Many of today's parents struggle with their approach in raising a healthy daughter within our complex culture. Never before have girls been faced with so many pressures to live up to confusing and often contradictory cultural expectations. These burdens are intense, newly evolving, and are affecting girls at earlier and earlier ages. As girls of all ages listen to the messages of popular culture, they gather that their worth is based upon a perfect appearance, the ability to gain attention and approval from others, and their accrual of accomplishments. As girls absorb these expectations, they begin to believe they are not good enough as they are. They are not able to develop an authentic sense of self because they lose themselves in trying to become what the culture dictates. It is not surprising that with all of these pressures, girls are experiencing stress, emptiness, and skyrocketing rates of mental health problems. Parents know that something is very wrong with today's culture, but they can't quite put a name on the problem. Many feel helpless as popular cultural influences pervade modern life at every turn. This book, however, provides parents with reassurance that their influence can make a significant difference in their daughters' development. Parents are empowered to make positive choices to help girls learn to resist cultural pressures and to successfully navigate the transitions they will face in their journey as girls in today's culture. Written in an engaging, practical style, Laura Choate draws from research and counseling literature to provide parents with tools they can use to teach their daughters the power of resilience. The book begins with a portrait of the contemporary adolescent girl's environment, including an in-depth exploration of cultural pressures and an overview of how these pressures influence girls' physical, cognitive, and social development. In the second part of the book, parents learn about five resilience dimensions that girls need not only to survive, but to thrive as they develop during girlhood and adolescence. Practical tools for instilling resilience regarding girls' positive body image, healthy relationships with friends and romantic partners, and management of high-pressure academic environments through a redefinition of what it means to be successful are all discussed extensively.

In recent years, water resource management in the United States has begun a shift away from top-down, government agency-directed decision processes toward a collaborative approach of negotiation and problem solving. Rather than focusing on specific pollution sources or specific areas within a watershed, this new process considers the watershed as a whole, seeking solutions to an interrelated set of social, economic, and environmental problems. Decision making involves face-to-face negotiations among a variety of stakeholders, including federal, state, and local agencies, landowners, environmentalists, industries, and researchers. Swimming Upstream analyzes the collaborative approach by providing a historical overview of watershed management in the United States and a normative and empirical conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating the process. The bulk of the book looks at a variety of collaborative watershed planning projects across the country. It first examines the applications of relatively short-term collaborative strategies in Oklahoma and Texas, exploring issues of trust and legitimacy. It then analyzes factors affecting the success of relatively long-term collaborative partnerships in the National Estuary Program and in 76 watersheds in Washington and California. Bringing analytical rigor to a field that has been dominated by practitioners' descriptive accounts, Swimming Upstream makes a vital contribution to public policy, public administration, and environmental management.

Shirley Zinn's story is one of determination, courage, and triumph over incredible adversity. Born and raised on the Cape Flats, Shirley never allowed her past to dictate her future. She proved that the typical story of a girl from the Cape Flats - that of gangsterism, alcoholism and teenage pregnancy - didn't have to be her story. Instead she relentlessly pursued her own goals and forged an impressive academic career even when she faced significant odds. And when she'd done that, she set out to conquer the world of business. Shirley is a formidable woman with an amazing story to tell. She has risen to the top of the pile in both academic and business circles, and yet she has retained great humanity and empathy in the face of great personal tragedy. Her story has lessons for us all - whether we are ordinary or extraordinary, whether we work in business, in government, or at home. Shirley's story will inspire you and show you that it is possible to achieve your goals, if you are prepared to swim upstream and be single-minded in getting where you want to be.

A collection of poems capture the feelings and experiences of a girl in middle school.

Short films have come into their own, not least in part due to the incredible new ways to distribute them, including the Web, cell phones, new festivals devoted to shorts--even television and theatres. This is the ultimate guide for anyone who's made a short film and wonders what to do next. Whether your short film is meant to be a calling card, a segue to a feature film, or you just want to recoup some of the costs, this book describes the potential paths for distribution. Written by the short film programmer of the Tribeca Film Festival and featuring contributions from top film festival directors, as well as studio, marketing, and technology executives, this book shows you what's important to the decision makers and gatekeepers. This is the definitive handbook filled with insider information available nowhere else.

"Author Dave Myers invites you to explore God deeper through his creation and see the rich lessons that are revealed in it. The perfect choice for any outdoorsman, Swim Upstream: An Outdoorsman's Guide to Spiritual Adventure is formatted as an easy to follow month-long devotional. Its offering of anecdotes and spiritual insight will bring your heart alive with stories of outdoor adventures and help you to clearly see the higher truths of God, showing you exactly what it takes to Swim Upstream. "--from publisher's description.

Swimming Upstream By: James P. McCullough, Jr. Swimming Upstream: A Story about Becoming Human is a memoir divided into two parts. Part One is a personal story of the author’s toxic early developmental experiences and the subsequent effects of chronic depression, as well as the specific life experiences that enabled him to modify his early maladaptive history and mature. Part Two is a history and description of the author’s forty-seven-year career as an academic clinical psychologist and his research with chronic depression. His therapy model, The Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP), is the only treatment model designed specifically to treat the chronically depressed patient. CBASP has been personally used by the author to treat 450 chronically depressed patients; therefore, Swimming Upstream is essentially a story of a life trajectory of hope.