Ophelia's Mom: Women Speak Out About Loving and Letting Go of Their Adolescent Daughters

by Nina Shandler, Sara Shandler

Ophelia's Mom Speaks -- At Last

"Why do I hurt so much when she pulls away?" "What did I do wrong?" "Are we ever going to be friends again?" "Why is she friends with that sleaze and dating that fungus?" "I know I'm supposed to let her go, but I don't know how and I'm terrified." From the mother of the author of the
bestselling Ophelia Speaks, this is the first book in which mothers of adolescent girls speak out about how the changes in their daughters' lives are prompting cataclysms in their own.

Reviving Ophelia and Ophelia Speaks explored the painful challenges faced by teen girls. But where's the support for the mothers of those teen girls? In Ophelia's Mom , Nina Shandler, Ed.D., gives the mothers the chance to speak out about feelings and uncertainties 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 these pages reflect the universal experience of mothers facing one set of life changes while their daughters are facing another. With humor, pathos, insight, rage, sadness, 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Parenting

304 pages, Hardcover

First published August 21, 2001

Reviews

[Diane Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend this book to all mothers of daughters! Especially timely for those of us whose daughters have just left for college. Actually wish I'd read it as my daughter was entering high school. Better late than never!

[Nancie Lafferty · Rating 4 out of 5]

My three daughters are well grown now, with teenagers+ of their own. Reading this now has helped me understand some of the issues we dealt with way back then, and some of the things my grandchildren and their parents are now experiencing. I don’t know if I would have had time to read this - and Sarah’s book, when my girls were younger, but both are quite worthy.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

was it this or reviving ophelia that I read?
Need to go back and check some of these books I "think" I read. :)

Update: April 2016. I read this and didn't even realize I thought I had read it before. Didn't seem familiar to me so I don't think I had. Or maybe I just didn't have a teenage daughter yet, so everything feels different now. Hard to say.
Now, with 17 yr old and 10 yr old daughters (and 2 boys between them), I held back tears through this whole book.

[Felicia Blasi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have two essays in the book. On the whole, though, the pieces are uneven in quality. One of mine was mentioned as one of the "better" ones. Woo-hoo!

[Joanna Bedggood]

I kept expecting this book to get better, but it never did. Its a lot of moms telling their stories of raising teen daughters - but somehow it never really grabbed me. Some of the poems were nice

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is helping be understand my own daughter...the screaming, the tatrums, the rages...and that's just me, not her.

[Duskwatcher2153 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for any mother dealing with a troubled teen daughter

[Susan]

I loved it!!!