I picked up Untangled not as a parent to a teenager (yet!), but as a practitioner — curious about how I could better understand the adolescent experience, particularly for girls navigating today’s highly charged social, emotional, and biological landscapes. What I found was a book that I now regularly recommend to peers and patients alike.

Dr. Lisa Damour, a psychologist and educator, outlines seven key developmental strands that teenage girls move through on their journey to adulthood. These include managing emotions, developing autonomy, and forming healthy relationships — areas that frequently intersect with the kinds of issues we see presenting in the clinic: anxiety, menstrual issues, fatigue, low self-esteem, disordered eating, or psychosomatic complaints.

What I appreciate most is Damour’s tone. She writes with immense respect for teenagers, without ever idealising them. Her voice is calm, grounded, and clear — helping adults understand that what often appears as chaos is, in fact, part of a natural and necessary process.

For herbalists, Untangled is especially useful in supporting a more holistic understanding of the young women we work with. So many of the physical symptoms we’re asked to treat are tangled (no pun intended) in wider emotional, relational, and developmental contexts. This book doesn’t offer clinical protocols — but it does help us ask better questions, listen more fully, and respond with compassion rather than frustration.

Whether you’re a practitioner, educator, or simply someone with young women in your life, Untangled is a valuable resource. It reinforces something we intuitively know in traditional medicine: that the teenage years are a liminal space, and that with the right support, challenge can be transformed into strength.