Back to School RA Tune-Up

As your daughter starts a new school year, don't forget to restock her relationship toolkit along with her wardrobe and school supplies!

  • Take a few minutes to talk about the highs and lows of last year and then discuss how she hopes this year will be different or the same.
  • Identify strengths she developed over the summer that she can build on in the months to come, and give plenty of praise for talents she’s developed.
  • As a together activity, buy journals and set up friendship goals you both want to achieve in the coming weeks. Write about the progress you have or haven’t made, and discuss what it will take to achieve your goals.
  • Buy or make a fun magnet frame that she can stick to her locker with a picture of something she enjoyed doing during the summer months. Have her to write a few words on the picture that will be a special message of encouragement when she needs it.
  • Practice Body Language 101. Pretend she is walking into homeroom on the first day and rehearse standing tall, walking confidently, and keeping a positive expression on her face. Do the same with entering the cafeteria and passing through the hallways.

Welcome A Message from Cheryl Dellasega

If you’re searching for suggestions, struggling to survive, or merely curious, you've come to the right place. I’m Cheryl Dellasega, and my work is all about the unique issues that confront mothers, girls, and others who care about them. My first book, Surviving Ophelia, shared stories of adolescent angst and the ways in which women (myself included) helped daughters with problems such as anorexia, depression, school difficulties, rebellion, running away, wilderness camps, and truancy.

The content I collected for Surviving Ophelia prompted Girl Wars, a book on girls in crisis due to relational aggression (i.e. RA or female bullying). My third book, The Starving Family, describes the impact of anorexia, bulimia, EDNOS, and cutting on mothers, fathers, and siblings. Mean Girls Grown Up, my fourth book, examines how girls, who do not learn a better way, grow into women who use relational aggression and bullying to hurt each other. I’m thrilled that my fiction series, Bloggrls, will be launched in Summer, 2007. As far as I know, it’s the first book to use a blog format and real art by a teen girl. In Fall, 2007, Forced to Be Family will be released by Wiley. It continues to explore female relationships within the family context.

In 2004, my work with women and girls led to recognition as the Penn State University Outreach Award winner. My programs Club and Camp Ophelia continue to grow rapidly, and have helped hundreds of teens learn healthy relationship skills through an arts-based curriculum and mentoring.

For over twenty-five years, I’ve been working and learning as a researcher, counselor, teacher, and nurse practitioner. Being a professor in a College of Medicine helps me continue to understand and develop interventions that improve the emotional lives of women. My books are an attempt to give you the best of both my worlds: relevant clinical insights alongside interesting everyday approaches; facts from rigorous research studies intertwined with worldly wisdom, stories of women and relationships mixed with personal experiences and observations.

I hope you’ll find what you’re looking for in some part of my work because chances are were the same: women who look to books for answers. 



Banner Photo by Stuart Leask