Drop Kick Your Good Girl to the Curb
Be a lot! Be all you are! We need you — all of you!
Is she still feisty? Yes, Yes, I am. Fuck, yeah. Does that mean I’m a lot? Apparently, it does.
Earlier this spring, I was talking with a friend who was processing a recent painful break up with a business partner, someone I happen to know. They’d been talking about circling back to the possibility of making me a one-boob bra out of their upcycled cashmere cast-offs as part of their budding business, something we’d already discussed — when her then business partner suddenly decided, “No, let’s not. Liz is a lot.”
A lot? Huh. Also — oof!
I was surprised that it stung — even if just a little. I could feel my inner Good Girl squirm in her chair. You know the Good Girl, because you have one, too. We all do. And I’d like to put this out there early on in this post — it is time for all of us to kick our Good Girls to the curb.
The Good Girl is the part of you who operates from the belief that you are supposed to be likable, tolerated, polite, palatable, “just enough” so you can be easily digested by everyone no matter what the costs or risks might be; the one who hides or dims the parts of you that might make others uncomfortable, who makes herself small or quiet to prevent any discomfort. She is the one who cares what other people think a little too much, who wants to be liked, quite irrationally, by every single person walking the planet. The Good Girl is the indoctrinated self who arose in childhood — or in utero, given how this has been part of the collective woman’s dysphoria for gazillion years — who understood early that this was the way it would be. She got used to having to be “fine” and “okay” with everything dished your way, to shrinking and butchering parts of yourself to fit in and feed the larger system of rules and constructs that infiltrated home, school, workplace, everywhere. As you grew, you might have realized, too, that the Good Girl is the one on your Committee who often gives herself over to men, dutifully, using your own nervous system and emotional capacity to mop up their messes, often at the detriment to your own energy. The same one, too, who is wired to compete with other women for the attention of men, further depleting or subverting yourself in order to bolster said men in your midst, who have their own version of the Good Girl to contend with.
The Good Girl is that twisted evolutionary holdover that sometimes re-enters the stage like an unwelcome bombastic fuckwit with an old script that ends up messing with everyone.
Despite my own deep embodied knowing of all of that, my Good Girl still hangs out in the shadows, and in that instance, sitting in my living room with my friend, it was she who emerged, making me feel the shade of disapproval behind the remark — and feeling it twist in my gut. I mean, I’d rather be “a lot” than “too little,” “not enough,” or gah, “nothing” at all. But still.
What the F does being a lot even mean? That I’m “too much”? Too much to handle? A pain in the ass?
I felt like I’d been reduced to some sort of invasive plant, wreaking havoc on the neighborhood — like multiflora rose. Nice, fragrant blooms in the summer, but damn, wicked sharp thorns that grab at you like you’re living in some Harry Potter world — and the worst part? They fucking take overrrrrr. As in, just go away. Plant yourself somewhere else. You’re a lot.
In the moment, I laughed it off, because who the F cares, really, but over the next few days, I carried that sting around with me for a while, the Committee spinning it around in my head like a forkful of buttered noodles. At first, I tried to flip what she said into something, anything positive. Elder Sage mused that maybe it was just something going on with this woman, that to entertain investing time and energy in doing something for me was overwhelming because the task itself was “a lot,” and far easier to pin it on me. Every part of me wondered — could there be by chance embedded in the comment even a speck of admiration for the energy and presence that others have perhaps appreciated about me? — and then laughed out loud. Nope. Inner Critic laid it out. Pretty sure she was beefing with something about you that she didn’t jive with. Oh well. Can’t please them all — but Good Girl sure wants to try. I am glad for the other parts of me that know better than to fall prey to that kind of thinking, however, who can bitch-slap my Good Girl, gently, put things into perspective, and reach a consensus of sorts — Warrior Girl pulling me aside to tell me, Girlfriend, didn’t you cut loose your Good Girl years ago? You are a lot. And be glad you are.
Rather than reject being a lot, what would it feel like to embrace it? I know that Warrior Girl is right — I am a lot! And I am okay with that. Maybe, just maybe, you know you’ve arrived when you hear someone say that you’re “a lot.” F*ck yeah.
