Reviving Ophelia

“To the rebels and the shy girls, the activists and the poets, the big sisters and the little sisters, the daughters and dreamers. We believe in you.”

Pipher worked with adolescent girls and women for three decades in therapy. She wrote Reviving Ophelia based on these experiences to help more girls and their families cope with the challenges of adolescence. She wants readers to understand that this book is for every type of girl from every type of place and situation. Throughout the book, Pipher expresses a desire for girls to have stronger communities and support each other, and she believes that with this support any girl can overcome anything they have experienced.

“Adolescence is […] an extraordinary time when individual, developmental, and cultural factors combine in ways that shape adulthood. It’s a time of marked internal development and massive cultural indoctrination.”

During adolescence, girls are experiencing influences from their own internal worlds and the external world. Societal norms, varied development, and individual personalities are all impacting the person that a girl grows into. She is developing physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally while simultaneously being thrust into the forefront of cultural expectations.

“Girls struggled 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 that you threaten boys.”

Girls are bombarded with signals and ideas from the media, the internet, their peers, their families, and other social influences. Often, the messages these sources send to girls conflict with one another and cause confusion and shattered self-esteem when girls cannot match these expectations. Girls are supposed to become a contradictory and false self, one that fits within the confines of society and makes nobody uncomfortable.

“The environment is the richest and most diverse at borders, where trees meet fields, desert meets mountains, or rivers cross prairies. Adolescence is a border between adulthood and childhood, and as such it has a richness and diversity unmatched by any other life stage.”

Pipher utilizes nature metaphors throughout her book and believes that a strong connection to nature is one of the most important factors in anyone’s mental health. She compares the experience of adolescence to an area of the world where two extreme environmental conditions meet; on one side is childhood, and adulthood on the other. Adolescent girls are the embodiment of both worlds simultaneously.

“Adolescence is an intense time of change. All kinds of development—physical, emotional, intellectual, academic, social, and spiritual—are happening at once. Adolescence is the most formative time in the lives of women and these choices have implications for the rest of our lives.” 

As girls go through adolescence, they experience developmental changes that range from physical to spiritual. These changes are shaped by the type and quality of experiences that girls have throughout this time. Most importantly, the experiences and changes that adolescent girls go through can impact and shape their entire adult lives either in positive or negative ways.

“For six decades, adolescent girls have manifested an unlikely combination of egocentrism and idealistism.”

Pipher observes many similarities between girls across the decades. One of these similarities is their tendency to simultaneously believe they are the center of the world, while also actively rising up to change it. It is a combination of the selfishness of childhood and the idealist nature of young adulthood, and many young girls take up multiple political causes in an effort to change their environment and the future.

“The kindest gift parents can give their children is preparation for life. That means teaching them critical-thinking and human-relations skills, encouraging them to be out in the world mastering difficult challenges, and having conversations with them about how relationships, politics, and society work.”

Throughout her book Pipher stresses the importance of family in adolescent girls’ development, happiness, and success. She believes that parents have a duty to prepare their daughters for the realities of life without preventing them from experiencing it. An open and trusting relationship with her parents is one of the most valuable tools an adolescent girl can have, as it allows her to approach them with questions and share her experiences. Girls also need to be taught honestly about the political sphere and society as a whole.

“In Western culture, mother-daughter tensions spring from the daughter’s attempt to become an adult, to be an individual different from and not dependent on her mother. Because of mixed messages within the culture, conflict between mothers and daughters is inevitable.”

Particularly in the 1990s, dominant cultural messages taught girls to rebel from their mothers and aspire to be as much unalike them as possible. This created massive tension within families and left many daughters lost without support and many mothers lost without knowledge of their daughters’ lives. The strive for independence from the family is predominantly a Western/individualist goal, but Pipher asserts that dependence and connection are healthy and necessary.

“Today, engaged fathers […] are experiencing feelings that are old hat to mothers. [Daughters] are ready to grow into their own lives and their fathers are thinking, Wait. Stay with me a little longer.”

