(In the car, daughter puts a CD in the player.)
Mother: “You listen to that a lot.”
Daughter: “Are you telling me to turn it off?”
Mother: “No.  Just thinking that you must really like it.”
Daughter: “Yeah.”
Mother: “What makes it so good?”
Daughter: “The way she compares herself to water. This part coming up—hear that?’”
Mother: “Yes. It’s beautiful.”

This mother just received the gift each of us waits and wishes for—an invitation to share, even briefly, her daughter’s mysterious interior life.  Some girls offer us such moments rarely; others reveal themselves more often.  Either way, it’s up to us to respond with careful attention, for this is how we nurture our daughters’ spiritual selves. 

Girls find strength in spiritual connections. A recent study of self-esteem at the University of Minnesota identified three factors that help girls weather adolescence successfully.  Along with connections to adults and positive academic experiences, spiritual connectedness was found to play an important role.  Whether they attended religious services or not, girls who felt linked to a power and a pattern beyond themselves had higher self-esteem.  Furthermore, girls who reported feeling personally connected to people in a spiritual community tended to make safer decisions regarding risky behaviors.  Clearly, when we support a girl’s spiritual awareness, we help her grow up as a whole. 

Looking for Meaning

Nurturing a girl’s spirit seems fairly straightforward when she is 10 or 11.  At this stage, most of our daughters are still open to sharing the rituals or beliefs that have meaning for us.  Lighting Hanukkah candles, singing Easter hymns, or admiring the beauty of a night sky binds us together.  But as girls enter their teens, they search for their own unique connections to the sacred.  They try on new ideas, keeping what has meaning for them and rejecting what does not.  Your daughter or mine may explore Buddhism this month and atheism the next.  If so, she’ll be “on task” developmentally, doing exactly what she has to do to build a belief system of her own.

“How Can You Believe That!”

You may feel your daughter’s absence keenly if she veers from your traditions.  It can be hard to reason respectfully with her about participation in family religious rituals, especially if she confronts you directly with something like, “How can you believe that!”  Such comments hurt, and you may be surprised by the intensity of your reaction.  If this happens, take a deep breath, connect with your own spiritual center and try, “Yes, I do believe that.  Tell me what you believe instead.”  If you can calmly listen to your daughter’s ideas and repeat what she says in your own words (“So you believe that . . .”), then she will hear her idea in a new way.  She can respond, “Yes, that’s it” or “No, it’s more like . . .” You may even get a dialogue going that connects you in a spiritual way.

One mother and her teenage daughter were having terrible disagreements about everything, including religion.  They began seeing a counselor, an insightful woman who helped them practice intentional listening.  This is the kind of listening in which you always let the other person finish her thought, and you don’t prepare your answer before she has finished speaking.  Then the counselor gave them an assignment.  “Skip church this Sunday,” she said.  She told them instead to hike to the top of a hill they knew. “Sit together and listen intentionally.  Talk about what you believe in your hearts,” she said.  They did, and it was an hour they’ll never forget.  “We still don’t agree,” the mother said later, “but it gave me such joy to feel close to her.”  The two of them had found, at least briefly, what we all hope for in each other—a companion for the spiritual journey each of us is making, someone who can hear our stories and appreciate our path.

Spiritual Connections

Try these ideas for nourishing the spiritual growth of the girl you love:

Drawing her out.  If you worship with a religious community, ask questions when you leave the service.  Try, “What had meaning for you?” and “What did you reject?”  If your daughter doesn’t want to talk, that’s O.K. Simply by asking questions, you let her know you’re willing to listen.

Everyday rituals.  Eating meals together or saying good night with a hug calls to mind the sacredness of our connections to each other.  Don’t abandon everyday rituals as your daughter enters her teens.

Menarche. The arrival of her first period intensifies a girl’s self-awareness.  This can be a time when she’s more open than usual to talking about the meaning of her life.  You might want to take this opportunity to bestow a gift with spiritual significance, or to explain, “Now you’re connected to women everywhere.  You’re even more a part of life.

Respect for the feminine.  Consider incorporating some aspect of the feminine into your family’s spiritual orientation.  Honoring a feminine, nurturing God or the sacred Mother Earth, for example, may help a girl recognize her connection to the divine.

Wider connections.  Recognize the spiritual value of your daughter’s volunteer work.  A girl who plants trees in a park or helps feed the homeless is connecting to the web of life around her.  She is making her spirit stronger.

Take Two

Words that might draw you and your daughter into deeper conversations:

Mother: “It gives me comfort to believe this.  Does it help you feel that way, too?
Mother: “It’s wonderful to feel that we are part of something bigger.”
Mother: “I know you’re capable of doing great things for the world if you look deep inside yourself.”

This article is based on the ideas of Carol Lee Flinders, author of At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger & a Feminist Thrist(HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), and contains contributions from therapist Donna Renner, L.P.C., of Brentwood, Tennessee.