Let’s be real. I have to be a lot! And I bet you do, too. Given the state of the world, we all need to be a lot right now. I’m not sure I could do all I do against this backdrop of insanity as well as I do (and there are days when I do not do so well), if I wasn’t a lot. If I didn’t allow all the different parts of me to share in the work. I’ve also been through some shit — and would not have come through the other side of it if I wasn’t a lot. Living on my own, I have to do so many different things by myself — and yes, it’s a lot. So I must counter that with also being a lot myself. And I’m glad I am — otherwise, I would have caved long ago to the ongoing pressure of having to tackle projects and decisions and navigating the usual challenging life shit by myself, and sold my tiny wannabe farm and moved to a sanitized life in a stupid condo somewhere — or worse, sold my soul to a second marriage with a provider-type who wanted to reduce me to one role, to just a few qualities and capacities and Committee members, and leave the rest of me behind, tucked into my stacks of vinyl records and mix tapes, shelves of scribbled-in notebooks, my big floofy dog and my John Deere tractor. Yeah, nope.
But still — the remark activated my chronically winded, wheezing, sneezing inner Sense of Lack (who clearly needs a more formal name on the Committee), as those remarks do, tapping into that feeling I’ve had since I was a little kid that I’m just not right, somehow. It’s a heavy bit to carry — Weirdo Spice knows — that who you are isn’t okay, that maybe you’re supposed to be a different way than you are — particularly the parts of you that might fly in the face of those f*cked up expectations and storylines of who you’re supposed to be or how you’re supposed to act. God forbid you should take up space.
It happens sometimes — an off-handed remark that feels a little too pinchy. And when it does, it’s good to take a closer look, clear some space, and sit with it for a bit. And so I did, and was reminded of other Good Girl transgressions — times when someone had commented about me in a way that indicated I had veered out of my prescribed lane, when they were maybe expecting my Good Girl to turn up, and instead, got a faceful of Warrior Girl. #sorrynotsorry
Last year, I got into it a bit with a male friend. Translated, this means that I argued my case after he made a dismissive remark that I was not going to ignore. I laid it out without apology, clearly, calmly, to which he replied, “You’re an intelligent, feisty woman — I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of that.” Sigh. Whateverrrr, dude.
It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. In 1990, about two months before I got married (to a guy who ironically was initially drawn to my particular brand of feisty that he would later demonize and pathologize through masterful gaslighting), my mother had an engagement party for us. One of her old boyfriends, N., someone I’d resented early on and tangled with a bit when I was in junior high, but came to love over time, asked a college friend of mine — another guy, of course — if I was still feisty. I can imagine the quiet cackles, the beer cans swinging in their hands.
My friend told me about it later. So what did you say?, I asked him. Why, YEAH, of course you’re still feisty. D’uh.
I was feisty with N. at first, FFS. Of course I was. I was 13. My Good Girl was straining under the weight of having to be nice to yet another one of my divorced parents’ respective, ah, partners? lovers? potential spouses?, to put up with whatever they dished out, and subvert my needs so that their needs would be centered, and she was pretty done at this point. After enduring an ongoing kaleidoscope of men who came in and out of our house and our lives at their whim — and being told by our mother that it was just the way it was going to be — my older sister and I had reached the end of our limits. There was one particular guy a year or two earlier, W., who had treated us with such disdain, and our mother with such open contempt at times, that we could not keep up the farce anymore. At a certain point it was all we could do to dish it back. We’d sing Linda Rondstadt’s You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good at him, our inner Bad Girls coming out to play. We were not sad to see him go.
Early on in childhood, as many of us do, I had assumed the Good Girl role in the family, and she held on tight, even when my Bad Girl was starting to elbow her for some room. I felt obligated to be extra nice to the kindly older babysitters who would take care of us during the weeks my mother was traveling for work, especially when my sister just didn’t have it in her. I made my bed every morning, learned how to hardly breathe so no one could hear me. I learned how to swallow the hurt of feeling left on our own too much, or of being pushed aside and silenced by some of those boyfriends. Because my sister was more resolute with her outward disdain, I stepped into the Good Girl space she walked out of, out of default. As younger siblings, I think quite often we step into the space left behind by our older siblings. And — I didn’t want people around me to feel bad. Good Girl training or just me, but even when I was feeling awful, needing comfort, something, anything other than what was happening, I tried to make the people around me, even when it was them causing my own upset, feel better. And when this particular boyfriend, N., the one who thought I was feisty, arrived on the scene, I didn’t like him at first, but thought I at least had to try. But I was also starting to explore my Bad Girl, and she gave Good Girl a hard shove — Don’t try so hard. I was pretty open about how obnoxious I thought he was. But over time, he and I slowly worked it out, first on the squash court, then around the dinner table. I made concessions, and I’m sure he did, too. In many ways, he was good for my mom. He convinced her to get a color TV, which was a big deal at the time. She loosened up about all sorts of things.
