Adolescence is the first great identity laboratory — the moment when the self that was handed down by family meets the world that has other ideas and begins the long negotiation. Erik Erikson called it the identity crisis that is not a malfunction but a developmental necessity; Indigenous rites of passage across cultures formalized it as crossing into a new name. What adolescents need is rarely less chaos but more mirrors — people who can reflect back to them what is genuinely emerging without rushing to name it prematurely.
Juana