As we go through the tender time of puberty, society’s conditioning sends us very confusing and contradictory messages about how to handle our emotional and sexual nature.

‘You busy?’ said the boy to Grace. ‘Do you want to do something? What do you want to do?’ She looked astonished. What did she want to do? ‘I don’t know,’ she said. The thought had rarely occurred to her. She knew what she ought to do, and what she ought not to do; the idea that she was allowed to want anything at all was appalling.

I’ve done my research and learned this: Ten is when we learn how to be good girls and real boys. Ten is when children begin to hide who they are in order to become what the world expects them to be. Right around ten is when we begin to internalize our formal taming.

The feminine in you is enmeshed in the drama of love and unlove. Day by day, year by year, the feminine feels, “I’m loved, not loved, loved, not loved, loved, not loved...” as if the entire world revolved around your emotional fulfillment. As if you could wait out the bad times, and then great intimacy will become possible. As if your lover…

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