When I was 14, Mom got a big promotion and moved to Atlanta. N. lived with her the first year, and they got engaged. I had just started boarding school in New Hampshire, setting up an epic showdown — and then a strategic, brilliant, seamless collaboration — between Good Girl and Bad Girl on the Committee. This became an ongoing dance between the me of me and the me of others within a disco-dance-floored, high-pressured world that valued authenticity only conditionally — when expressed within the bullshit shiny-medaled definitions of success that the larger systems had deemed to be acceptable. Say it with me — fuck that shit.
A few years later, Mom and N. split up — but not before he offered to host a blowout overnight camp-in-the-yard kegger graduation party at his house for me and all my friends. By this time, I had learned to love and appreciate him for the energy he breathed into a family space that had started to feel increasingly small, rigid, and lonely. And maybe into my heart, too — helping me trust again. But Mom decided she didn’t want to get married — not to him anyway. And I never saw him again — until the engagement party. That happened a lot. N. was the second of three men Mom got engaged to. I would put a lot of energy into building relationships with these would-be step-fathers, into reconfiguring my plans, and myself, Good Girl exhausting herself at every turn — with some expectation that they’d stick around, that it’d be worth it, that things would finally feel more secure. But for reasons I understand now so much more than I did when I was a kid, Mom would end things and they’d leave, never to be seen or heard from again — apart from calling me feisty. With N., what remained for me — what still remains to this day — was the journey to acceptance, to learning to love him, and to missing him, still. That’s my soft side, not the feisty. I suppose I was disheartened that what remained for him was the feisty.
Sidebar note: I’d also argue that it could also have been another instance of men thinking they have to reduce their emotional capacities and hide authentic emotional responses in order to connect with other men. And sometimes this takes the form of vilifying women — because calling a woman feisty or too much or crazy or a lot is basically saying she’s veered out of her lane. She’s not being who she is supposed to be. She’s breaking the rules — Warrior Girl taking the reins.
As for my inner Bad Girl who was starting to emerge back then — she was a good thing for me, and for the burgeoning Committee as a whole, as long as she kept out of Rodeo Clown’s ear, who could spiral into some seriously risky behavior when she did. Warrior Girl took her over, keeping her safe and contained, because, well, she was a little out of control, for a while. But it was time. Time to rethink Good Girl, the Most Cooperative bullshit I’d adopted, the Pleaser, and kick her to the curb. She was getting in the way. She was way too worried about getting good grades and doing the right thing and making sure her grandparents were proud of her that the other parts of me, Bad Girl included, were feeling neglected, getting bored, and worse. Starved of oxygen, they were clamoring to be let out, to explore, experiment. I would never understand and feel my edges if I didn’t let all the parts of me have time to run amok, make mistakes, shine. It was time to be all I was — whatever the F that might be. I really didn’t have a clue. But I didn’t have a shot at discovering who that was if I let Good Girl worry too much about making other people happy. I didn’t have to be one thing or the other, that’s the thing. I could hold that tension inside of me — between Good Girl and Bad Girl, and the entire Committee, but most especially the tension between those defined by other people’s expectations and my own internal belonging, the me of others and the me of me. And I could instead just be — star-dusted and a-shimmer, dancing into the breath of my own becoming. Isn’t that what life is for?
