My daughter became a stranger to me around age fifteen.
This talented, creative, intelligent child-this daughter that I love-somehow morphed into a kid at risk.
Kids at risk engage in risky behaviors which ultimately, place obstacles in their path to personal success.
And now-because of those choices-she is a young adult at risk.
She is not alone.
Our times have somehow created a culture of twenty-something women that just can't get it together.
Over the years, I have cheer leaded, begged, enabled, rationalized, and "lost it" over the drama that tornadoes about this young woman, an incredible artist who has somehow lost her own way.
My feelings have run the gamut. Sad. Frantic. Angry. Disappointed.
Worried....sick.
I felt alone in the struggle.
Until I happened upon the book "Surviving Ophelia" by Cheryl Dellasega.
Dellasega, a clinician at Penn State's College of Medicine and a mother of three "...provides a community for mothers who, like she, have the often bewildering and unnerving task of raising a teenage girl (an Ophelia) in trouble. By describing her own heartbreaking experience and compiling the stories and poems of hundreds of mothers across the country, Dellasega paints a picture of lost teenage girls and their mothers' fights to save not only their relationships, but often their daughters' lives."
My daughter and I share a dance that is waltzed between mothers and daughters everywhere. The names on the dance card simply differ as does the ballroom of the battle. We glide together for a few short steps before ultimately, my daughter's fingertips slide from my grasp and once again, she is gone.
"Surviving Ophelia" offers comfort in the struggle.
It gave me hope and camaraderie .
Mothers and daughters everywhere.
Read this book.