Death of The Good Girl

I grew up aspiring to be the Good Girl. At school, at home, everywhere I was lapping up the expectations and the judgement that comes with the role of the Good Girl.

I noticed that other Good Girls around me seemed to be getting attention, love, recognition, all the things I desperately wanted. So I decided I had to be like them.

I think I was about 6 or 7 years old. Of course, at that age I had no idea that I was buying into a dangerous archetype by following the GG path.

All I knew was that when I religiously followed the GG path, I was praised, I was recognised, I was being given opportunities.

Thinking back now, I was the perfect seed being sown to grow for the benefit of the patriarchy.

I learnt to never question the male authority pretty early on in my life by being shamed every single time I made an attempt.

Often it was fat-shaming. I was always a normal size girl but with curves from an early age. My father knew it would stop me in my tracks so it became his go-to tool for shutting me up.

Sometimes it was physical violence. The threat of being whacked around the head was enough most of the time to swallow my words and stop me from standing up for myself. On occasion, it wasn't. One day I paid the price with a cracked and bleeding head for leaving some study materials on the coffee table.

That kind of thing leaves a mark, not just on the body but on the soul as well.

I took me lots of lessons and many years of my childhood to learn that asking for being seen and heard was dangerous for a female. Physical, mental and emotional abuse was the consequence so it was easier, not to mention, safer to be invisible and silent.

You can imagine, all that stuff will eventually build up. And it did.

All the words, the beatings, the manipulation and my learnt response to them to keep me safe. They hardened into a stone-like creature that I was simultaneously carrying on my back and in my stomach. It developed its own identity and will.

I got so used to it being a part of me that I didn't even notice it any more but in reality, it was killing me. Killing my body with the pent up stress, my mind with the constant and relentless hypervigilant state when I had to interact with others and my soul because I knew something was holding me back from thriving but I was too scared to delve into what it was. I just didn't want to open that Pandora's box.

Until one very dark day a decade ago.

The day I had to make a decision between wanting to live or wanting to die.

There are some parts of that day I don't remember. Like my mind set aside a certain amount of space for that day and it had to choose what to keep and what to let go.

Since I'm writing this now, in 2019, I obviously chose life. Obviously.

The few years following that decision would be spent on me recovering, nurturing, learning to love the pieces of me that were left and grieving for the pieces I lost.

I first read about the Good Girl in 2017 in an article written by Samantha Nolan Smith.

I sobbed the whole way through because I knew, then, that I was a Good Girl and what it cost me.

Self-worth.

Independence.

Feeling powerful.

Confidence.

Self-love.

Self-respect.

Daring to dream.

Success.

Peace.

Just a few of the things I could think of.

Then the rebuilding began. Now that I knew what it was that I was carrying, that I could name it, I can heal it.

Heal the wounds left by abuse, the emptiness left by trying desperately to appease the patriarchy, the broken heart that was a gaping wound I left untended and festering for 8 years.

It wasn't an overnight thing. The GG is not something you take a pill for or have a great healing session and you're done.

It's a decision made, every single day about how you respond to the world and the people around you and to your own Good Girl triggers.

As I was learning to let go of her, I was learning about me. The weight of that stone wasn't lifted all at once. It was more like it was being chipped away with each choice I made from a place of Me and not from a place of the GG.

Sometimes it was 2 steps forward and 3 steps back and the guilt and shame cycle would kick in. That's when I called in my circle. My little circle of powerful women who would hold me the space to nurse myself back to Me.

I'm so lucky to have them.

My circle of powerful women.

Now, it's been over 2 years since I started my healing and my leaving the Good Girl behind.

The journey took me to some of the darkest places I've ever been to in my mind and to some of the most beautiful, amazing, divine places too.

I feel stronger, steadier, more powerful than I ever have before in my life.

I know the GG is not far behind me and sometimes it winks at me, beckoning to turn back into her because it's "easier". But I know that it's all a lie.

The lie the patriarchal world makes us all believe. Because when they take away our self-esteem, our sense of worth, our sense of identity and break us down, we are more likely to take the crumbs they give us, just to stay alive.

I want more than just staying alive. I want to live.