Our quest to be that person, whomever that is, the person who spends too much energy trying to fit in to the social norms and other people’s expectations, and our own ideas, too, of who and how we are supposed to be, means we quite often diminish and hide and fail to develop other parts of us that we feel are somehow less worthy. We end up abandoning ourselves at every turn as we dim the parts of ourselves that make other people uncomfortable, or detach ourselves from the very things that make us, in all our gorgeous particulars, quintessentially us. We squirm and shape shift to try to fit into those fucking boxes that tell us we have to be this or that or this, or to follow the track laid out ahead of us, betraying the very essence of who we are and never giving ourselves the chance to create our own path out of our own vision. Aren’t we supposed to be engaging in the ongoing figuring and exploring and becoming? On our own terms? For ourselves? Any other way, and we’ve sold out — to the very systems that have laid out those fucking boxes, that one singular track, those expectations of shoulds and supposed to’s. And of course if it doesn’t work out, and usually it doesn’t, even after we’ve followed the rules, we think there’s something wrong with us. Fuck that shit.
Couched in this brazen bullshit is, of course, the Good Girl trope. My Good Girl, who still shows up from time to time on my Committee, as I’ve shared, who feels at once ancestral and cultural, betrays me at every turn. She whispers shit to my other selves, trying to reject who they are or steer their behavior for the sake of behaving appropriately, being nice for the sake of being nice, or for being liked. She tries to get them to shift who they are, who I am, whispering, Don’t say that! if I’m about to launch anything potentially problematic or edgy or off-putting or contrarian for fear of coming across as feisty or bitchy or weird or ha, a lot. The Good Girl wants to stay in the designated lane. Mostly, I don’t. And I see that as a good thing.
Ironic that it was Good Girl who emerged from the shadows that day, because in many ways, she is responsible for my shadow self. By wrangling with and shaming the parts of me who have been labeled unacceptable, unloveable, unwelcome, she inadvertently turns them into the othered — misfits relegated to the cold outer edges of my being, tiny shiny shadow selves tucked just out of sight, waiting to be let back out.
We all have shadow selves — the parts of us who have been maligned or deemed unworthy or lacking in some way, and so stuffed or snuffed out or dimmed or gaslit or called names — even by ourselves — the very delinquents on the committee who are so in need of so much more love! For me, quite often they are the parts that have been afraid to shine, to spread their wings, be all I am. My quest to be the Good Girl quite often forced the less-than-compliant, neurospicy, creative, and yes, angry parts of me to hide out in the shadows, languishing, unheard and unseen — until I decided I could no longer operate with any modicum of self-respect if I did not bring them back into the light of who I am, into how I express myself in the world. But first I had to make space for them. I had to identify the disablers, the naysayers on the Committee. I took a long and hard look at Good Girl and thought about whether or not she was doing me any good at all. I’m certain she has in her own way helped me navigate certain circumstances with greater finesse and even keep me out of trouble. But there have been trade-offs. I also know she’s inspired me again and again to self-sabotage, to betray my very essence and submerge my needs for the sake of others. To stay small, to let others steal my fire. And by keeping her in the mix, I’ve played into the patriarchal, misogynistic bullshit storylines that keep all women small, that strip the actual agency that comes from authenticity and voice and take away our power — ensuring that men continue to be served and enabled to remain entitled, yes, but also small and emotionally disabled in their own fucked up ways. Worst of all, Good Girl has kept me from stepping into all I am and can be, allowing me to believe that I shouldn’t shine so bright, lest make someone uncomfortable with all that dizzying, dazzling light and gah, think I’m “a lot,” or take away the spotlight from someone else. Good grief.
Somewhere inside of you is that beautiful, brilliant, soulful part of you that has been afraid to take up too much space in the world. We need that part of you more than ever right now.
In taking a closer look at my Good Girl, I’ve had to look at the harder edges of her many shadows — from the tiny shiny shadow selves on the committee she has vanquished to the dark corners for fear of shining too brightly and making her look bad, ha, to my Bad Girl, who along with her cohorts in the collective has gotten a bad rap. There’s not a single one on the committee that is all bad or all good — we know that. But we do get to decide for ourselves who gets to stick around, and how much power to give them. And as I’ve unpacked Good Girl’s origin story over the years, recognizing all the ways she’s disempowered me, I decided long ago to gradually reduce her presence and voice on the committee — phasing her out of the conversations and ultimately disappearing her from my day to day life. She is someone else’s creation — born out of a system that seeks to keep us powerless. Thankfully, she is now a mere shadow of her former self. In some ways, she is dying a good death — painless, timely, compostable. I am starving her, not giving her space or time or attention or breath or air or water. And soon, I will burn her hollowed out corpse in a blazing fire as an offering to my soon-to-be 60 year old self. Kick her to the curb. Buh-bye, Good Girl. Thanks for your service.
