The TRUTH: I'm Ten, I'm Smart and I Know Everything

Psychology and self-help author Barbara Becker Holstein, Ed.D, author of THE TRUTH: I’m Ten, I’m Smart and I Know Everything! (Ladybug Press), has our guest post today. I think you'll find it interesting.

I've included a synopsis and an excerpt after the intro so keep on reading:--)

Speck

The Truth: I'm Ten, I'm Smart and I Know Everything Synopsis:

THE TRUTH ... how do we carry the truth from girlhood to adulthood? That priceless ‘truth’ that we all recognize as kids? How do we walk over that bridge into growing up, carrying the Truth? How do we recognize THE TRUTH in our children and help them carry their most precious selves into adulthood?

What if we could pass the gift of our early wisdom and brilliance along to our children, giving them permission to hold on to their most precious jewels?

My new book, THE TRUTH, My Secret Diary, I'm Ten, I'm Smart and I Know Everything, is a delightful, humorous secret diary, written by a girl who is 10-11 years of age. She is wise and yet so innocent. She makes us cry and laugh and remember ourselves. Behind this very easy read is the psychological message to the women reading THE TRUTH that they can and must recapture the fire and passion of their girlhoods not only for themselves to flourish and be happy, but for the next generation to also have the gifts of good emotional and spiritual health.

Women love the book and so do girls, ages 9-12. Women find it a pure delight-a hot fudge sundae with a secret message inside and no weight gain, while girls recognize themselves and finally feel totally understood!


It is a fascinating question as to why I wrote THE TRUTH, I'm Ten, I'm Smart and I Know Everything! I am filled with a passion to help both women and girls hold on to the best of themselves and not get swamped by the stresses and strains of life. Some people save forests and others save whales and all of it is good. I am compelled to save women and girls, as best I can. Life is hard but for most of us, if we understand our value as human beings and we work at it, we can stay treasuring our best friend and our constant companion-ourselves. I would like to now share the introduction to THE TRUTH as it further explains why I wrote this particular book geared to women and girls, and why I let the Truth be told by not me, but 'the girl.'


Introduction to THE TRUTH
Barbara Becker Holstein, Ed.D.

When I first came upon The Truth, I realized that it must be published. Twenty-five years of clinical work with women in my psychology practice has convinced me that many, many women forget the truth. We seem to forget what the ten- or eleven-year-old girl inside of us once knew with such certainty. We forget how strong we are. We forget how astute we are at sizing up the world. We forget our capacity to recover from hurts and build successful new relationships.

We forget so much of our childhood wisdom. We forget the excitement and enthusiasm that comes from letting our passionate natures come out to play. And we forget how to laugh, laugh from our bellies. We forget how to intensely react to daily life. So often we forget how to have fun. Many of us don’t allow the playful part of ourselves to come out. We don’t know how to let out, safely, the imp inside of us. And we forget how proud we can feel about ourselves.

I see it as a tragic loss—we have forgotten so many of the simple truths known to us in our girlhood. The cost is enormous. Many of us walk around depressed, feeling like we’re a balloon that has pins pricked into it. Many of us don’t achieve our birth right of living out our potential. Falling by the wayside, many of us are under utilized, under educated, and marginally productive. We spend our time ruminating, feeling bad, wishing we had made other choices with our lives, and often seeing ourselves as in hopeless situations. Too often we blame others, saying someone else is responsible for the decay of our own lives, having lost any sense that we are navigators of our lives. Like sleeping beauty, we await a prince to awaken us, rather than awaking ourselves to our own riches: our capacities for joy and fun, to create, study, invent, innovate, lead, recover, re-invent, feel, love, discover, share, etc.

When I came across The Truth I realized that here is an opportunity for us to see ourselves with fresh eyes and to feel once again the passions of girlhood. The girl’s truth may not be exactly your truth, but the girl has the power to stimulate, reminding us of our talents, our dreams, our wisdom and our resiliencies. Weren't you once determined to make adulthood better than what you saw as a girl? If the girl begins to mobilize you to bring to life the exciting woman that you were meant to be, then The Truth is not lost!


The Truth: I'm Ten, I'm Smart and I Know Everything Excerpt:

Dear Diary,

I have a secret. I was going through my mom and dad’s night tables while they were out, and I found these great tubes in my father’s night table. They said Trojan on the label. You have to unravel them really carefully and then you can fill them with liquid, just like test tubes. I went into the kitchen and put sugar and water in one of them, salt and cinnamon in another, oil and pepper in a third and cleaning powder and water in the last. I had fun shaking them. I pretended I was a scientist. I hope my parents didn’t mind that I opened all four of them. Why would my dad have test tubes? He’s not a chemist.

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Dear Diary,

I hate Gloria. Her teeth are too straight. She won’t need braces. That isn’t fair! Also, her thighs are slimmer than mine and don’t have little puckers on them. I hate my puckers. At the beach my mom told me to just hold my stomach in and no one will notice my legs. But that is NOT the truth!The truth is Gloria has nicer legs than I do, and she knows it. In dance class she does turns really easily. Who wouldn’t with those legs? I guess she will grow up to be a great dancer and I won’t. I think I’ll trip her accidentally when she walks by my desk.

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Dear Diary,

Today, when I came out of the shower, I lifted my arm in front of the mirror as I was drying myself, and I had three dark hairs growing from my right armpit! I can’t believe it. It is beginning.

Good news: nothing in the other armpit yet.

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You can visit her blog at www.enchantedself.typepad.com/