Quotes About Support

As I say the words, I realize how true they are. And maybe that's the trick to getting through it, through life: realizing that everybody, including ourselves, is lugging around some kind of screwed-up baggage. Maybe we are put here to help each other carry the loads.

Elaine, I remember the first time I met you. You were so young, so scared. It nearly broke my heart to see you so.

Courage' isn't the kind of word you use to describe yourself, Nick, even if we both know it's true. That only works if other people are saying it.

Women are not a problem...they are an answer

You know you are with true friends when they lift, encourage, correct, and then spur you on.

Some hopes were better nurtured in private, where the words of others could not harm them, and where disappointment could be borne free of the pitying gaze of friends.

When girls come into my office in a panic...and I can tell that they they're just a wreck, I get out my glitter jar and I do this." She picked up the jar and shook it fiercely the way one shakes a snow globe. The placid water immediately became a sparkling purple tempest. "And then I say to the girl, 'Right now, this is what it's like in your brain. So first, let's settle your glitter.

It's bad enough to be rebuffed by your daughter—it's worse that it happens right when you feel that she needs you most.

Try this at home. The next time your daughter tells you that she's feeling really nervous about a test for which she has yet to study, cheerily reply, "Good! I'm glad you're worried. That's the ideal reaction, because right now you know you're not ready. As soon as you start studying, your nerves will calm down.

Raising a young woman will be one of the most vexing, delightful, exhausting, and fulfilling things you will ever do. Sometimes all on the same day. The job is hard enough even under the best conditions, and anyone doing a hard job deserves support. When we get that support, when we understand the developmental tour de force that is adolescence, we can truly enjoy and empower our girls.

if you feel you must criticize your daughter's friends—and sometimes you must—use your words and your tone to communicate that the girls are in a tricky situation, not that they are bad people.

If you really want to help your daughter manage her distress, help her see the difference between complaining and venting.

It's important to remember that teenagers form tribes with the express purpose of creating a group that doesn't include adults, so going outside of their group to get help from an adult—even for life-threatening behavior—can feel like a huge betrayal.

girls told us that they would be open to telling an adult if a friend showed signs of an eating disorder, except for one thing: they didn't want to be seen as disloyal. They were fiercely committed to supporting one another and keeping one another's secrets, and they worried that telling an adult about a troubling change in a peer's eating would be a social transgression.

we learned that girls are much more likely to seek help for a suffering friend if they can count on adults to respect their tribal loyalties.

Girls will often set aside their own wishes to help a needy friend.

Raising teenagers is not for the fragile, and that's true even when everything is going just as it should.

It's critical to remember that by the time teens are telling us that they feel anxious or angry or sad or any other emotion they choose to put into words, they're already using an effective strategy for helping themselves cope with it. As a psychologist, I know this through and through. As a parent, though, I often forget it.

I have tissues right where students can reach them but have noticed that girls often avoid taking one. It's as though needing to use a tissue suggests that they have totally lost control of their feelings.

Complaining to you allows your daughter to bring the best of herself to school.

Well, here's a little secret, kiddo - that's pretty much how everyone down here feels most of the time. But we keep walking anyway. We just keep moving forward. And if we're lucky, we find some people who don't mind stumbling around with us, and somehow that makes it a little easier to stay on our feet.

There is a breed of men out there, you know, who are attracted to strong women. They just don't know what to do once they win us over.

Parents think the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is cancer. They're wrong; the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is mental illness.

Because sometimes pain is knowing, and sometimes pain is sharing that knowledge with someone who loves you but can't do anything to help.