If we could only do that to the craptastic, soul-sucking system from which she came. Oh, wait. We can.
I realized long ago that I couldn’t possibly be all the things I am and want to be if I’m constantly worrying about whether people will like me. That I can’t possibly be boundaried and true to myself if I’m trying to please other people. That I can’t advocate or show up for myself — or others — if I’m trying to be a Good Girl all the time. Well-liked. Cooperative. Submissive. Making sure everyone is comfortable and happy. Not my job. Not yours. This is so important right now. How can we take care of each other in all the critical ways if we are acting on our indoctrinations, if we are still allowing the old consciousness that created this mess to guide our thinking, if we are letting the parts of ourselves that do not belong to us take the lead? The Good Girl — and that internalized sense of lack — exists in us as an unwelcome, largely unconscious implant, installed in us as part of the larger systems that must be taken down. These are the larger systems that reinforce the scarcity mindset to drive us to consume rather than create, to feel again and again that we are not enough and don’t have enough and must work harder and longer to make the money to buy more because we are nothing if we do not tend to those capitalistic habit energies. Are we enough? Do we have enough? Good Girl tells us we are not enough as we are, but must shape shift to fit into the boxes of cultural expectations in place to reinforce those systems.
Who and what, then, is getting in the way of leading ourselves and acting from a place of clear, focused, bold authenticity and nothing less — the powerful elixir we need right now? Time to go, Good Girl. We need to gather our wits, the best bits of our respective Committees, find our fire, collectively, and with our biggest, most brazen heart, come together to ignite the re-growth.
Because here’s the thing — there is absolutely no way to win at the Good Girl game. No matter what you do, it will, you will not be right. Trust me on that one. But we unwittingly take it on as if it is a game — as if the only way to survive in the system is to play it, and to play this role, and reduce ourselves again and again. The Good Girl is often part of the emotional labor women take on as young girls as part of the early mapping and messaging about what it means to be female in a patriarchal society. We are primed to not to shine too brightly, lest steal the spotlight from the men in our midst. We are shamed for being rambunctious and wanting to be physical, active, chatty. We are quickly brought to our proverbial knees by the very systems that work to oppress and reduce us so we can operate within those systems, following the dangling carrots like programmed child-bots in hot pursuit of approval that never arrives. Men have their own messed up shit, disabled emotionally and relationally by a system that likes to reward them for running away hard and fast from any emotional discomfort and connection with themselves, denying them the chance to build any semblance of self-awareness.
But it’s never too late to do the work.
Remember this question? Which parts of you did you learn were not welcome at school when you were a child?
Ask any high schooler and they can easily answer that question. Many of my students report getting the message over and over again that they could not bring their full self to school in kindergarten or first grade, that there was something deemed bad or wrong about at least a part of who they were. Too loud, too antsy, too verbose, ha. For the girls, it was often around wanting to play just as physically as many of the boys but not being allowed to. Instead, they were expected to be quiet and calm, to sit for long stretches of time without complaint while being sure to be a steadying presence for the boys because well, the boys couldn’t regulate themselves, right? They speak of noticing from a young age the double standard at work everywhere — how girls received harsher punishments and shaming comments for doing the same things the boys were doing, while simultaneously being rewarded for repositioning themselves back in the Good Girl box, in the default role.
This shit just goes on, no matter what your age — especially in the relational space with men. Oh, no worries at all, I’m happy to center your needs over mine! Better yet, if you say you like me, I’ll feel obligated to do anything you want me to do! I’ll try my best to make you feel good about yourself, even if it means taking a backseat in every possible way! I’ll wait to see what space you don’t take up before settling in! And I’ll move out of your way quickly and quietly so you can have it back if you so chose! I’ll be sure to quiet and dim and even cut loose the parts of me that might be problematic for you, don’t you worry. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me. I will try not to disappoint you. You’re supposed to feel in control and like the man! And supported in that. Our systems insist on that. I will be content with being less than who I am because I do not matter the way you do.
