Reviving Ophelia In Mary Piper's Ph. D.

Cheyenne, is a case study, in Mary Piper’s Ph.D. book, Reviving Ophelia, whose parents had to move to a new neighborhood which caused a spiral of devastation to a once semi-normal (in society’s eyes) household. Reviving Ophelia, is an earth shattering, realization of how teen girls suffer from the new generation of fitting into a society that only accepts perfection. The young girl had always followed the rules, loved sports (especially soccer) and received good grades in school, unlike her older sister who had not been so innocent. Her mother and father had a few issues with her older sister but nothing like what Cheyenne was putting them through.

While reading these first 4 chapters I felt myself wondering if I also had fallen into the

Now, add moving to a new neighborhood and all these already tough times become intensified immensely. Prior to the move and puberty, Cheyenne was a normal young lady who loved to play soccer and got along with her parent’s. But in a whirlwind of newness all her innocence and acceptance of herself, fly’s right out the window. Perhaps Cheyenne could have handled puberty with more grace, but adding the move and not making new friends quickly left Cheyenne feeling as if she had no options. She lunged into the first group that accepted her and in order to maintain these friendships she had to walk the walk and play the role. She started to hate everything about herself, her looks, especially her red hair. Cheyenne’s need to fit it led her to have sex with a boy she barely knew and subsequently became more sexually active and contracted herpes’s which was the final straw in her parent’s eyes and led her to counseling, which she was quite unhappy about. She resisted for a while, but quickly found herself talking to the counselor and asking question about weird dreams and other things that troubled