In the 1960s when Pipher was growing up, fathers mainly worked and did not spend a great deal of time with family. In the 1990s, families were divorcing at an all-time high and many fathers were disconnected from their daughters. Now, fathers are entering the picture as fully involved caregivers who are ready to provide empathy and guidance and who often create deep bonds with their daughters. This means they are experiencing what used to be mainly unique to mothers: the grief felt when a daughter grows up and is ready to be independent.

“One of the things that helps saplings survive a hurricane is their root system. With divorce, the root system splits apart. Girls are often unsupported, at least temporarily. They face the strong winds without the support of a home base, and they are at risk of blowing over.”

Pipher repeatedly compares adolescence and many of the experiences common to it to a storm, particularly a hurricane. She describes adolescent girls whose families are going through divorce as saplings in a raging hurricane. Because they are small and lack the support of deep roots, they are often knocked over by strong winds. The same can happen to adolescent girls during divorce, as parents are often so emotionally caught up in the drama of it they unintentionally neglect their daughters. What results is many girls are left to fend for themselves during this harrowing time.

“As institutions fail us, what we have left is relationships.”

Pipher shows deep concern for the state of policies and culture for adolescent girls. While there has been progress made since the 1990s in terms of family and crime, policies and culture still fail girls in terms of their self-esteem, their safety, and their ability to be who they truly are. In a world where girls cannot rely on their school or government to protect and support them, family is all the more important.

“Self-harm could be seen as a concrete interpretation of our culture’s injunction to young women to carve themselves into culturally acceptable pieces.”

Western culture has specific rules set out for what makes a girl worthwhile and desirable in the eyes of society. She must be pretty, submissive, and smart but not too smart. Girls are expected to fit this strict shape regardless of their views or their health. Often, the pressure and stress of adolescence leads girls to self-harm to cope. Pipher compares this reaction of carving one’s body to the way society carves the personalities and bodies of adolescent girls.

“Girls already possess many of the skills of happiness—gratitude, friendship, empathy, and kindness.”

Depression is an increasing problem among adolescent girls in the 21st century. Pipher cites loneliness and social media addiction as well as increases in academic pressure as potential reasons for this increase. She believes that adolescent girls are already hardwired with the skills necessary to overcome the depression of adolescence if they are taught how to utilize them.

“Our culture has become isolating, polarizing, and fear-producing […] No place feels truly safe.”

Anxiety is a major issue for adolescent girls in the 21st century. They are constantly surrounded by messages about an unsafe world from the internet and other media sources. Furthermore, girls are under immense pressure to perform well academically; most of this pressure is self-imposed. Girls often also struggle with social anxiety and worry over their peer relationships. Racial and political tensions are mounting in the United States and school shootings are continuing to occur. Sexual assault and violence are all over the internet. All these factors compound to create an atmosphere where girls do not feel safe.

“Anorexia is a metaphor. It is a young woman’s statement that she will become what the culture asks of its women, which is that they be thin and nonthreatening.”

A commonly running theme throughout Reviving Ophelia is the cultural influence on adolescent girls and their sense of self. Pipher considers much of the media to be an assault on their inner voice. This assault often leads to mental health issues and can manifest as an eating disorder like anorexia. Girls with anorexia often lose control of themselves and become obsessed with weight. Food intake becomes the one thing they feel they can control. Furthermore, they are telling the world that not only can they live up to its standards, but they can beat them—in their own way, on their own terms. Unfortunately, anorexia is an extremely unhealthy way to make this statement and many girls need support to find healthy ways to assert their strength and independence.

“When young women are valued for their characters, personalities, creativity, intelligence, and efforts, we will see girls’ attitudes towards their bodies change.”

In the current culture, girls and women are valued for their appearance and ability to serve. Pipher insists that this is an unhealthy model to teach girls as many cannot or do not want to live up to it. On top of this, girls have much more potential beyond the way they look. If people begin to value girls for traits that truly matter, such as their intelligence and assertiveness to create change, girls will in turn begin to view their bodies with less severity and importance. This will help prevent issues like anorexia, bulimia, and depression.

