Growing Courageous Girls: How to Raise Authentic, Strong, And Savvy Girls in Today's Mixed-Up Culture

By Priscilla Wainwright, Ph.D., CPC

Growing Courageous Girls is THE quintessential resource for raising girls in the current culture. Culture is the air we breathe. We take it in, absorb it, taking it for granted. While women have greater opportunity than ever before, there is a strong, lingering substrate of toxic cultural messages and stereotypes that are disrespectful, belittling, and limiting to women. Problem is, our children absorb them and are affected before anyone knows that there is a problem.

Growing Courageous Girls will raise your awareness. It provides powerful tools to help protect and empower your daughters by helping them to truly love themselves unconditionally, appreciate being Female, and develop their unique Female powers. You’ll help them recognize, overcome, and transcend limiting cultural messages, and live into happy, successful, and meaningful lives, radiating their true unique glory!

In the process, you will prevent, heal, or reduce the common mother-daughter conflict so many parents experience. Your relationship will become richer, closer, more respectful, and meaningful.

Also, as you strengthen your daughters, YOU will become more positively empowered yourself!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9780988873223

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PREFACE

My Passion for Writing this Book

I remember it so clearly. I was sitting on the living room floor watching TV with my parents. There was a strong man on TV lifting weights. I was about 5 and was so impressed. I turned to my parents and said, I want to be a strong girl when I grow up. My father looked at me lovingly and said, Honey, there is no such thing, and Mom said nothing.

In school, I was bullied for being so sensitive, emotional and enthusiastic. I would jump into things I liked with great gusto. My Tigress was roaring! The other kids would make fun of me and tell me to Tone it down. Of course, I was hurt, and they’d taunt me for that.

Despite my challenges at school, I really was blessed growing up. I had loving parents who supported me in every way, although once Dad said You’re a girl, so I guess I won’t be paying for college. I grew up among strong women, but still they would often back down when a serious disagreement arose with their husbands.

Then there was Nana, my Mom’s Mom and my idol. She went to college in the late 1890’s, became a teacher for a while, and ultimately became an itinerant Bible teacher, traveling all around the Philadelphia area giving lectures and courses. She was a loving wife and mother, but very empowered for a woman of her time. Her message to me was always, You can do anything you want. Just follow your heart. By the way, when I went on to college, Dad paid without question.

Later, when I started speaking for money, I had to work through fear of disapproval that I feel stemmed in part from the bullying, as well as from the sexist cultural programming to which I was exposed.

Growing up with my friends, family, and with so many women clients I worked with for over 40 years, I have seen so many shining lights grow dim or go out. I have seen so many creative and powerful women feel invisible, lose their voice, bury their dreams, betray themselves, and settle for dull lives when they really could have been shining stars.

Dad meant no harm with his reply to my strong girl comment. While he was just trying to help me be realistic for the way he saw it in 1949, he unwittingly stomped on a little girl’s momentary dream.

As women, we have been victimized, objectified, and abused by a culture that, while changing, still devalues the feminine. This must change and we women can do it.

We have such innate power and glory as women. My mission is to help women and girls break through, rise above our cultural morass, love and honor themselves magnificently, and live into their full female power and greatness.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

That’s right: USE. This is a book to be used, not just read.

First of all, share it with your partner. He or she is a critical part of the parenting process. Both of you reading this book together will enable you to discuss its concepts, come to a more common understanding, and to be more on the same page in your parenting.

Second, this is a book for the long haul The empowerment principles and practices are universal and timeless. Keep it handy as a reference and refer to it often. To have the greatest impact on your daughters, the concepts and practices need to become second nature to you. Your goal is to develop empowered ideas and habits as second nature in your daughters as well.

Third, empower yourself, too. The principles and practices you teach your girls are equally relevant to you as well. Plus, modeling is the best form of teaching. If they see you acting out the principles, it will be much easier for them to catch on and follow suit.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED

Growing Courageous Girls is presented in four sections. Section 1 – LEARNING THE LANDSCAPE is all about necessary consciousness-raising. You can’t understand or change what you can’t see. Cultural poisoning is so subtle, we slip into it and start developing disempowered beliefs and habits and having the symptoms long before we’re aware there is a problem. By then, we’re hooked and have a hard time breaking free. Section 1 makes the invisible visible so you can act. Forewarned is forearmed.

Also, we know that guys and gals think differently, often leading to inadvertent conflict. Yet we typically can’t put our finger on just what those differences are. Once we know, we can work around them and have a more peaceful, loving, and meaningful relationship.

