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.