“Our culture today is one that runs from pain and treats suffering—which is an inevitable part of life—as an avoidable problem.”

Pipher describes the current cultural climate as villainizing the idea of pain and suffering and promoting the idea of avoiding any type of pain. She asserts that pain is a natural and essential part of life that everyone must experience to grow and learn. However, current attitudes in medicine and the media lean toward the idea that pain should be avoided and covered up.

“Girls need to be encouraged to be the sexual subjects of their own lives, not the objects of others’ lives.”

Since the time that Pipher was a teenager in the 1960s, girls have been taught and trained by the media, institutions, their peers, and even their parents that they are to be objects of sexual attention for men. Girls are encouraged simultaneously not to be too sexual, which is very confusing for them. Pipher believes that girls should be empowered to harness and understand their own sexuality for its own worth rather than thinking of their sexuality as something that exists to please men. She describes working with girls who believed that women deserve to be raped in specific cases, such as when they are married. Pipher is alarmed at the lack of personal attention and focus girls pay to their own sexuality aside from how it relates to boys.

“To stay on course, you must follow your own North Star, your sense of who you truly are. Only by orienting north can you chart a course and maintain it, only by orienting north can you keep from being blown all over the sea.”

Pipher uses another nature metaphor, this one comparing the North Star to an adolescent girl’s inner voice. She believes that if girls listen to their inner voice instead of the messages from their culture, they will be able to love themselves and weather the storm of adolescence. She regrets to report that many girls today do not know who they are, but she provides several strategies for helping girls learn about themselves, including keeping a diary and spending time in nature.

“Therapists believe in the essential beauty and promise of all adolescent girls.”

Pipher was a therapist who worked with adolescent girls for over 30 years. She speaks about two types of therapists, one of which is successful with girls and the other often not. The unsuccessful type of therapist is eager to diagnose, label, and focus on problems. The successful therapist is focused on solutions and on understanding the individual and their life. A therapist who is successful in helping adolescent girls is one who sees the potential in each of them and who strives to aid them in their quest to unfold their talents and traits.

“Strength implies remaining the subject of one’s life and resisting the cultural pressure to become the object of male experience.”

Strength is something that Pipher believes all adolescent girls possess, but they may lose sight of it in youth or may not know how to fully utilize it. It was her goal to help girls identify and fully realize their strengths so they may keep their heads above the icy waters of adolescence. She also asserts that instilling inner strength in girls is the best way to help them avoid cultural pressures that often lead to ruin or a loss of the self for the sake of men or society.

“No girls escape the hurricane. The winds are simply too overpowering. Fortunately, by late high school, the winds of the hurricane are dying down and trees begin to right themselves.”

Pipher again relates adolescence to a hurricane. All girls must go through this stage of life to move on to the next, and it involves challenges and tough lessons. The hardest time for most girls is junior high, or approximately ages 11 to 15. When they reach the late stages of adolescence, they are beginning to understand that having made it this far must count for something, and their confidence is beginning to grow again.

“To keep their true selves and grow into healthy adults, girls […] need to feel that they are part of something larger than their own lives and that they are emotionally connected to a whole.”

Pipher believes in Jung’s concept of the self and asserts that the self is often fractured in adolescence as girls are pressured to create a false self that fits the mold of their culture. In order to prevent this fracture, which can often spread into adulthood, girls need to feel like they belong to something bigger and are not alone. Examples of this type of connection include connecting with nature, connecting with other peers or other age groups, or becoming more active members of their household.

“Ophelia died because she could not grow. She became the object of others’ lives and lose their true subjective self. Many of my clients suffer from a thwarting of their development, a truncating of their potential. As my client described it—they are perfectly good carrots being cut into roses.”

The book’s title, Reviving Ophelia, title was inspired by the story of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this play, Ophelia falls in love with Hamlet, and while she was once a vibrant and independent girl, she loses herself and her only focus becomes his attention. This happens to adolescent girls, often at the hands of their culture, their peers, or even themselves. Girls with vast potential are being limited to submissive, pretty objects.