Upcoming Events:
Weekend Workshops
Mothers and Daughters - Learning From Each Other in the Pre-Teen Years (10-12):
July 23-25, 2010 at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA.
Register now
October 15-17, 2010 at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY.
Register now
Mothers and Daughters - Meeting in the Middle During the Teen Years (13-15):
May 7-9, 2010 (Mother's Day Weekend) at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY.
Register now
July 30 - August 1, 2010 at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA.
Register now
Visit Our Website:
tomothertodaughter.com
Links for Moms:
Embodying Conscious Femininity Workshops
Stone Ridge Healing Arts
Links for Girls:
V-Girls
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Greetings!
Sil & Eliza | Welcome to our new quarterly Mothering & Daughtering newsletter! We are Sil and Eliza Reynolds, a mother/daughter team who teach weekend workshops for mothers and their 10-15 year old daughters. If you are receiving this email it means that you are on our official mailing list. After each workshop we reluctantly leave the promise of deeper conversations between us all until a future date; there's school in the morning, deadlines to meet and the laundry's piling up... Well, we think the time to talk is now. The spring has brought us a fresh energy and determination to continue to spread our message. We want mothers and daughters to know that their relationship can thrive (and not just survive) during the teen years. Contrary to our culture's professed norms, we believe that daughters want and need to be close to their mothers during the teen years. We've chosen to use the term "daughtering" because the role of a daughter is not solely as a passive recipient of her mother's actions. Together we must continue to love, trust, be open, and keep talking. As we expand our ever growing community we ask that you help us: please consider forwarding this email to a friend! Expand the circle around you. So what is new? Our Mothering & Daughtering Newsletter is launched!: We are excited to now be able to reach and reconnect with our entire community every 3 months. These pages will include upcoming events, a short note from us, a featured article, and an "Ask Us" section. Scroll down to see the first editions of these pieces, and tell us what you would like to see there. We welcome your ideas, your favorite links for moms and girls, and your photographs. Send all to: info@tomothertodaughter.comOur Website: We are in the process of developing a beautiful new website which should be up and running by September. We want our new website to be, among other things, a lively forum for our growing community. It will include an archive of our featured newsletter articles and "Ask Us" editions, a blog, video and written testimonials, FAQ, resources for mothers and girls and more information about our personal mother/daughter story and the workshops we teach. In the meantime our existing website is still up and has basic information about us and our workshops. If you haven't seen it yet, do Visit Our Website Now. (tomothertodaughter.com). Our Book: We are positively thrilled to tell you that we have just completed a 40- page fully illustrated book proposal which we have sent to an agent whom we hope will find us a publisher this spring. The working title of our book is Mothering & Daughtering: How to Create A Deep and Enduring Relationship Through the Teen Years. We are planning to finish our book by the end of August, with our sights set on a Spring 2011 publication. We will keep you posted! Welcome to the Mothering & Daughtering conversation.
Sil & Eliza Reynolds
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It's Workshop Season Again!
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The Cliffs at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA | Spring, summer and fall are our teaching seasons, and we've expanded our workshops this year: both for mothers and their 10-12 year old daughters, and for mothers and their 13-15 year old daughters. We will be bringing our workshops to both coasts this year: to a lovely rural retreat center in Rhinebeck, NY (approximately 2 hours north of NYC) and the breathtaking cliffs of Big Sur, CA (approximately 3 hours south of San Francisco). Look in the Upcoming Events section for details.
Many of the mothers and daughters who have attended our workshops return year after year as a way of staying connected. We welcome repeat participants who come and strengthen our growing community with their wisdom. There is always deeper work to be done and more fun to be had!
Have a daughter who is hesitant to join you for a weekend retreat?
1. Explain to her that in fact 50% of the time will be spent with a diverse group of other cool teenage girls from around the country! And a 19 year old teacher...
2. Realize that you must commit to making sacred time for your relationship, whether it takes the form of this weekend retreat or not. In a culture focused on "doing" rather then "being", and one that often encourages teenage daughters to dismiss their mother's role in their lives, modern mothers must swim against the current to demand and hold the needed space for their daughters. We encourage you to use whatever loving coercion you can manage in order to get her there to see for herself: Do you have a birthday coming up? A Mother's day present? She will not be sorry by the end of the weekend, we promise!
3. Email Sil for some strategy advice.
You can register on the Esalen Website or the Omega Website
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Featured Article:
Raising A Feminist/
Raised A Feminist
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OUR FEATURED ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN AUGUST '09 BY SIL AND ELIZA AS ELIZA PREPARED TO LEAVE HOME FOR HER FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE. THE ARTICLE HAS BEEN FEATURED IN TWO ONLINE BLOGS (check out: feministing.com and feminist.com).
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 RAISING A FEMINIST
By Sil Reynolds
In one week my daughter leaves home. My 18-year-old baby turned
young woman, Eliza, is packing the car for college: Botticelli posters,
red and pink pillows, a desk lamp, closet organizers, a hat stand -
nesting things for a nest that I will not be sharing with her. This is
our sacred rite, our last great initiation and our milestone together:
shopping, packing, planning, and giddy giggling energy. SHE'S LEAVING?
Can't I come too? I want to take her courses "Shakespeare's Present
Tense" and "Social Psychology", I want to meet new people, I just want
to stay at college with her and cuddle at night in one bed with my
little girl and whisper about the world.
Yet, remarkably, I also find myself ready to release her because she is so ready for the world.
