Ophelia's Mom
Loving and Letting Go of Your Adolescent Daughter
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
MOTHERS TALK BACK!
In 1999 Ophelia Speaks, Sara Shandler’s collection of writings by and about adolescent girls, became a bestseller. Two years later, Nina Shandler, Ed.D., psychologist by profession and Sara’s mother, invited mothers of adolescent girls from all over the country to talk back, giving them the chance, perhaps for the first time, to speak out about feelings too often considered taboo.
Culled from written submissions and interviews with hundreds of women from all walks of life and from every part of the country, the concerns voiced in Ophelia’s Mom reflect the universal experience of mothers facing one set of changes while their daughters are facing another. With humor, insight, rage, sadness, jealousy, pride, joy, and, ultimately, optimism, these mothers talk candidly about rejection and separation, feminism versus Girl Power, love and sex, friends, school, drugs and alcohol, divorce, menstruation and menopause, the mother-daughter bond, and much more.
As these mothers reveal how this life passage has reshaped them as well as their children, you’ll realize that you’re not crazy, and you’re certainly not alone in your frustration, confusion, and exhilaration over raising an adolescent daughter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Family therapist Shandler (Estrogen: The Natural Way) follows up on daughter Sara Shandler's 1999 bestselling collection of teenage girls' writings about their lives, Ophelia Speaks, with a collection presenting their mothers' perspectives. Although Shandler's calls for submissions yielded far fewer responses than her daughter's, she culled over 110 essays, poems and conversational snippets (including overheard restaurant conversations) focused on what she regards as the biggest problem confronting mothers of adolescents: "the paradoxical challenge to love daughters and let go of them." The book, which includes a foreword by Sara, discusses raging hormones, school, sex, drugs, alcohol, sibling rivalry and divorce. The selections vary greatly in quality and tone but all are heartfelt. Among the strongest are Jean L. McGroarty's poignant recollection in "Driving Lesson" that her daughter, who is about to drive away, was once a little baby playing with her keys, and Felicia Blasi's humorous take "On Shopping" in which she observes that "there are no logical reasons to have children." In the poem "March 12, 1994," Karen Margulies Green chronicles her attempt to help her drug-addicted daughter, while in "Don't Worry, Mom, I'm Right Here," Grace Wozniak shares her struggle with breast cancer with her daughter at her side. In "In a Mother's Tears" R.M. searches for a silver lining when her 14-year-old daughter is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. While this is not a parenting how-to guide, the sheer volume of the entries offers reassurance that other mothers, too, face tough choices during their daughters' sullen years and that most teens and parents emerge from this difficult period wiser and stronger.
