Gifted Females and Gourds

Check out the newest entries in the Diigo Library: gifted females in middle school and gourds. You wouldn't think these two have anything in common but they do. Gifted females often hide their gifts and talents at two particular ages, 13-14 and 40 or so. These times coincide with natural reproductive changes in the female body. Gourds, also, have two timespans when they are vulnerable to outside forces: at the soft, tender period when expansive growth is taking place and when they are dehydrating on their way to becoming a useful and beautiful piece of art or craft.

Both are subject to outside forces. In the early stages of puberty, gifted females will tend to hide their intellectual gifts as family, peer, and society pressures to be feminine build. Gourds, as well, will mold themselves to outside pressures of fencing, strings, manual manipulations -- taking on the shape being imposed upon them.


 

As both age, they wise up and harden. At about 40 or so, gifted females are done with bowing to pressure. They start new careers, strike out on their own, and are not as willing to care about what others think. Gourds too, as they age, begin to harden. As they dehydrate, they become strong against bugs and winds and rains. They go on to be what they were destined to be.