Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [48]
During Abby’s adolescent years, Bill would suggest a bike ride and Abby would give him a withering look. Nan would bake a gooseberry pie and she’d refuse to eat it. She quit coming to meals with the family. When they tried to talk to her about the changes, she clammed up or attacked them for being unreasonable.
Nan and Bill couldn’t understand what was going wrong. Nan had some family history of depression, but she’d never worried about it. Abby had seemed calm and stable. They took her to a therapist, but Abby wouldn’t talk. She claimed she could work her life out on her own.
Two years later Elizabeth was in trouble. She dropped the Crazy Kids and stayed in her room, which she turned into a dark cave. She listened to her radio and read science fiction. Elizabeth also hated school and managed to flunk three courses in her eighth-grade year. Her only friend was Colin, who shared her interest in science fiction.
Elizabeth managed to pull her grades up and by high school she was again an honor roll student But she remained distant from the other students. She and Colin formed a small world of their own. She argued with Bill and Nan, who tried to push her back into the world of her school. Unlike Abby, she never used chemicals, but she was an angrier daughter. She hurled insults at her parents and told them nothing about her life.
When Elizabeth first had trouble, Nan and Bill again found a therapist. This one talked to Elizabeth alone and then assured Nan and Bill that they were doing everything right. She said, “I’ve never seen quite so much trouble in such a healthy family.” Nan told me later that she wasn’t sure whether to feel good or bad about that remark.
The therapy may have helped some, but both girls remained in trouble. They blamed Bill and Nan for the difficulties they were having, as if somehow perfect parents would have protected them from the chaotic world they were entering. In spite of her intelligence, Abby barely graduated from high school and never attended college. Elizabeth got pregnant her junior year and decided to keep the baby.
At first I was baffled by this family’s trouble. I wondered if there were problems I didn’t know about, if Nan or Bill had secret vices or if the girls had been assaulted by a relative or family friend. Reading the research on families with different control strategies and levels of affection helped me understand this family.
The Boyds were an affectionate family but had minimal controls. Their daughters turned out much as the research would have predicted. They had low self-esteem and problems with impulsivity. Clearly in their early adolescent years they would have benefited from more structure.
The Boyds believed in autonomy, tolerance and curiosity. They wanted their girls to experience the world in all its messiness and glory. They raised daughters who were open to experience, eager to try new things, socially aware and independent. Because girls like this are so open and aware, when they reach junior high they are hit full force by the gales of the hurricane. When all that force hits, they are temporarily overwhelmed. It’s too much to handle too fast. Often they handle it in the way Abby and Elizabeth did, by withdrawal and depression. They screen out the world to give themselves time to process all the complexity.
Abby and Elizabeth are now in their early twenties. They are both “in recovery” from their adolescent experiences. Abby works at a food co-op as produce manager and is active in Ecology Now. She hates drugs, even caffeine, and allows herself only herbal teas. She loves the community of like-minded people who work at the co-op. She and Nan shop together for herbs and vegetables to plant in the spring. Together they concoct natural-food recipes for the co-op deli. She and Bill just returned from a bike ride across Iowa.
Elizabeth is a good mother for her lovely red-headed daughter. She, Colin and the baby live on a rented farm outside of town. Neighbor kids follow her around as she feeds the goats and chickens