with a meditation room, needed centering.

 

All of the families in this chapter are high in the affection dimension, but they vary on the control dimension. Jody and Leah come from families that are high in control. Franchesca and Lucy come from families that are moderate in control, and Rosemary, Abby and Elizabeth are from families that are low in control.

Jody’s and Leah’s families believed that the best defense against bad ideas was censorship. Development was carefully channeled so that it fit the family’s values. Sheltered from the storms, Jody and Leah experienced challenges at a rate they could handle. But their protection had a cost. Their growth was circumscribed and thwarted, like that of bonsai trees. In adolescence these girls looked strong, but their life choices were restricted.

Lucy and Franchesca came from homes that believed that the best defense against bad ideas was some censorship and some freedom. Both families were reasonably protective and yet allowed the daughters freedom to grow in their own directions. Not surprisingly, their daughters were less stressed than Abby, Elizabeth and Rosemary and less well behaved than Jody and Leah.

Abby’s, Elizabeth’s and Rosemary’s families believed that the best defense against bad ideas was better ideas. They were more liberal, democratic and prone to negotiating. They valued experience more than structure, autonomy more than obedience. These families had many strengths—respect for individual differences and commitment to the developing potential of their daughters. But the daughters weren’t ready for existential choices, and often they made bad decisions. These girls looked miserable and out of control in early adolescence. Later, however, they settled down into interesting and unique adults.

In a perfect universe, all girls would be loved. Adolescent girls would be protected by their families and yet allowed to blossom and flower as individuals. Families would provide moral clarity without sacrificing too much personal freedom. But in reality, this perfection is impossible. Families have choices. With less structure comes more risk to girls in the short term and more potential for individual growth over time. With more structure comes less short-term risk but more risk of later conformity and blandness. Families of adolescent girls struggle to find a balance between security and freedom, conformity to family values and autonomy. Finding this balance involves numerous judgment calls. The issues are complex and mistakes can be costly. Parents can be overwhelmed by the intensity of the issues. The perfect balance, like the golden mean, exists only in the abstract.

MOTHERS

My mother was a general practitioner in small Kansas and Nebraska towns. This was when most people died at home and much of what a doctor did was sit with the patient and family.

Mother told me, “Just before old people die, they get addled. They leave this reality and go some other place. The men become farmers again, driving their horses home through a blizzard. They’ll call out, ‘Giddy up, go on. It’s not far.’ They’ll see a light in the window and their breathing will relax. They’ll see their wives watching for them and laugh in relief. ‘I’m coming,’ they will shout. They’ll flail at their bedclothes, whipping their team on through the snow. ‘Giddy up, now. We’re almost home.’ ”

“What do women say?” I asked.

“Women call out for their mothers.”

When I was ten, my mother often didn’t make it home till late at night. She wore a tailored dark suit, red lipstick and black high heels. Her hair was short and curly and her eyes were always tired. When she walked in with her doctor bag and trench coat, I ran to her side and stayed there till bedtime. I watched her eat warmed-over stew, look through her mail, read my brothers a story and change into her housecoat and slippers. I rubbed her sore feet and asked about her day.

I accompanied her on house calls and on her trips to the hospital sixteen miles from our town. She told me stories about her childhood on a ranch. She’d killed rattlesnakes, found fossils in the creek bed, buried herself in a haystack during a hailstorm and played on a championship high school basketball team. She’d gathered cow chips for fuel during the Depression. I asked for more. “Tell me about when you ate watermelons right from the patch; tell me about the gypsies who came through; tell me about the twins who died from drinking the water in the chicken coop; tell me about the time the stunt pilot crashed at the county fair.”

In junior high I grew irritated with her. She had a big stomach, thin hair and wasn’t as pretty as my friends’ mothers. I wanted her to stay home, bake tuna fish casseroles and teach me to sew. I wanted the phone to stop ringing for her.

For a high school graduation gift, she took me to San Francisco. We went to a coffeehouse in North Beach where beat poets read. I was sure that everyone was staring at my mother, and even though I liked the poetry, I insisted we leave early.

As an adult, I traveled with my family to her house for holiday dinners. She fixed my favorite foods—crab cocktails, vegetable soup and pecan pie. She gave my children too many sweets and presents. At midnight when I tried to go to bed, she offered to fry me a steak, go for a walk, anything to keep me talking for another hour. When it was time to go, she walked me to the car and held on to the door handle. “When are you coming back?” she asked.