Soul Searching Journal A Guide To Self-Discovery For Girls

Parenting expert, popular speaker, and bestselling author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee returns with a revelatory new book for parents of teenagers. In The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, author Wendy Mogel introduced a new approach to parenting, one that drew its fundamental principles from Jewish wisdom and emphasized resisting overprotection of our children. With its combination of insight and practicality, the book became a word-of-mouth success and made Mogel a much sought after speaker. Now, in the long-awaited follow-up to her perennial seller, Mogel addresses the question she is asked most frequently: how to be a parent in a culture that breeds anxiety and fragility in older children and teens by placing too high a value on perfection and success. Applying concepts from mussar (a Jewish system of character refinement that focuses on ethical behavior) and other teachings, Mogel shows parents how to stop overindulging or pressuring their children and instead focus on developing sound judgment. By practicing composure, detachment, acceptance, moderation, integrity, authority, and delightthe traits covered in the seven chaptersparents will not only uncover an appreciative and reflective relationship with their children, but will also set an example of the adults they want them to become. An important and inspiring book, The Blessing of a B Minus encourages parents to see beyond the drama of teenage crises and the competitiveness of college applications to the goal of raising resilient, optimistic adults.

Sarah Stillman graduated from Yale with simultaneous Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Anthropology before pursuing her PhD at Oxford—an inspiring example of what a self-confident teen can achieve. Active in the international global justice movement, she has worked with migrant factory workers in southern China, refugees in rural Guatemala, and HIV/AIDS patients in Thailand. In 2008, she was embedded with the 116th Military Police Company in Iraq as a foreign correspondent for Truthdig, following which New York University named her the inaugural recipient of The Reporting Award. Stillman has written about her experience in Iraq for The New Yorker and currently works as a fellow at Yale’s Morse College, where she co-teaches a course on the Iraq war with a U.S. Army captain.