Finally, Section 1 defines that mystery, the Inner Feminine Spirit. It spells out its qualities and provides a target template for what a fully empowered woman acts like. This gives you a model to shoot for.

Section 2 – THE HIDDEN FEMALE POWER SYSTEM identifies and describes the Female Power Sources existing on the Female side that the male-dominated culture fears, trivializes and repudiates. Again, this is not just consciousness raising, but also gives you starter practices for developing these feminine power sources in your and your daughters’ lives. Until we fully embrace and act from our female power, we risk living as Partial Persons!

Section 3 – CRITICAL EMPOWERED PARENTING PRACTICES moves you closer to the heart of this book. These practices work for both girls and boys. While you may be doing some or most of these already, a review is always helpful, and may add new insights and twists to what you may already be doing. Some of the other practices may be novel and provide more helpful ways to understand and do successful parenting.

Section 4 – EMPOWERING LIFE LESSONS AND PRACTICES This is the heart of this book. Each chapter gives you the basics of the concept and how to implement it. Books have been written on each of these topics. The Reference section at the back provides books/sources for further information for each Life Lesson so that you can dig deeper and gain greater understanding and facility with each one, should you desire.

It has been exciting and a passionate labor of love to write this book. In spite of all women’s opportunities today, our daughters are still in cultural jeopardy of being disempowered, abused, and taken advantage of. If this book helps you to strengthen your daughter and empower her to protect herself and to rise above, my mission has been fulfilled!

Priscilla

August 2015

www.GrowingCourageousGirls.com

For more free resources on Women’s Empowerment, please visit www.InnerTigress.com

Sign up for my free blog, Tigress Talk. www.InnerTigress.com/TigressTalk/

CHAPTER 1

Nurturing Your Daughters’ Spirits

Growing Courageous Girls is unlike any parenting book you’ve ever read!

Girls grow up differently than boys. DUH! But what may not be so obvious is the differential destructive programming Western Culture does to both genders. We are all culturally embedded, yet there are invisible and vague toxins in the cultural air we breathe that are particularly poisonous to girls. Hilary Clinton recently commented, How women are treated today is often more subtle, but no less damaging.

Growing Courageous Girls empowers you to guide and help your daughters to become immune to these cultural toxins and to discover, develop, and live into their own natural, courageous Female power, radiance, and glory.

You will help them:

•Recognize and rise above toxic culture conditioning.

•Honor and live their True Authenticity.

•Love themselves and their bodies magnificently just as they are .

•Avoid falling prey to cultural stereotyping.

•Develop their unique Female power sources (which most women don’t recognize).

•Develop and capitalize on their personal unique style.

•Become immune to impossible beauty standards, destructive peer pressure, etc.

•Develop a true no-limit mindset (beyond cultural hype).

•Build their courage to speak their truth, and to become significant and birth their own dreams into reality.

•Develop a healthy, self-protective, and realistic approach to sex and relationships with guys.

•Protect themselves from unwitting abuse.

•Develop a Female-Friendly Understanding of success and abundance.

Your greatest mission, opportunity and glory as a parent is to raise a healthy, happy, glorious daughter with the passion and courage to make her mark on the world.

Growing Courageous Girls gives you the concepts and tools you need to give your daughters to live into Tigress Truth #1 and make your mission come true.

HEALING MOTHER-DAUGHTER CONFLICT

As you know, so many mother-daughter relationships are fraught with tension and conflict. Following the guidelines in this book will help heal and prevent such tension. Your daughters will trust, respect, and communicate with you more. They will see you as their best friend and ally, and more likely trust your advice. If you are the mother of a teenager especially, what more could you ask?

THE SOURCE OF YOUR POWER

The core concepts in this book are based upon my Inner Tigress/4 Bridges™ model and system of female empowerment. The Inner Tigress is your Inner Feminine Spirit. She is the source of your power, radiance, and glory as a woman.

The Inner Tigress is a model. It’s a way of conceptualizing, understanding, and talking about our innate female power, radiance, and glory. In our model, the Tigress is strong and glorious, but not hostile. She is at the same time gentle and compassionate. Other writers use models such as Inner Goddess, and Divine/Sacred Feminine to describe similar traits.

Inner Tigress and 4 Bridges will be fully explained as you progress through this book. To find out more now, and sample the many free resources that are available to you, please visit www.InnerTigress.com.

NOTE: By Female and Feminine I do NOT mean girly. Rather I am referring to the spirit, qualities and powers we possess as women (both natural born and trans). Girly Girls, Tomboys, and anyone in between can be equally Feminine by virtue of being born or reconstructed as Female.

