The Two Most Radical Things

When One Of Us Tells The Truth, He Makes It Easier For All Of Us To Open Our Hearts To Our Pain And That Of Others.

Girls Have Long Been Evaluated On The Basis Of Appearance And Caught In Myriad Double Binds: Achieve, But Not Too Much, Be Polite,but Be Yourself, Be Feminine And Adult; Be Aware Of Our Cultural Heritage, But Don't Comment On The Sexism. . . . Girls Are Trained To Be Less Than Who They Really Are. They Are Trained To Be What The Culture Wants Of Its Young Women, Not What They Themselves Want To Become.

We Live In A World Filled With Language. Language Imparts Identity, Meaning, And Perspective To Our Human Community. Writers Are Either Polluters Or Part Of The Clean-up Team. Just As The Language Of Power And Greed Has The Potential To Destroy Us, The Language Of Reason And Empathy Has The Power To Save Us. Writers Can Inspire A Kinder, Fairer, More Beautiful World, Or Invite Selfishness, Stereotyping, And Violence. Writers Can Unite People Or Divide Them.

Coming Out Of The Trance Of Denial Is Painful. But Crises Offer Us Opportunities To Rethink Our Lives. The Best Thing About Despair Is That It Wakes Us Up. We Can See The World More Clearly And Open To New Possibilities...and We Can Find New Joy In The Ordinary.

It's Important For Parents To Watch For Trouble And Convey To Their Daughters That, If It Comes, They Are Strong Enough To Deal With It. Parents Who Send Their [adolescent] Daughters The Message That They'll Be Overwhelmed By Problems Aren't Likely To Hear What's Really Happening.