I intended to raise a daughter who lives authentically, passionately
and on her own terms -a daughter who is open-minded and openhearted. In
short, I intended to raise a feminist. My husband was a remarkably
attuned father and I had extraordinary friends and family at my side. I
have taken notes as I have mothered because I teach workshops for
mothers and their teenage daughters. So as I pause at the dawn of this
new era of empty nesting, I offer this list:
1. Find a village to raise your child. Take Hilary
Clinton's advice to heart and find village women and men to help you
raise your child in a loving and supportive community. You cannot do
everything or be everywhere - create that circle for her and for you.
2. Love your body. Then your daughter will be
inspired to cherish her own unique feminine body. Teach about what is
wrong about those too skinny images that are coming at her every day.
3. While I am on the subject--keep no scales in the house. A number in the morning should not have the right to determine how one feels about oneself.
4. Celebrate the sacred, invite it in, and make room for it in your home.
Celebrate your daughter's menarche even if she resists it. It may be
just the two of you (red tulips and strawberries), or a circle of women
that hold her.
5. Plant a garden with her if you can find a patch of earth. This will teach her the rhythms of the Earth, the cycles of life and the miracle of starting life from a seed.
6. Teach tolerance and celebrate differences:
different bodies, different sexual orientations, different cultures and
different points of view. Teach about injustice. Model compassion.
7. Keep talking. Always keep the lines of communication open. If you are having trouble with this, get help.
8. Bring your daughter to your workplace. If you don't work, bring your daughter to your volunteer place. Make sure she sees you in the world.
So how do I know if I - and her father and the village--succeeded? How
do I know if this feminist birthed another feminist? By letting her
speak! |
 RAISED A FEMINIST By Eliza Reynolds I was raised to be a feminist, but I didn't know it. I would say to
anyone who would listen: my mom, my math teacher, my middle-school
crush, "Oh no, I'm not a bra burner, I'm not angry, I'm not that girl
who doesn't shave her arm pits as a statement against the Man; I am no
feminist, no thank you." But deep down I was. It was a secret at first. Something that I didn't want the middle
school boys to know because then they might be scared of me--you never
knew what those feminists might do. They demanded things; they liked
the shock value of what they said, of how they dressed. They were
rebels and I was no rebel. There was no part of that ugly label that I
wanted. But it turned out that I had it all wrong - middle school
stereotypes should never be confused for the truth. I can shave my
armpits and be a feminist. I can love my pink strawberry-patterned bra
and be a feminist. I was raised a feminist. I couldn't have avoided it. Oh boy, I was
actively prepared, consciously guided and snugly dressed for the world
by Momma and Daddy, six godmothers, three teachers and a summer camp. I
learned by heart the meanings behind the 'badges' that came to adorn my
chest. I am a feminist because I love my hips and my belly (because they
are the same hips and belly that my mom has and loves). I am a feminist
because when I'm angry with you I'm going to challenge you--yes my face
in yours--to sit down and really talk it out. I am a feminist because the morning I got my period my dad gave me a
big hug and kiss and a bowl of strawberries. I am a feminist because I
changed my car tire in a white dress and green heels (and I liked it)
and because sometimes I kiss a boy before he gets up the guts to kiss
me. I am a feminist because sometimes I cry for "no reason" and it
makes me feel whole. Feminism had snuck up on me. One day I realized that I just love
women. And that hey, I am angry when they are hurt and happy when they
are healed, and that because I want to protect them and be their
champion, I am a feminist. All of the little acts that make up my life,
all of the little stories that I would tell as "essence of Eliza", mean
feminism to me. I am a feminist because I, an 18-year-old, sarcastic,
blog-reading, Starbucks-drinking college freshman, have this vision of
the world embedded in me: a world where all people will have the right
to be raised safe and free--just as I was.
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INTERESTED IN HAVING A CERTAIN TOPIC DISCUSSED? EMAIL IN YOUR SUGGESTIONS TO info@tomothertodaughter.com
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Our new "ask us" section is just getting started! Help us by sending in your Mothering & Daughtering questions to Sil and Eliza at info@tomothertodaughter.com.
You can look forward to seeing your questions answered in our next newsletter!
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Sil Reynolds, RN,
has been a nurse practitioner for almost thirty years, during which time she
has specialized in women's health, eating disorders, and a Jungian approach to
psychological and spiritual processes. She is a therapist in private practice
in Stone Ridge, New York.
Sil has been an ongoing advisor to
Omega Institute's Women and Power Conference and a consultant to Eve Ensler's V-Day projects related to body
image and eating disorders. For over 10 years, Sil assisted and led Geneen Roth'sBreaking Free From Emotional
Eating workshops across the country. Sil leads Embodying Conscious Femininity retreats
with Sherry Wheaton MD and Linda Kawer LCSW.
Eliza Reynolds is a freshman at Brown University where she is studying Psychology, Gender Studies, English, and nonfiction writing. She is a certified Teen Peer Mediator, a counselor at the The Wayfinder Experience summer theater camp, and an SOS Trained Peer Educator for Planned Parenthood. In high school she helped to found Scarlet, a magazine for teenage girls. Eliza recently served as an advisor to Eve Ensler for her newly released set of monologues for girls, I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Lives of Girls Around the World.
Since spring 2009 she has co-created and led two weekend long summer camps entitled New Moon, whose sole purpose is to empower "the feminine" side of teenagers of all genders through life skills workshops and different forms of artistic expression (with a focus on theater). Interested in an upcoming summer weekend? Contact New Moon's Director, Miranda Ten Broeke by email.
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