A NOTE TO DAD

While mostly written to Mom, this book is for YOU too. There is something very special about the typical Father-Daughter relationship. Dads usually want to protect their daughters and keep them safe. Protection is part of what men typically are about. Since there is so much in life that is out of our control, the best way to protect your daughter is not to limit her, but to EMPOWER and trust her.

By working together with her Mom through this book, you both will be providing a consistent context for raising her to be courageous, strong, and savvy – which is the best protection a girl can have today.

THE BEST GIFT YOU CAN GIVE YOUR DAUGHTER

Second only to your love and protection, there is one gift you can give her that will set her up for a positive life, all life long:

EXPECT GREAT THINGS OF HER

I’m not talking about pressuring her to excel. That just adds to kids’ stress and is counter-productive. Rather, I’m referring to your expectation level. Show her you believe in her greatness and potential. It’s been proven in study after study that people will live up or down to the expectations others hold of them. Believe in her power. Expect her power and her other skills and talents to blossom. Encourage her to stretch herself and rise to new challenges and she will! Such is the nature of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

In one study, teachers were given mediocre-performing students, but were led to believe that these students were very bright and creative. At the end of the year, the students had performed at a much higher level. Why? The teachers believed in them and taught accordingly. Do likewise and you and your daughter will reap great benefits, plus have a wonderful relationship.

Welcome Aboard!

SECTION 1

Learning the Landscape

Empowering our daughters is perhaps the greatest task and challenge we face. It is also our greatest joy and contribution to future generations. In so doing, we will have multiplied our blessings and changed the world!

Empowerment goes beyond typical parenting. It goes without saying that we want our kids to grow up happy, competent and successful. But truth be told, most parenting is shoot-from-the-hip. We have a vague idea of an end result, and we honker down day by day trying to do our BEST.

Map and Compass

No serious hiker treks off the beaten path in a huge forest without a geological map and a good compass. To ignore these tools could lead to getting hopelessly lost, disoriented, and possible harm or death.

Well, so it is with RAISING GIRLS! We women and girls face particular challenges growing up in a sexist, male-dominated culture. You know this all too well, and have suffered its effects.

You can’t change what you can’t see. Therefore, in this section, we lay out the foundation and describe the cultural context as it relates to girls. We also spell out key gender differences so that we better understand ourselves as women, how we tick, and how to better relate to males and other women.

Perhaps most importantly, we spell out what being a women and empowerment are all about. We end with the Tigress Manifesta, which spells out the 16 key habits highly empowered women demonstrate. This provides a target and an outcome to shoot for.

May blessing abound on your magnificent, Divine journey.

CHAPTER 2

We’ve Come A Long Way, Sister, But On The Path To Where ?

Women today have more opportunity than ever before. While we’re still heavily under-represented at the top of major corporations and in the STEM fields, our numbers in those arenas are rising. We now have a woman CEO at General Motors, the Red Cross, and an increasing number of major corporations. Major religious denominations have more and more women bishops and leaders. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church have women at the very top. WOOHOO!

This is all awesome, and as a result, we are beginning to see shifts in the culture from the Patriarchal Top-Down model to a more feminine-based horizontal model of Equal Partnership. This is clearly the Millennium of the Woman, and more and more we are taking center stage.

Most of the young women I talk to today feel more free, empowered, effective, successful, their own person, etc. I can’t argue with how wonderful that is. When I was a girl, the big three career opportunities were Clerical, Teaching, and Nursing. Women were not so welcome in medical school, and male nurses were teased unmercifully. Yes, we have come a long way, Sister. (Notice – I didn’t say We’ve come a long way, Baby. Calling a woman Babe or Baby is pejorative.)

THE UNDERBELLY

Yet, there is an insidious underbelly to all this progress. You need to understand this if you and your daughters wish to be fully empowered as women.

To understand it, we need to go back in history a bit. Every social change movement begins by attacking the prevailing system. The Women’s Revolution starting in the 60’s, and gaining significant momentum in the 80’s, was no exception. It began where it had to, by banging on the door of corporate America. I take my hat off to those committed Feminists who worked so tirelessly and won so much for the rest of us.

I cast no aspersions on any of them. They did what they had to and what they saw was necessary. I grant them the greatest Honor and Respect.

BUT…..

What did they win?

Basically, permission to play at the guys’ table, entry to the Inner Sanctum of Male Power! They won us permission to compete in the male game!