Fuck.
And fuck that shit.
Boys, too, are saddled with their own bullshit storylines from a young age — and because they often have not been allowed to develop their own capacities for self-reflection, may have a much harder time at examining them along the way. Ask a 60-year old man the same question, and they usually struggle with it. I don’t even know who I am. And as those little boys grow up, they lose sight of who they are beyond the singular identities they’ve constructed or that have been built for them around what they do for work, how much money they make, and being a family provider. Again — storylines installed by the greater systems that require these beliefs to take hold in order for them to persist, forcing men to believe there is nothing of value in interiority, in knowing themselves, in thinking beyond their external presentational, work-focused world. And it leaves them not sure of anything beyond their nifty 30-word little summary of themselves on LinkedIn. They might not know how to know themselves at all, having spent most of their lies struggling with their own Good Guy trope — trying to make decisions based on how it might look to others on the outside, or in the name of duty, rather than honoring what they themselves know to be best and true and right (which of course requires them to do the deeper shadow work themselves). Duty! Unpack that one for a bit. Loaded! Another one of the system’s henchmen.
Whatever gender, the storylines we inherit can, if we let them, keep us from truly knowing and experiencing ourselves, from feeling our edges and being able to articulate our needs and wants in healthy ways — and instead, keep us perpetuating the harmful narratives that fester within and feed the larger belly of the patriarchy, white supremacy, consumer capitalism, and worse. We so often take on an identity early on as part of our inheritance without making it intentional or even conscious; shown a path to take and without understanding why, we assume it as our own, reinforcing our assumed identity along the way. That path — someone else’s path — can consume us, subverting our identity into a mere veneer or shadow of our true self, which has long been buried and forgotten. Adopting the Good Girl or Good Guy identity because you think it’s how you’re supposed to be is mostly performative, unconsciously strategic, perhaps even full-camo, survival-mode shit. Whatever the origin, it’s not substantiated by who you are at your core, and preserving the facade only continuously hijacks you out of yourself, preventing you from claiming your unique depths and authenticity. By keeping you disconnected from yourself, and at the mercy of the identity you’ve adopted as your own, but is not your own, these forces are shaping the direction of your life — keeping you cinched up tight, believing, perhaps, that you are not worthy of good things. That fucking sense of lack. Maybe it’s time to reconsider your own enoughness, instead.
Which parts have you already brought back? Who might still be waiting in the wings?
Because here’s the thing: we do get to do the work to reclaim our identity — and ourselves — from the rotting trash heap of manufactured, bullshit systemic constructs designed to keep us under the oppressive thumb. It’s never too late to uncover who you really are. We do get to unpack the fear that is often behind not being able to step fully into ourselves — fear of how others might react when we are so shimmering and shiny and free. Identity is not fixed or stagnant, or a finished product — rather, it is an ongoing act of creation, a perpetual process around the larger forces of becoming. And we never stop becoming — as long as we breathe energy and awareness into knowing ourselves as we go, allowing for change, acceptance, and growth, we get to build and rebuild our identity, ourselves, as we grow — and age.
What are you afraid of? Letting others see who you really are? Shining too brightly? Disappointing people? Not being liked by everyone? Being a lot?
My work with students and older clients is largely around helping them engage more fully and authentically in this process of building foundational but not fixed identities — a constellation of particulars and peculiarities, both mundane and meaningful — empowering them with self-authoring tools and daily practices that engender not just self-awareness but self-acceptance, as well as an understanding of their own processes of becoming, which of course, is the life curriculum, the ultimate act of creation, especially when embraced as a form of self-directed creative play. This work can infuse their next steps with greater intention and vitality, purpose and direction, wherever they go, and no matter how many times they redraw their map.
No matter what your age, you get to do that, too. Let me know if you would like some help with it. For now, here are a few things you can do to let some of these ideas percolate a little more.
Interested in disempowering your Good Girl or Good Guy?
⇰ Keep going with your Committee work. Do some mapping to better understand and uncork your Good Girl/Guy — or whatever you might call the part of you that seeks to please everyone else, but most especially expectations around staying in your lane, coloring in the lines, not raising a ruckus or rocking the boat. The one who listens to everyone but you. Consider how much this part of you has infiltrated your identity — how you think of yourself and how you think others see you as well. Consider the power you give to this part of yourself simply by allowing it to flourish unchecked. Consider, too, what you’ve lost in yourself as a result.
