Healthy Touch

"Healthy intimacy, trust, and self-empowerment all begin with touch for a girl child, because empowerment lies in following the body, not in imposing controls from outside. Touch also contributes to her sense of body affirmation, perception and definition. A girl who has been touches in a loving and respectful way will instinctively reject any intrusion on her body."

- Virginia Beane Rutter, Celebrating Girls

Growing up Female

"Eventually, our capacity to tell the truth was judged as rude and "not nice", and our capacity to think for ourselves as "troublesome" and "rocking the boat" by our families. We learned to question our thoughts and perceptions and to lie in a compliance-based environment that valued conformity to outdated gender stereotypes and "politeness" more than it did integrity. We kept our thoughts about the events of life to ourselves so there wouldn't be an argument. We strained to like everyone so we wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. We pretended that we didn't know what we knew so their egos wouldn't be hurt; that we didn't hear what we heard so their secrets wouldn't be exposed; and that we couldn't do what we could do so that the masquerade about who was weak and who was strong would be maintained. The constant repetition of these childhood commandments censored our natural tendency to tell the truth and to think for ourselves. We learned to question our truth and to defer to the thoughts and perceptions of others, assuming something was wrong with us."

-Patricia Lynn Reilly, I Promise Myself: Making a Commitment to Yourself and Your Dreams