Looking back, corporate women in the 80’s looked like (and were frequently seen by men and other women as) Guy-Wannabes. Skirts and blouses gave way to pin-striped pant suits, white shirts and even ties! While that look was not universal in the Reagan Era, it clearly was symbolic of the spirit of the times.

Those women who achieved the greatest success proved highly adept at mastering the male game and its Patriarchal definition of success!

Yes, we have won great equality, but it basically comes as parity in the male-based system!

That is our Legacy.

Yet serious gaps still exist. Women on average still earn $.78 to the male dollar for similar work. Double standards still exist: a man who speaks up is called assertive; a woman who speaks up is called a bitch. Male ways and traits are honored; female ways and traits are trivialized and seen as weak. You can actually see it. Women are quite interested in what men say and do, but the reverse is not true. The average man generally tends to be disinterested in women’s talk, ideas, or interests, unless, of course, she’s his partner.

THE PERNICIOUS TRADE-OFF

In earlier Feminist movements, especially for women’s suffrage, when Feminists emphasized the differences between women and men, women’s differences were used against them.

Thus, not wanting to fall into this trap, the Feminist Revolution starting in the 1960’s came to deny and entirely bypass innate gender differences beyond sex and reproduction. Their agenda was, What a man can do, any woman can also do. Gender differences were seen strictly as the result of cultural upbringing. This notion naturally also found its way into the Political Correctness canon of the times. The Superwoman Syndrome took off like a rocket! (The Energizer Bunny is pink! Was that done so women would identify with it?)

The outcome? Legitimate, innate gender differences were denied. In fact, legitimate scientific research into gender differences was suppressed!

Part of this cultural revolution was the Androgyny movement in the 80’s. There was a move to attempt to raise little children gender neutral. Of course, it fell apart. For example, little boys given Barbie dolls would sword-fight with them. Little girls given toy trucks would wrap them in blankets, hug them close and pet their cars, It’s OK, Truckie.

This denial of legitimate gender difference has had a significant negative backlash on the very women the movement was trying to help.

THE FEMALE FALL-OUT

The fall-out of all this is a cultural repudiation of the Inner Feminine. While the doors of opportunity for women continue to be flung open wider, the gender-bias of the prevailing Patriarchal system has remained basically intact.

Millions of women, lured by increasing opportunities for social or financial success, have bought into the male model of achievement. In so doing, many inadvertently have ignored or rejected certain female qualities and sources of power. To the degree that these qualities differ from the Patriarchal system, they are devalued.

I’m not suggesting that these women are less feminine in appearance or behavior, or are guy-wannabes. Not in the slightest. Rather, the key feminine power sources and traits, such as emotion, intuition, connection, changeability, openness, &c., are considered weak, and/or remain underdeveloped. These women tend to have absorbed a male-based understanding of personal power. Female power sources are not valued in the culture. There is naturally a full unique power system on the Feminine side with which jillions of women today are out of touch!

Interestingly, it was believed that this new empowerment, which came through 2nd Wave Feminism, would automatically and instantly boost women’s self esteem! This did not happen! In fact, Gloria Steinem commented in the 90’s that the vast majority of women did not have the courage nor self-esteem to take advantage of the new freedom and opportunities they were given.

So, sexism is alive and well in spite of all the progress women have made.!

GENDER POWER

Normally we don’t think much about gender per se. We just take it for granted. While we may attack some obvious stereotypes, we still subconsciously act out our basic gender programming. When you really get down to it, gender – often invisibly–impacts every aspect of life and every manner in which we know ourselves.

Granted, much of our gender roles and norms fits the significant differences in structure and information processing between the female and male brains. So, in fact, culture has to some degree followed both body and brain biology, but it has added tons of excess baggage in terms of a rigid Gender Binary that actually limits men as well, but is particularly unfriendly to women.

Gender programming in the human infant actually begins by osmosis, prior to conscious thought. By age 3, the average child knows whether he or she is male or female, and begins automatically to act accordingly. Most children follow suit, though some will rebel against certain gender standards and norms. Parents, culturally conditioned themselves in infancy, typically reinforce these gender norms without giving it conscious thought.

The typical unspoken attitude most of us have is, The culture is the way it is. That’s ‘reality’, so why question it?

Fortunately, the Patriarchy with its Gender Binary is coming under serious question. But, even so, gender norms and the subtle spoken and unspoken messages these norms generate are absorbed into our minds and are subconsciously acted out none-the-less. Sue Patton Thoele put it very well: "Under the seemingly solid ground of respect and equality women have