⇰ What are the qualities and capacities you or others might assign to this part of you? Maybe it’s the well-behaved part of you, but break that down. Be specific. What does that actually mean? Caring for others? Compliant? Submissive? Quiet? Helpful? Then consider how many of these qualities have a flip side. Being caring and supportive can also mean sometimes putting yourself last. Trying to fit in and conform in order to not make waves can often mean suppressing your own opinions or needs. These tropes can mean so many different things along family and cultural lines — so unpack what it means to you.
⇰ Think about how the performative Good Girl or Good Guy seeks to outshine your more authentic selves, who may have been snuffed out over the years. Try to find them in the rubble. Bring them back to life first in your notebook, which can become a Book of Shiny Shadows, and then set them free — and give them some love.
⇰ Write an obituary for your Good Girl, your Good Guy, or a past self you are ready to let go of. Bury it in the soil. Burn it. You are still young.
⇰ In a nutshell: Without doing this work — and it is ongoing work, take it from me — you can’t be your full shiny whole integrated self. But it’s so worth it. Because of this — Being yourself in full bloom means you are risking rejection at every turn. But it also means you will open yourself to the possibility of attracting the right people and projects your way. It’s when the good stuff happens. Alignment. Synchronicity. So learn to disappoint people. Feel your edges. Set boundaries. Practice saying, I don’t like that. I don’t want to do that. I need…(fill in the blank).
⇰ Play out the script. What might happen if you cared less about what other people thought of you? This can be hard to do — a muscle to exercise — but cultivating giving fewer fucks is a powerful thing to do. I think mostly we worry way too much about it — which of course makes it impossible to be your true self! It also limits your capacity to advocate or show up for yourself or others in any sort of genuine, non-performative way. Allowing your Good Girl or Good Guy too much leeway also inhibits your ability to be an emotionally safe place for another person. This taps into the idea that you can only meet another person as much as you’ve met yourself. Staying cinched up small just to please or appease others or some bullshit storylines, to stay in those prescribed boxes for fear of being a lot, means you cannot possibly keep yourself or anyone else safe. If you aren’t regularly tuning in to yourself to understand and name the full spectrum of your emotional life and needs, you can’t possibly connect with someone else fully and intimately in an exchange of mutual care, whatever the relationship. This is in part the idea of presence — and being present for others begins with being present for ourselves. As Brene Brown said, “In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen — really seen.” We have to first show ourselves to ourselves, know ourselves, in order to truly share ourselves with others — and then get out of our own way.
I want to end with a little more about why doing this work matters. That inner sense of lack that fuels the Good Girl and disconnects us from our most empowered selves comes directly from the larger systems that feed on our willingness to believe in our own inherent unworthiness — compelling us to adopt the scarcity mindset that fuels the buy-buy-buy, rush ‘n go urgency of consumer capitalism and the idea that our sense of value as human beings is somehow tied to our productivity within said system. It is the same mindset that compels us to compete with one another for resources, position, power, material wealth — that buys in to the oppressive constructs, disempowers the strength of the collective, that rejects our basic interdependence and interconnection. Basically, it fucks with us. And it’s all connected, all part of the same — the way we make ourselves so small, ultimately, in order to perpetuate that addiction to external validation from systems that simply do not give a rat’s ass about us.
The world is demanding that we shed those indoctrinated parts of us and be all we are — to keep doing the work to get grounded in ourselves and clear about what feels meaningful and what matters most, so we can align our behaviors and thoughts and voice with who we are and what we might offer to the collective in the most powerful, impactful way. We think we have time. Do we? It all feels increasingly urgent now — to disconnect from all that does not align, and deepen our connection to and engagement with what does, and to put into a practice of everyday democracy what we’re willing to stand up for and speak out against. And sometimes in order to do this, we have to be a child again, shed all the outer layers and past voices telling us how to be, and instead, be fearless in our re-growth.
We need you to shine right now — the collective depends on it. Be a lot! Be feisty! Be true to you! I love you!